All For One, One For All

Alexandre Dumas (1802 - 1870), writer of such enduring high adventure romances as The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Corsican Brothers, stands undeniably alone as the most widely read French author of all time. Whether or not he maintains a place in history as the most filmed author ever remains a point of contention.

According to The Guinness Book of Movie Facts & Feats, Edgar Wallace (1875 - 1932), the British author of numerous, musty, drawing-room mysteries, is the most filmed novelist, inspiring at least 180 English, American and German films (besides also being a playwright, Wallace, significantly, wrote the initial draft for what would become the 1933 screen classic "King Kong"). American writer Zane Grey’s prodigious output of romanticized novels of the Old West resulted in at least 103 movies, most of them low-budget B movies stuck on the bottom half of Saturday matinee double-features in the 1950s, although Ed Harris ("Appaloosa") breathed new life into the mothballed fiction when he executive-produced and starred in the 1996 made-for-television film "Riders of the Purple Sage," costarring real-life wife Amy Madigan ("Field of Dreams"). The works of Edgar Allan Poe, Charles Dickens and Leo Tolstoy have been brought to the screen over 100 times each. Some accounts claim that over 120 motion pictures are based on the writing of Alexandre Dumas, while more generous sources attribute over 200 films.

In his 1988 book The Hollywood History of the World, George MacDonald Fraser, the author of the farcical, fictionally historic Flashman series of novels, had this to say about Dumas’ masterpiece, The Three Musketeers: "There is no romance like it: the young Gascon cadet, thirsting for glory, falling foul of the indomitable Three (Athos, Porthos, Aramis), then standing up with them against the Cardinal’s guards, saving the Queen of France’s honor by retrieving the diamond studs she has unwisely bestowed on her wooer, the Duke of Buckingham, foiling the plots of the Cardinal and the wicked Milady, losing his beloved Constance, finally becoming a lieutenant in the Musketeers."

As mentioned previously in the moviehouse, every generation of filmgoers seemingly gets its own version of "The Three Musketeers." Less than 60 years after The Three Musketeers was published, the tale was made into a silent film in 1903, appropriately by the French. The Thomas Edison Studios cranked out a two-part adaptation in 1916. A decade later, the silent film era’s most popular swashbuckler, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., starred in a version which featured selected scenes enhanced with post-production-added color (above). Fairbanks reprised his role as d’Artagnan in a 1929 sequel titled "The Iron Mask."

The first, full-length English-language version of "The Three Musketeers" (above) was produced in 1935, starring St. Paul, Minnesota native Walter Abel as d’Artagnan and directed by Rowland V. Lee ("Son of Frankenstein").

Dumas’ bold adventurers were given a tumbleweed twist with "The Three Mesquiteers," an umbrella title that covered a series of over 50 low-budget matinee westerns cranked out between 1936 and 1943, including eight starring a young John Wayne as Stony Brooke, all based on novels by the prolific William Colt MacDonald. The popular programmers transplanted traditional western motifs into contemporary surroundings, and by the end of the series, the trio of 20th century sagebrushers were battling Nazis.

In 1939, Hollywood presented what it dubbed "A Musical Comedy Version" of Dumas’ novel, featuring Don Ameche as d’ Artagnan (above). (Decades later, Ameche would discover newfound popularity as oily greed-hound Mortimer Duke in "Trading Places" and in the Oscar-winning role of Art Selwyn in 1985’s "Cocoon.")

Ameche’s costars in the broad burlesque were the Ritz Brothers (above), a trio of vaudevillian siblings best described as a poor man’s Marx Brothers, the main difference being that while the Marx boys created individual comedic personalities, the three Ritzes remained an inseparable dough of mugging inanity. The script doesn’t give them individual names, and the credits don’t even bother listing the brothers by name.

