Best movie of this year hands down!

As Good As It Gets

A Masterpiece!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

I feel obliged to share my thoughts about the Musketeer d'Artagnian - the way they are in the mind of someone in his mid-fifties. Nowadays, adolescents doesn't read books as much as we did as kids. We had also bicycle (various models), sarbacanes (blowgun with paper darts), marble or glass balls for playing the Triangle (I don't know the name of that game in English), etc. So, how about my having read the book "Three Musketeers" and its sequels at age 10-13 and being totally fascinated. I didn't know French history and going to the movies was expensive though greatest entertainment at that time. Television was dull, parentage was boring and life was just taking a start.So, I didn't watch this film exactly in 1973 but some ten years later on video. My first encounter with the Musketeers was in "Le Masque de Fer" (1962) with Jean Marais, which doesn't feature the rest of the Musketeers but is swell. French cinema was making great adaptations of historical novels written by 19th century Romanticists - Alexandre Dumas pere, Victor Hugo, Honore de Balzac, Eugene Sue, Stendhal and others. Altogether, the French were leaders in Adventure genre both in fiction and cinema; Walter Scott and James Fenimore Cooper, however, were more popular in the Anglophone world.Nee, I started this review from another angle. Wikipedia gives nice summary plot of the three novels from d'Artagnan Saga: 1. "Three Musketeers", set in 1625; 2. "Twenty Years After", set in 1648; and 3. "Vicomte of Bragelonne or Ten Years Later", set between 1660 and 1673. It was the Age of Louis XIV, the Sun King who was the longest reigning monarch of all times (72 years). Now d'Artagnan, whether a real person or fictional hero, is dubious personality. He died as Marshal of France, at the siege of Maastricht, from a cannon ball (yet I read elsewhere in a critical study that he died in Bastille Prison and was "de facto" the alleged "Man with Iron Mask"; Philippe I, Duke of Orléans, was younger twin brother of Louis XIV and was highly fictionalized but he has proved progeny that ruled as Louis Philippe I of France from 1830 till 1848).Right or wrong, Alexandre Dumas wrote a great adventure novel that is unsurpassed in its dramatization while little inconsistencies here and there are not important. For instance, Athos died of grieving because his son Raoul was killed by Barbary Coast corsairs in Algiers; Porthos is smashed by stones in a cave while fleeing the royal guards; Aramis escapes by sea and becomes a Jesuit in Spain. This is the fate of the Musketeers.Lastly, my personal opinion about "Three Musketeers" (1973). I rate it higher than the next installment "Three Musketeers" (1993) only because the performance of Chris O'Donnell as d'Artagnan is so poor. Thank You!P.S. My first instance doesn't work here. Several weeks after I wrote this review I was curtailed by a friend in conversation. It appears that I have watched even an earlier version of the Three Musketeers story in the 1970s - i.e., "Les 3 Mousquetaires" (1953), but my overall impression as a kid was that this movie was comedy with lot of laughter in it mainly because of the role of Planchet (Bourvil); the latter was a great French comedian, sorrily forgotten today. I haven't watched this 1953 version on video, whatsoever!

This is arguably the best version of the oft-filmed Dumas classic. It's a somewhat uneven mixture of comedy and violence early on before it settles down. It starts to come together once the main story involving the queen's diamonds kicks in about a third of the way in. The humor is sophomoric but everybody seems to be having so much fun that the film eventually wins over the viewer. The all-star cast is in good form. York is ideally cast as the bumbling D'Artagnan. Among the musketeers, Reed comes off best. Heston and Dunaway provide the villainy, although the latter really gets to shine in the sequel. In perhaps the best role of her career, Welch is charming as D'Artagnan's daffy lady love.

As much as I liked the 1948 film(and I am one of those who actually liked the 1993 film, it was flawed and deviated a lot but it was entertaining), this is my personal favourite film adaptation of the Dumas classic. It is fun, witty, well-paced and is in close reference to the book. The script sparkles constantly, and the action sequences are unpredictable and very well-staged. The film also looks wonderful, the costumes are beautiful-just look at Milady's dresses- and the scenery is breathtaking captured wonderfully by the fluid cinematography. Helping all this work is the crisp direction and the rousing music score. And the performances are marvellous, with Michael York very clever and handsome as D'Artagnan and Oliver Reed a standout out of the three Musketeers as Athos, the melancholic drunk. That's not to say that Richard Chamberlain and Frank Finlay weren't great, they were, being both witty and charming but Reed stood out with some of the better lines of the script. Raquel Welch is a lovely yet clumsy Constance as well, but I loved the villains here. Cardinal Richelieu is played with crisp villainy by Charlton Heston and Rochefort is played magnificently by the majestic Christopher Lee. And I loved Fay Dunnaway as the beautiful, scheming and haunting Milady De Winter too, surpassing Lana Turner I think. Any criticisms? No, not really, other than one or two parts where the story was a little hard to follow, but other than that, this is a hugely enjoyable film and a definite must. 9.5/10 Bethany Cox

Alexandre Dumas's classic The Three Musketeers seems to never lose its appeal, it gets another cinema version every generation. In the seventies Richard Lester shot such a long film that producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind decided to release it in two parts. This film only takes us to the point of the affair of the diamond studs.Michael York is one truly bumptious Gascon in his interpretation of D'Artagnan. Apparently it's a French mantra that people from Gascony are braggarts and quick to fight. I don't know how well that point is known outside the French speaking world, but it's in the strength of Dumas's tale that we Americans even those who haven't studied The Three Musketeers in high school of college English can appreciate that fact. Because of that fact he manages to make all kinds of enemies, the wrong ones and the right ones. Fortunately the right ones, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain all recognize York's worth and he becomes a companion of The Three Musketeers. The King's own guard, fighting against the encroaching power of France's prime minister Cardinal Richelieu.Charlton Heston adds to his collection of real historical characters portrayed on film with his interpretation of Richelieu. He was hardly the villain in real life that he is here. As he said on his deathbed that he had no enemies, but the enemies of the state. Richelieu was in fact a great French patriot though as a Cardinal was not terribly pious or scrupulous.Richelieu was also not a tall man and the six foot two inch Charlton Heston had to stoop over a bit when playing him. Note that carefully when you watch Heston, especially in his scenes with Christopher Lee as Rochefort. Lee does not lack in the height department either.Three women have substantial roles in The Three Musketeers. Raquel Welch makes a sexy Constance, not quite the innocent that June Allyson played her as in the MGM version with Gene Kelly. Geraldine Chaplin is serene and beautiful, but tragically unloved except by Great Britain's prime minister the Duke of Buckingham {Simon Ward}, France's mortal enemy. Milady DeWinter played by Faye Dunaway is as deadly and beautiful as Lana Turner was in the Gene Kelly film.Personally I've never thought that Hollywood ever got The Three Musketeers quite right. It will never happen I'm sure, but I'd love to see the operetta that Rudolf Friml wrote the music for, made into a Three Musketeers film. Still this one isn't too bad with an accent more on bawdy comedy than anything else. The followup Four Musketeers takes a more serious turn.