The Four Musketeers
Filmed back-to-back with The Three Musketeers and released the following year with its premiere in Berlin in October 1974, The Four Musketeers was less a reuniting of the cast and crew under the direction of Richard Lester as a continuation of the extended principal photography of what had been planned as a single epic film with intermission eventually released as a separate theatrical event, subtitled The Revenge of Milady and picking up the action an unspecified but presumably brief time later.
The opening titles carrying a recap of the previous adventure, the scene is swiftly set, the musketeers Athos, Porthos and Aramis and their associate d’Artagnan (Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, Richard Chamberlain and Michael York) loyal to the king but at odds with Cardinal Richelieu, his henchman the Count De Rochefort and their own nefarious snake in the grass, Milady de Winter (Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee and Faye Dunaway).
The Cardinal’s scheme to discredit Queen Anne (Geraldine Chaplin) having failed and his relationship with Rochefort now strained by the humiliation of having been rescued by the Musketeers from the siege of La Rochelle, where before Milady was ancillary to the machinations of state she now steps up, arranging the kidnapping of d’Artagnan’s lover Constance (Raquel Welch) in order to set up her own seduction of the young swordman, to be followed thereafter by his murder.
Again adapted by George MacDonald Fraser from Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Three Musketeers, there is nevertheless a noticeable tonal discontinuity between the two productions, The Four Musketeers moving away from the endless duelling of the first, with a full forty minutes elapsed before the first swordfight, though taking place on the surface of a frozen river the novelty compensates for the tardiness, and perhaps in reflection of the original intention that the film would serve as a vehicle for the Beatles there is more humour and absurdity as befitted their cinematic image.
With glass daggers containing acid, primitive submarines and automated fencing practice machines serving as distractions, despite the title it is also very much the film of the fourth musketeer, d’Artagnan central to the plotting and shenanigans, and while Athos’ history before joining the musketeers is partially disclosed, tangling him unexpectedly with another of the players, the contributions of Porthos and Aramis are as lacking as the plan to conceal Constance following her rescue which might have been more successful had any attempt been made to dress appropriately for a convent.
The many curtailed scenes of the latter part of the film making it seem there was an awareness the pace was flagging, The Four Musketeers is simply not as good as the dynamic action of its predecessor which it joins as part of StudioCanal’s Vintage Classics range, again accompanied by an interview with film scholar Neil Sinyard along with the concluding part of the documentary The Saga of the Musketeers.
The Four Musketeers is available on 4K UHD, Blu-ray, DVD and digital download from StudioCanal