Supplanting show business rumors that Douglas Fairbanks Jr. would inherit the mantle borne by his father nearly three decades earlier, Gene Kelly was cast in the role of d’Artagnan in MGM’s big-budget 1948 remake of "The Three Musketeers" (above). The lustrous supporting cast boasted Lana Turner, June Allyson, Angela Lansbury, Van Heflin, Gig Young and Keenan Wynn. The role of Cardinal Richelieu, the manipulative and avaricious antagonist in Dumas’ d’Artagnan novels, was given to Vincent Price, but, hedging controversy of offending the Roman Catholic Church, Hollywood watchdogs ensured the character was never referred to as a cardinal and his wardrobe downplayed any religious affiliation.

Like d’Artagman, Cardinal Richelieu was a flesh-and-blood historical presence but was far removed from Dumas’ depiction of the man as a power-hungry villain. As Chief Minister for France’s King Louis XIII, Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac (1585 - 1642), could be considered the world’s first prime minister. He succeeded in consolidating power to the throne by ruthlessly suppressing and stripping rival French nobility of any influence that could be utilized against the King in rebellion and, as a result, single-handedly transformed France into a strong, centralized state. Richelieu’s uncompromising policies paved the way for Louis XIV (who ascended the throne less than a year after the Cardinal’s death) becoming the most powerful monarch in 17th-century Europe.

Whatever his true motives may have been, Richelieu’s hard-nosed obstruction of royal intrigue and foreign interests, incorporating such authoritarian measures as censorship of the press, an internal network of spies, and the execution of prosecuted conspirators, garnered the Cardinal a singular niche in history as, according to Canadian-born philosopher John Ralston Saul, the "father of the modern nation-state, modern centralized power (and) the modern secret service." (Speaking of Canada, were it not for Richelieu’s influence and personal involvement with a fledgling French colony strategically located on the gateway to the Great Lakes at the St. Lawrence River, Quebec would not have evolved into modern Canada, and, by extension, Louisiana.)

Just how one of France’s most influential nationalistic figureheads was transformed by Dumas into one of fiction’s, and cinema’s, most unscrupulously cunning villains could actually be traced to mere historical gossip that the Cardinal himself was a rejected admirer of the French queen who subsequently targeted his romantic rival, England’s Duke of Buckingham, as both a personal and political enemy.

Author George MacDonald Fraser, in The Hollywood History of the World, dubbed the 1948 production a "lavish MGM spectacular, a film of brilliant color and costumes, staged with great panache, with Gene Kelly swashbuckling acrobatically in the Fairbanks tradition…bringing all his dancer’s grace to the role" in "a splendid, almost balletic rendering of the story," which "held close to the plot of the original story and performed the considerable feat of condensing it into just over two hours without losing the essentials." Fraser summed up, "It was a spectacular in the old studio tradition: rich, lively, glossy, romantic, and thoroughly enjoyable."

D’Artagnan was Gene Kelly’s favorite non-musical role, and he had hoped the film’s success would convince MGM to let him do a musical version of "Cyrano de Bergerac." They weren’t convinced.,

The Italians put their unique rotini-twist on the French tale with "The Secret Mark of D’Artagnan" (1963), which finds d’Artagnan and Porthos (budget constraints obviously excluded Aramis and Athos) actually working with Cardinal Richelieu to thwart a plot to overthrow Louis XIII! This film’s d’Artagnan, George Nader, had earlier starred in the cult sci-fi trash heap "Robot Monster" (below) often regarded as one of the worst movies ever made.

A Canadian made-for-television movie version of "The Three Musketeers" from 1969 found 26-year-old Christopher Walken portraying Felton, the Puritan guard seduced by an imprisoned Milady de Winter into assassinating the Duke of Buckingham. (Although Milady was a product of Dumas’ fiction, John Felton, was, in fact, a disgruntled English officer who did stab Buckingham to death.) D’Artagnan was played by Kenneth Welsh, an actor later familiar to fans of the cult TV series "Twin Peaks" as former FBI agent Windom Earle.

