The Three Musketeers: Blu-ray (MGM, 1948) Warner Archive

I recall acerbic wit, Oscar Levant suggesting in an interview that in France, MGM glamour gal, Lana Turner was officially known as ‘les sexpot formidable’, “…and if you need a translation, boys, you also need a transfusion to bring up your blood pressure!” Dear Oscar…how pert and to the point of accurately assessing where the drawing strength in Turner’s box office lay. I have never heard it said Lana Turner was a ‘great actress’…and for good reason. She’s not. Please don’t misunderstand. I love Lana Turner – as a pin-up, as eye candy, as joyously slinky window-dressing, appearing to fine effect when screenwriters were clever enough to mask her shortcomings with well-orchestrated, exquisitely lit close-ups of that impeccable chassis. But Turner had what, in Hollywood, is even more highly marketable in lieu of talent – star quality and sex appeal; intangibles to trump virtually everything else, every time. Apart from Turner’s exceptional turn as the ill-fated chorine in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), for which the ‘sweater girl’ virtually shattered all preconceived notions regarding her presence in the movies to deliver a genuinely heartfelt and utterly tragic performance, the remainder of Lana’s luscious screen incarnations were rather slavishly devoted to extolling her physical assets as exemplars of the female form divine. This too, undeniably, has its place.  Alas, as she grew into maturity, this image inculcated in youth did not. And thus, Turner’s acting style turned from sugar to syrupy sweet treacle. Even so, nothing on celluloid could ever match Turner, the woman whose real-life was the stuff of which exotic melodrama and cheap soap operas are made, and, who rather selfishly lived that fast life of meteoric highs and epic lows on her terms, arguably, at the expense of her daughter’s happiness. At least on the screen, Turner remained as ethereal and luscious a creature as one could hope to find, even in the ‘wild’ wilds of Hollywood. And thus, her casting as the unscrupulous viper, Lady de Winter, at the height of her loveliness, in George Sidney’s ravishing Technicolor remake of The Three Musketeers (1948) was practically assured.  

Odd, MGM should have undertaken this lavishly appointed screen adaptation barely a decade after 2oth Century-Fox’s superb B&W spectacle from 1938, co-starring The Ritz Brothers. Not that Sidney’s sumptuously mounted remake is unworthy of the effort. On the contrary, with a roguishly handsome Gene Kelly as D’Artagnan, Lana Turner, oozing sinful sex appeal as the deliciously devious, flaxen-haired Charlotte - the Lady de Winter, June Allyson, above it all as the virginally obtuse, Constance Bonacieux, and Vincent Price, a thoroughly wicked Cardinal Richelieu, this version of the famed Alexander Dumas swashbuckler was every bit as lusty, playful and exquisitely staged.  As MGM always did in grand ole days, it threw enough kilowatt stardust at the screen to stifle a supernova; Angela Lansbury, as the Queen, Frank Morgan, a thoroughly loveable King Louis XIII, Van Heflin as Athos, the intellectual among these freedom fighters, and, Gig Young and Robert Coote - stars ascending, if never to reach the upper echelons, as Porthos and Aramis respectively. Apart from being a pugnacious mogul, Louis B. Mayer knew his business inside and out, and, arguably, audience’s tastes much better still. The post-war generation’s verve for valiant heroes, despicable villains and hot-blooded women – both virtuous and ‘un’ – cavorted with enough nimble brio to set cash registers ringing and was the perfect formula for success.

Robert Ardrey’s screenplay updates the time-honored paeans of Dumas’ tongue-in-cheek adventurist spirit with just enough of that ancient flowering gleaned from golden age Hollywood razzamatazz to allow for a certain, rarified nostalgia - all high-spirits and marvelously staged set pieces – while keeping the romantic bruhaha in its proper place within this actioner’s pantheon. Even better, Metro’s resident workhorse, Herbert Stothart composed a rollicking score, full of the hot-blooded, daring escapades derived from Dumas’ prose, with cinematographer extraordinaire, Robert H. Planck shooting in eye-popping Technicolor this happy affair – cobbled together from already free-standing back lot facades and sound stage sets, held over from Irving Thalberg’s monumental acquisitions for Marie Antoinette (1938), with the occasional insert, lensed at Santa Monica beach. The Three Musketeers remains the stunningly handsome beneficiary of Thalberg’s far-reaching excellence in the picture-making biz, and looks every inch the authentic and plushily padded escapist yarn Dumas might have envisioned if he had had the luxury to be born in the 20th century and think of his tall tale in those cinematic terms.  Quite simply, The Three Musketeers could not miss – and didn’t – at $4,124,000 in domestic grosses, one of MGM’s brightest bell ringers, not only of the year, but the entire decade.

