1973 - THE THREE MUSKETEERS, large scale production of this often told story

The director Richard Lester who had not exactly been hitting it out of the box office park with his recent films was hired by the producer Ilya Salkind to film a large scale version of that old war horse of a story The Three Musketeers.  Lester signed on for this film and brought his usual bag of cinematic tricks with him. Lester was known for adding comedic touches and slapstick scenes throughout his films along with a kind of a frenzied editing style. Viewed today, Lester's films are in many ways period pieces of a certain film making style of the 1960's and 1970's.

You have to give the producers of this film credit, no expense was spared. On location filming was in Spain and the stunning photography came from a frequent Lester contributor David Watkin.  Watkin gave the film a beautiful glowing look.  The action scenes in The Three Musketeers were staged by a fencing master named William Hobbs.  Hobbs toughened up the sword fights with an anything goes approach to the fencing instead of the usual gentlemanly rules found in those old Tyrone Power and Erroll Flynn movies. The Musketeers just don't fight with swords, they kick, hit and at times bite their opponents.

The interesting cast was a mixture of British and American actors, Oliver Reed, Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee in yet another villain role and Faye Dunaway as the evil Milady de Winter.  Raquel Welch was hired to bring more sex appeal to the film as the love interest of Michael York.  However Richard Lester got the inspired idea to have her play her part like a complete fool,  Welch is the victim of most of Lester's goofy gags as she is constantly getting knocked over or thrown around like a punching bag.  Needless to say the critics proclaimed Welch a comedic genius although it was all Lester's doing.

 

The Three Musketeers is an entertaining spectacle and it is also notorious as the film that the producer decided to split into two parts from it's original lengthy running time.  It's safe to say the actors were not amused by this since they had only signed up to act in one film not two.   Needless to say it was bring out the lawyers time when the second film now called The Four Musketeers was released.

The Three Musketeers looks great in it's Blu-Ray presentation and to give credit where credit is due Richard Lester did a very good job freshening up a story that had already been told many times.

George MacDonald Frasier wrote the screenplay the running time is 105 minutes.