It’s interesting to take a look back at the cinema of the 1970s and see how the frantic antics in director Richard Lester’s enduringly popular "The Three Musketeers" (1973) and "The Four Musketeers" (1974) fit in (above). On one hand, in the wake of variously counter-cultural, youth-oriented and iconoclastic ‘60s flicks like "Easy Rider," "Psych-Out," "Bonnie and Clyde," "Medium Cool" and "Alice’s Restaurant," the "Me Decade" of the ‘70s ushered in a number of intensely provocative dramas, including "The Godfather," "The Godfather Part II," "All the President’s Men," "Network," "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest" and "The Deer Hunter."

On the other hand, perhaps because of weariness over a seemingly endless war in Southeast Asia and distrust in homeland politics, the decade’s highest-grossing films were pure escapist blockbusters, among them the original "Star Wars: A New Hope," "The Poseidon Adventure," "Jaws," "Grease," "The Exorcist," "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," "Saturday Night Fever" and "Superman." It is among these motion pictures where "The Three Musketeers" and "The Four Musketeers" nestle. As refreshingly comedic and breathtakingly action-packed as the high-spirited adventures are, there is a remarkable undercurrent of deviously intelligent social satire running throughout both films.

The ‘70s take on "The Three Musketeers," produced by Albert Salkind (who would subsequently produce the "Superman" films starring Christopher Reeve), was originally offered to The Beatles, since Richard Lester had already directed the Fab Four in their successful screen romps "A Hard Day’s Night" and "Help!" At that time, John Lennon was reportedly obsessed with French beauty Brigitte Bardot, who was rumored to be cast as the duplicitous Lady De Winter, but The Beatles ultimately turned it down.

In The Hollywood History of the World, George MacDonald Fraser, who, coincidentally wrote the screenplays for "The Three Musketeers" and "The Four Musketeers," deemed Richard Lester "the best director who ever tackled the subject, and there never have been Musketeers to match Oliver Reed (as the melancholic Athos), Richard Chamberlain (as the nonchalant Aramis), Frank Finlay (as the flamboyant Porthos), or Michael York (as the hotheaded d’Artagnan). Nor a Milady so wickedly lovely as Faye Dunaway, a Cardinal so masterful and urbane as (Charlton) Heston…"

When he approached Heston for the role of Richelieu, Lester told the actor that the Cardinal was one of the best villains in fiction and "It’s about time you played a bad guy." Heston, in his 1995 autobiography, In the Arena, recalled, "True, it helped that Richard promised to film all my scenes in ten shooting days and pay me an obscene amount of money."

(Heston’s performance in the 1961 film "El Cid" as Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar, the 11th-century Spanish hero who captured Valencia from the Moors, prompted Fraser to note the picture’s unique place in historical epics by "paying as much heed to human psychology as to action," something we believe Heston brought to all his historical roles - Andrew Jackson in "The President’s Lady" and "The Buccaneer," Michelangelo in "The Agony and the Ecstasy," General Charles "Chinese" Gordon in "Khartoum," Henry VIII in "Crossed Swords," Richelieu in "The Three Musketeers." "There’s a special excitement," Heston once said, "in playing a man who made a hole in history large enough to be remembered centuries after he died." "Heston," according to Fraser, "is simply international, and acceptable as hero, tyrant, patriarch, statesman, king, or commoner; probably only Olivier matches him for historical variety.")

"Dumas made Richelieu a classic villain," Heston wrote, "all-wise, all-powerful, determined to thwart the gallant musketeers at any cost." He noted, "The more I researched Richelieu, the more I admired him. He served Dumas as a villain; he was in fact a great man. He more or less invented France as a modern nation, resourcefully and tirelessly serving a fool of a king (Louis XIII). He was indeed ruthless in the service of his country."