At its zenith, MGM was justly celebrated for such lavish spectacles, made with a certain unapologetic lack of authenticity. None of the actors herein carry off their roles with anything even remotely resembling an authentic ‘French’ accent (Kelly’s boyish rascal is more a sexy pirate/comedian than sword-slashing seducer). Miraculously, this disconnect goes virtually unnoticed – at least, for long stretches, allowing the audience to slip into the ether of suspended disbelief with not even a thought for remaining anything less than thoroughly and pleasantly entertained by the jaw-dropping gorgeousness and ridiculously out of step accoutrements. Mayer’s view of popular entertainment may have been myopic (all women – beautiful, all men – handsome, every movie ending in a flourish of preciously preserved merriment) but it nonetheless endured as the preferred method for reaching the masses, beloved by audiences until the end of WWII. If Mayer had it all to do over again, then 1948 would likely not have been a year he remembered fondly. In point of fact, MGM was already experiencing something a downturn in its profitability. Mayer chose to ignore this as anything more substantial than a hiccup, to correct itself as his empire of make-believe continued to churn out the light and frothy with enviable precision. And while The Three Musketeers is exactly the sort of gargantuan spectacle, a la the blessings of the late Irving Thalberg would have also judiciously approved, and, the likes of which virtually no other studio in Hollywood could rival for sheer presentation, if without a few sweaty palms in the executive front offices, it also marked a distinct turning away from all those costume epics Mayer would continue to promote into the early part of the next decade before being unceremoniously deposed from his throne in 1951. Interesting, the costume drama was to endure Mayer’s ousting, MGM single-handedly keeping it alive with such movies as Scaramouche (1952), Young Bess (1953), Beau Brummell (1954) and Moonfleet (1955).

Before this deluge, Mayer could afford to be magnanimous, even extravagant in pursuit of such antiseptic perfection. His kingdom had weathered the lean war years as none of his contemporaries. Even with wartime rationing, Metro had managed to make many fine and fanciful movies far above the glossiest, while also to show handsome profits. By 1948, MGM to the outside world, was still the envy of Hollywood and in possession of a highly prized roster of stars never again to be rivaled under one roof.  Tossing a handful of them at the screen for this adaptation of The Three Musketeers would have seemed frivolous to downright dangerous coming from any other mythical back lot in the land. But from Mayer’s private repository, an embarrassment of such riches, it just seemed par for the course and much anticipated. If nothing else, and with very few exceptions, The Three Musketeers gives us the Cook’s Tour and lay of the Metro back lot, spanning the girth of its formidable outdoor sets, from Copperfield Square and the famed footbridge leading to the house where Greer Garson once defended the virtues of England from a downed Nazi pilot in Mrs. Miniver (1942) to Dutch Street and Salem Waterfront, all of them, curiously depopulated.

In hindsight, MGM had already begun to tighten its purse strings – just a little – Mayer spreading the graft across an enviable spate of 52 pictures a year. Consider herein, the lack of extras to populate these cluttered streets of Metro’s pseudo-France. So too, reflect upon Malcolm Brown and Cedric Gibbons’ art direction that asks we not look too closely for the discrepancies in these varying bits of architecture, in no way  replicating the flavor and/or authenticity of period France; disparately butted against genuine period trappings reassembled from Thalberg’s Marie Antoinette, the throne room as example, with its intricate parquet flooring and gargantuan crystal-cut chandeliers – arguably, the gleaming gold obelisk and reminder of Thalberg’s bygone decadence.  Were that The Three Musketeers under Thalberg’s reign, it would have emerged a far more fabulous and arguably worthy contender in the ‘illustrated classics’ tradition of Hollywood make-believe. In retrospect, it now best represents Mayer’s verve for asexual ‘family-orientated’ fare, cleansed almost entirely of its political hypocrisies and intrigues, except as they serve to remind the ardent reader of Dumas’ novel of a sort of primitive connect-the-dots plot, swiftly executed, if emasculated of its intellectual bite, and, in service to the more luridly escapist chapters of the book for which Mayer’s kingdom was world renown.