During production, Heston said to director Lester, "This is a swashbuckling romance. How much satiric spin do you want me to put on Richelieu?" According to Heston, Lester "all but leapt out of his chair. "None at all, Chuck, for God’s sake! You have to play the part as though we were doing a film about him. I need you to be the solid center of this piece. Cardinal Richelieu is serious and dangerous. He is not joking."

Heston was particularly proud of convincing the director to include a quote from the historic Richelieu that was neither in the script nor the novel. When the Cardinal’s henchman, Rochefort (Christopher Lee), suggests, "It must be difficult, your Eminence, to have so many enemies," Richelieu matter-of-factly replies, "I have no enemies; France has enemies." In his autobiography, Heston expressed his lack of understanding why, instead of Richelieu, "the French persist in revering Napoleon…a bloody tyrant who all but destroyed France."

The sparkling cast also featured Jean-Pierre Cassel as a clueless Louis XIII, Geraldine Chaplin as his consort, Queen Anne, Simon Ward as her paramour, Lord Buckingham, and, displaying a surprising flair for pratfalls and knockabout comedy, Raquel Welch, as d’Artagnan’s beloved, Constance. In Jean-Pierre Isbouts’ 1998 book Charlton Heston’s Hollywood, Heston recounted, "It was a brilliant stroke of (Lester’s) to make Raquel, as beautiful as she was, very clumsy. She kept falling and stumbling over stuff." He called it "perhaps her best performance." Welch’s atypical performance won her a Golden Globe as Best Actress. Goon Show cofounder Spike Milligan was marvelously befuddled as Constance’s addled husband, while Roy Kinnear, a familiar presence in eight films directed by Richard Lester, added a sardonic touch as d’Artagnan’s tireless servant, Planchet.

Recollecting his experience, George MacDonald Fraser wrote, "No screenwriter was ever so fortunate, or more grateful," calling the production "a mixture of comedy and realism; there was room for more Dumas, and for historical detail…the extravagances of royalty in elegant palaces and the squalor of slum interiors…authentic broadsword rough-housing instead of the conventional polished rapier work. The Musketeers were closer to Dumas’ originals - a good deal less decorous and principled than they usually appear on screen…Richard Lester filled the screen with life and spirit and fun."

Behind the scenes, the breathtaking duels were brilliantly choreographed by William Hobbs, a master swordsman and fight director responsible for a number of the screen’s most memorable fencing from the 1960s to the 2000s, including "The Duellists" (starring Keith Carradine and Harvey Keitel), "Excalibur," "Hamlet" (the 1990 version with Mel Gibson), "Rob Roy" and "The Man in the Iron Mask" (featuring Leonardo Di Caprio). According to critic Roger Ebert, Lester utilized "three cameras at a time and his customary nervous energy."

When the final production clocked in at over three-and-a-half hours, the producers surprised the cast by cutting it into two separate releases. In her autobiography, Faye Dunaway recalled, "I had a feeling that something was afoot…There was an immediate outcry from the actors that we had been taken advantage of. No one had agreed to the idea of filming two movies for the price of one." In his review of "The Four Musketeers," Roger Ebert pointed out that in the actors’ contracts, the fine print cleverly substituted the phrase "the film" with "the project."

The legal squabble over the double-production led to the Screen Actors Guild’s issuance of what became known as the "Salkind Clause" (in reference to "Musketeers" producer Alexander Salkind), guaranteeing that an actor’s contract for a single film could not be extended to two films without the consent of the actor. In hindsight, Charlton Heston maintained a laidback position over the controversy, stating, "I was paid a very great deal of money for not much work…I thought it was kind of funny, but then again, I didn’t work so hard on it ."