The Three Musketeers opens with great pomp and circumstance, Gene Kelly, as D’Artagnan, doing some of his most ambitious swashbuckling and swordplay this side of Errol Flynn, some of it later reappearing in B&W as ‘The Royal Rascal’ movie within a movie used in Singin’ In the Rain (1952).  Alas, for all his skill as a swordsman, D'Artagnan is a rather uncouth Gascon youth, his ego preceding his manners. On his way to Paris, he encounters the villainous Charlotte, the Lady de Winter who orders her protector, Rochefort (Ian Keith) and his men to subdue the lad, fearing he is the King’s spy. D’Artagnan is beaten unconscious and his father’s letter of introduction burned, thus depriving him immediate entry into the elite Musketeer corps. However, the Captain of the corp, de Treville (Reginald Owen) does allow D’Artagnan cadet status. Almost immediately, D’Artagnan makes rather bad enemies of three Musketeers in his clumsy pursuit of Rochefort. Athos, Porthos and Aramis each demand their satisfaction, arranging duels at half hour intervals throughout the course of the day. Thus, when Athos’ seconds arrive to observe the first of these confrontations, they are pleasantly astounded to discover the youth challenging them is one in the same. However, before the first duel can commence, the Musketeers are confronted by Richelieu’s men, including Rochefort. Determined to avenge his early assault, D’Artagnan stands with the Musketeers – all for one, and one for all. Hastily, D’Artagnan proves his mettle with a sword in the dispatch of their foes. His superb skill utterly humiliates Rochefort by exposing his pantaloons.

Amused by this fine upstart in their midst, the Musketeers and D’Artagnan return to court to face the King’s wrath. Fittingly, the befuddled Louis XIII exonerates them of any wrong doing, but orders de Treville to get D’Artagnan a new suit of clothes and a noble steed. With this newfound wealth and title, D’Artagnan takes a fashionable suite of rooms near the palace. His landlord, Bonacieux (Bryron Foulger) pleads for D’Artagnan to watch over his daughter, Constance while he is away. Constance is Queen Anne’s most trusted and loyal confidante and thus in danger of being kidnapped by Richelieu’s men. Interestingly, Louis B. Mayer proclaimed to his screenwriters that no mention would be made of Richelieu as a ‘cardinal’, presumably, so as not to offend the Catholic diocese. D’Artagnan and his man servant, Planchet (Keenan Wynn) are cruel to Bonacieux, knocking him down a flight of stairs. But shortly thereafter, D’Artagnan becomes smitten with Constance, whom he spies on from a secret porthole in his floor. Witnessing her near kidnap by Richelieu’s men, D’Artagnan intervenes and subdues these would-be attackers. Constance is grateful and quickly falls in love with D’Artagnan. Meanwhile, Anne has given a matched set of diamond studs, a gift from her husband, to her lover, the Prime Minister, the Duke of Buckingham (John Sutton). Unearthing this indiscretion, Richelieu plots an intimate crisis in order to distract Louis from more pressing matters of state, and later, to persuade him into a war against Britain. Louis is reluctant to do so. Thus, Richelieu decides to arrange a ball, a diversion where the Queen will be expected to wear the diamonds she no longer possesses.