Obviously inspired by the popularity of Richard Lester’s films, small-screen producers jumped on the swashbuckling bandwagon with the 1976 TV movie "Panache," starring Rene Auberjonois (Changeling Odo on "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" and attorney Paul Lewiston on "Boston Legal") as the titular, devil-may-care hero in a lighthearted escapade which borrowed a number of characters from The Three Musketeers, including Cardinal Richelieu. (Incidentally, the word "panache" originally denoted a tuft of feathers, as in a plumed hat, but its eventual, figurative meaning as a grand, flamboyant manner or swaggering flair was first used in an 1898 translation of "Cyrano de Bergerac.")
Likewise, 1979’s "The Fifth Musketeer" (based on Dumas’ The Man in the Iron Mask) tried to cash in on the box-office success of the Lester pictures, with ads boldly proclaiming, "Pure Adventure Is Back…For the Fun of It!" Beau Bridges played dual roles in an all-star cast, including Cornel Wilde, Lloyd Bridges, Jose Ferrer and Alan Hale Jr. as the aging Musketeers - respectively, d'Artagnan, Aramis, Athos and Porthos - along with Sylvia Kristel, Ursula Andress, Ian MacShane, Olivia de Havilland and Rex Harrison.

Twenty-seven years earlier, Wilde and Hale portrayed d’Artagnan Jr. and Porthos Jr. in "At Sword’s Point," also known as "Sons of the Musketeers," costarring Dan O’Herlihy as Aramis Jr. and Maureen O’Hara as Athos’ swashbuckling daughter, Claire. Alan Hale Sr. himself had played Porthos in the 1939 version of "The Man in the Iron Mask," directed by James Whale, of "Frankenstein" and "Bride of Frankenstein" fame.

Ken Annakin, the director of "The Fifth Musketeer," was a competent filmmaker, with an impressive résumé, including Disney’s "The Swiss Family Robinson," the British sequences in "The Longest Day" and the 1965 comedy "Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines," but when it came to mixing the right blend of frenetic action, slapstick comedy and sly political satire, he couldn’t hold a candle to Richard Lester.

In 1988, director Lester collaborated again with writer George MacDonald Fraser for "The Return of the Musketeers" (above). Inspired by Dumas’ Twenty Years After, the entangled plot interweaves political intrigue with rambunctious derring-do as d’Artagnan (Michael York) attempts to reunite his fellow, aging Musketeers (Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Frank Finlay). Geraldine Chaplin reprises her role as Queen Anne, while the actor who played her husband, King Louis XIII in the earlier films, Jean-Pierre Cassel, here appears in a cameo as Cyrano de Bergerac.

Jean-Pierre Cassel portrayed d’Artagnan in a 1964 French production, "Cyrano et d’Artagnan," directed by Abel Gance, noted for the acclaimed 1927 silent epic "Napoleon." Jose Ferrer (previously mentioned as playing Athos in "The Fifth Musketeer") repeated his 1950 Oscar-winning role as Cyrano.

"The Return of the Musketeers" also saw the return of Christopher Lee as Rochefort, which is interesting since the character was killed in the climactic end-all swordfight with d’Artagnan in "The Four Musketeers." (In Alexandre Dumas’ d’Artagnan Romances, Rochefort and d’Artagnan are initially antagonists who engage in a number of duels before becoming friends and allies; in Twenty Years After, d’Artagnan accidentally kills Rochefort.)

When Charlton Heston got a telephone call from Richard Lester, the actor assumed he was going to be asked to repeat his role as Cardinal Richelieu. "But when I asked him," Heston recalled, "he said, ‘No, no, I can’t do that.’ ‘You son of a bitch,’ I said, ‘you’ve got everyone else in this one.’ ‘That’s true,’ Lester admitted, ‘but you’re dead. It’s twenty years later, and there’s a different cardinal now - you know, whatshisname, Mazarin.’ I was dumbfounded. ‘But we would like your permission,’ Lester continued, ‘to have a portrait made of you…to have hanging on the wall…’ So I said, ‘The hell with you guys.’ ‘Oh, come on, Chuck,’ Lester said suavely. ‘All right then,’ I said, ‘I’ll do it if you give me the portrait after you’re done with it.’ Now…I thought this was going to be a small portrait…fairly modest. But…it came over and there it was, some five feet tall…I’m very fond of it."

The role of Richelieu’s successor, Cardinal Mazarin, went to Philippe Noiret, the beloved French actor with over 100 films to his credit, perhaps best remembered internationally as the fatherly projectionist in "Cinema Paradiso" (1988). Other newcomers to the cast include Kim Cattrall ("Sex and the City’s" Samantha Jones) as Justine, vengeful daughter of the executed Lady de Winter, and C. Thomas Howell (Ponyboy in Francis Ford Coppola’s "The Outsiders") as Raoul, son of Oliver Reed’s Athos.

During filming in Spain, British comedic character actor Roy Kinnear (above), reprising his role as d’Artagnan’s exasperated servant, Planchet, fell off a horse and fractured his pelvis. He was transported to a Madrid hospital, where he succumbed to a heart attack the following day. His family subsequently demanded an official investigation, questioning the quality of medical care he had received. His role was completed by a stand-in, photographed from behind, and dubbed by a voice actor.

Once described as "plump, florid, wheezy, wispy-haired," Kinnear, memorable as the father of spoiled brat Veruca Salt in "Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory," had worked with director Richard Lester on a number of occasions, beginning with the 1965 Beatles film "Help!" Kinnear was especially hilarious as a deadpan gladiator instructor in Lester’s 1966 version of "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Forum." Lester was so affected by Kinnear’s death that he abruptly quit the film business.

Never released to the theaters in the U.S., "The Return of the Musketeers" made its American premiere, without fanfare, on the USA cable network in 1991.

Michael York dusted off his d’Artagnan characterization one more time in 2004 for Hallmark Entertainment’s "La Femme Musketeer," also known as "The Lady Musketeer." Suzy Amy (of the British soccer soap "Footballers’ Wives") stars as d’Artagnan’s daughter, Valentine (above), who teams up with the three sons of her father’s old cohorts, who themselves eventually join the adventure.

The cast features Gerard Depardieu as Cardinal Mazarin, Nastassja Kinski as an evil noble lady and John Rhys-Davies (Indy’s friend, Egyptian archaeologist Sallah in a couple of "Indiana Jones" pictures and the dwarf Gimli in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy) as Porthos, who tells the now middle-aged d’Artagnan, "All for one and one for all - if your wife will let you."

John Rhys-Davies earlier played Porthos, as well as Alexandre Dumas (above), in a two-part episode of the 2000 science-fiction series "The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne," produced in Canada. (As a young, aspiring writer, Jules Verne, in fact, became acquainted with the elder Dumas. Dumas had recently built his own theater, which he called Theatre Historique, where he could stage plays of his liking, especially his own. For a dramatization of "The Three Musketeers," Verne was an honored guest in Dumas’ box, where he delighted in his vainglorious patron’s running commentary on his own play. "He couldn’t help telling us what was going to happen," Verne wrote in a letter home.)

The 1992 made-for-television film "Ring of the Musketeers" cast "Bay Watch" star and viral-cheeseburger-chomper David Hasselhoff as modern-day John Smith D’Artagnan, with Cheech Marin as Burt Aramis and Alison Doody (the flaxen-haired femme fatale from "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade") as Anne-Marie Athos. This off-the-wall obscurity was co-written and directed by John Paragon, a former member of the Los Angeles-based improvisational comedy troupe The Groundlings who played Jambi the Genie on "Pee-wee’s Playhouse." A number of Paragon’s fellow Groundlings and "Playhouse" costars appear in cameos in "Ring of the Musketeers," among them Cassandra ("Elvira") Peterson, Edie McClurg and Lynne Marie Stewart (aka Miss Yvonne).

Critic Leonard Maltin dubbed Disney’s 1993 production of "The Three Musketeers" "Young Swords," referring to costars Charlie Sheen and Kiefer Sutherland’s appearance in the hit 1988 film "Young Guns."

Coincidentally, there was a 2001 TV movie titled "Young Blades" (above), featuring Hugh Dancy, who portrayed Galahad in 2004’s "King Arthur," as d’Artagnan, followed in 2005 by a short-lived series of the same name on the family-friendly PAX network (below), starring Tobias Mehler (Zac Adama on the recent "Battlestar Gallactica") as d’Artagnan.

Alongside Sheen’s portrayal of Aramis and that of Sutherland’s as Athos, Oliver Platt was singled out in reviews for his robust presentation of Porthos. Rebecca De Mornay (forever enamored by fans of rapid transit sex for her tryst on the el with Tom Cruise in "Risky Business") portrays the nefarious Lady de Winter, while the always reliable Tim Curry etches a memorable Cardinal Richelieu (below).

The performance of Chris O’Donnell (Robin the Boy Wonder in "Batman Forever" and "Batman & Robin," now costarring with LL Cool J in the TV series "NCIS Los Angeles") as d’Artagnan garnered a nomination for the Golden Raspberry Award as Worst Supporting Actor. Director Stephen Herek’s previous credits included "Critters," Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure," "Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead" and "The Mighty Ducks."

Little more than a decade after Disney-fying Dumas’ protagonists into ‘90s-mulleted homogeny, the studio went back to the basics with the direct-to-home video animated "The Three Musketeers," featuring Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Goofy. Also along for the adventure are Disney stalwarts Minnie Mouse, Daisy Duck, Peg-Leg Pete, Clarabelle Cow and the Beagle Boys.

Speaking of animation, MGM’s venerable cat-and-mouse antagonists, Tom and Jerry, were featured in 1952’s "The Two Mouseketeers," an Oscar-winning Best Short Subject, which ended with the morbid offscreen execution of Tom by guillotine. Jerry was paired with Nibbles, an orphaned mouse also known as Tuffy, who appeared in a number of Tom and Jerry cartoons, including the 1954 prequel to "The Two Mouseketeers," "Touché, Pussy Cat!" (nominated for an Academy Award) as well as two more Musketeer-inspired romps, "Tom and Cherie" (1955) and "Royal Cat Nap" (1957).

(And then there was 2009’s "Barbie and the Three Musketeers." We in the moviehouse were hoping for a menage a quatre, but it turns out to be one more in Mattel’s ad infinitum-ad nauseam series of girl-empowering home videos in creepy computer animation.)

In 1994, Sophie Marceau, best known to American audiences as Princess Isabella in "Braveheart," starred in the enchanting "La fille d’Artagnan," or "D’Artagnan’s Daughter," also known as "Revenge of the Musketeers," directed by Bertrand Tavernier, who, in 1986, made the critically acclaimed "Round Midnight," featuring tenor sax great Dexter Gordon. Philippe Noiret, who played Cardinal Mazarin in "The Return of the Musketeers," here portrays d’Artagnan.

A.V. Club critic Keith Phipps called "La fille d’Artagnan" "a colorful, high-spirited film" which "makes a nice companion piece with Richard Lester’s ‘The Three Musketeers’ and ‘The Four Musketeers,’ pairing old-fashioned adventure with a knowing wit and, in this case, sentiments of sexual equality mixed with generous portions of heaving cleavage. It’s froth, to be sure, but Tavernier’s assured direction and a game performance from Marceau make it worth a look."

A later French production, "D'Artagnan and the Three Musketeers" (2005), also titled "The 4 Musketeers," put a supernatural spin on the tale by depicting Milady Winter as a sorceress who has a covenant with the Devil. The three-hour film features Emmanuell Beart (costar of the acclaimed 1986 "Manon of the Spring" and the 1996 hit "Mission: Impossible") as the assassin with satanic powers.

(Above) "The Musketeer" (2001) has be the loosest of adaptations (at least, until the 2011 3D version), owing more to popular Asian action flicks than Dumas’ fiction. Stephen Holden, critic for The New York Times, called it "probably (the) least necessary screen adaptation ever," singling out the film’s "allegedly groundbreaking fusion of swashbuckling swordplay and aerial Hong Kong-style choreography…What tumbles from the screen is a frantic, graceless confusion, devoid of magic and playfulness."

The gravity- and logic-defying stunts were masterminded by Xin-Xin Xiong, once a stunt double for Jet Li. Former Calvin Klein model Justin Chambers (currently playing Dr. Alex Karev on "Grey’s Anatomy") portrays d’Artagnan in a cast featuring Mina Suvari ("American Beauty"), Tim Roth, Catherine Deneuve as Queen Anne and Stephen Rea as Richelieu.

Holden summed up the movie: "‘The Musketeer’ belongs to the school of new-style adventure movies that confuse visual energy with visual cole slaw." Ten years later, the same, it seems, can be said for the recent 3D version of "The Three Musketeers."

When a distributor refuses to screen a movie for the press before its theatrical release, it is, predictably, a sign that the studio lacks confidence in the production. Such was the fate of "The Three Musketeers," which sneaked into theaters in late October 2011.

This take on the timeless tale features Milla Jovavich as an amazingly athletic Milady de Winter (above), which should come as no surprise since director Paul W. S. Anderson personally molded Jovavich into the cinema’s reigning action heroine as producer and sometime director of the "Resident Evil" films. Anderson also happens to be married to Milla. The supporting cast boasts Oscar-winning Christoph Walz ("Inglorious Basterds") as Cardinal Richelieu, Orlando Bloom ("The Lord of the Rings," "Pirates of the Caribbean") as the Duke of Buckingham and Mads Mikkelsen ("Casino Royale," "Valhalla Rising") as Rochefort. Logan Lerman, the star of "Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief," portrays what ads depict as a suspiciously androgynous-looking d’Artagnan (below), a character "so colorless," in the words of The New York Times critic Stephen Holden, "that you can’t imagine why so many women ogle him, except for his youth."

"The film," Holden noted, "belongs to the fantastical ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ school of filmmaking and has the same cheeky attitude toward Alexandre Dumas as Guy Ritchie had toward Arthur Conan Doyle in ‘Sherlock Holmes’…Without drama or reverence for its source and lacking any genuine interest in history or literature, the film offers small pleasures with its visual kicks, found principally in practiced scenes of battling airships and generic stunt work adapted from Hong Kong action movies."

Chicago Tribune’s Michael Phillips wrote, "Whatever your relationship (ardent, platonic, nonexistent) to the Alexandre Dumas story about Athos, Porthos, Aramis and the lionhearted musketeer intern, D’Artagnan, there’s a word for the latest screen edition of ‘The Three Musketeers’: whatthehell? Seriously. What the hell?…Director Paul W. S. Anderson brings to this costume party the same battering-ram sensibility he brought to ‘Allien Versus Predator,’ ‘Death Race’ and the continuing ‘Resident Evil’ franchise."

Dumas’ classic, according to Phillips, "is now a steampunked migraine. Clashing swords, purloined jewels and court intrigues no longer suffice. This movie couldn’t give a rip about that stuff. It exists for its digital airborne sailing vessels and deadly retro-futuristic flamethrowers…Not that Anderson cares about dialogue. But he’s a numbskull with action."

Almost immediately on the heels of the film’s shaky release, Milla Jovavich took to Twitter to voice her disappointment with the lack of a marketing campaign, targeting Summit Entertainment, the film’s U.S. distributor (Summit has found success in the release of the "Twilight Saga" movies). Jovavich accused the company of "resting on their laurels" from "Twilight" and sweeping "The Three Musketeers," "a great family adventure film, under the rug in the U.S. Shame on them. SHAME ON YOU Summit."

The last word goes to reviewer Michael Phillips: "Rewatch the 1974 Richard Lester ‘Three Musketeers’ sometime. That impudent entertainment, both plush and merrily slapdash…had a spark to call its own."