Constance implores her lover to retrieve the gems before anyone is the wiser. Alas, on the road to England, D’Artagnan and the Musketeers are ambushed by Richelieu’s men yet again. Another display of swordsmanship results in some spectacularly photographed Californian beachfront scenery that in no way replicates the coast line of France. One by one, the Musketeers are forced to separate. Only D’Artagnan and Planchet reach the Duke in time. As a failsafe, Richelieu has sent the Countess de Winter ahead to seduce the Prime Minister and steal two of the jewels back – proof, returned to Richelieu, he intends to use to illustrate the Queen’s infidelities to her husband. With marked efficiency, Buckingham has his jeweler create two replacements, the gems entrusted to D’Artagnan. On the eve of the ball, D’Artagnan sneaks past an army of Richelieu’s guards, crashing through the windows of Constance’s bedroom and restoring the jewels to her. In short order, Constance gives the diamonds back to the Queen who arrives at court with the complete set, much to Richelieu’s chagrin. Now more than ever, Richelieu is determined to destroy the monarchy, his venom telescopically focused on Constance.

Not long thereafter, Constance is abducted on Richelieu’s command. Richelieu attempts to enlist D’Artagnan in his service by promising Constance unharmed return to him. As D’Artagnan openly refuses to even consider the appointment, Richelieu now sends Milady de Winter to work her feminine wiles on D’Artagnan. She is most conniving and erodes at least part of his resolve; Athos desperately trying to convince D’Artagnan Charlotte is an evil, corrupting and remorseless viper who will stop at nothing to destroy any man who falls under her spell. And Athos intimately knows of what he speaks. De Winter is, after all, his wife! Refusing to accept Athos claims at face value, D’Artagnan soon discovers the fleur-de-lis branded into Charlotte’s flesh – the irrefutable mark of a common criminal. Meanwhile, relations between Britain and France disintegrate. War breaks out. Amidst this chaos, Anne discovers where Richelieu is keeping Constance. A daring rescue ensues and Constance is taken to England. In reply, Richelieu gives de Winter carte blanche to murder Buckingham. Learning of this insidious plot, D’Artagnan sends Planchet to England to warn the Duke. Athos confronts de Winter, exposing Richelieu’s treachery to Buckingham.  Charlotte is imprisoned and Constance made her jailor. Alas, Constance takes pity on Charlotte, who fakes madness and then a hunger strike to win her forgiveness. Pleading with Constance to procure her a knife by which she means to take her own life rather than face torture and an inevitable hanging in the public square, the weapon is instead used by de Winter to murder both Constance and Buckingham.

Arriving too late to prevent these cold and calculated assassinations, Athos, D’Artagnan, Aramis and Porthos nevertheless thwart Charlotte’s departure back to France. With them is the Executioner of Lyons (Frank Hagney). There is no escape this time. De Winter is beheaded in the gardens just beyond the castle where her bloody treason has been wrought. Now, the Musketeers are ambushed by Richelieu's men. While Louis XIII is empathetic to their plight, he nevertheless is easily manipulated by Richelieu to see things his way. Richelieu is about to sentence the Musketeers to death when D’Artagnan produces the carte blanche given to de Winter by Richelieu. It proves his complicity in the plot to destroy Louis’s kingdom from the inside. Determined to preserve his integrity at all costs, Richelieu grants the Musketeers their choice of exile; Aramis, to a monastery; Porthos, to find a rich widow of his choosing and settle down, and D’Artagnan and Athos, to retire in a manner of luxury befitting their station in life. The Musketeers retreat from the King’s court, secure in the knowledge they have done their sworn duty to the crown.

This version of The Three Musketeers can be an exhilarating experience. Without question, Gene Kelly’s performance is memorable, despite his second billing to Lana Turner’s incendiary vixen. In the beginning, neither star was attached to this project. Louis Hayward, then Douglas Fairbanks Jr. were both advertised in the trades for D’Artagnan, with Turner relenting to make her first appearance in Technicolor after negotiations with Alida Valli fell through and Louis B. Mayer threatened Turner with suspension should she refuse the honor. Alas, only days before production was to begin on Easter Parade (1948) Kelly broke his ankle during a game of touch football at his home, exercise expressly forbidden by Mayer in case of just such an injury. While Kelly’s delayed healing forced him to bow out of Easter Parade entirely, Mayer pushed back shooting the more elaborate fencing sequences in The Three Musketeers to give Kelly’s ankle a chance to sufficiently heal. But Kelly would begin the picture with his injury only partly on the mend, strapped into a cast-like brace and doing all of his love scenes and close-ups ahead of schedule.

Rooting from behind, Van Heflin does his absolute best to keep up. But it is Kelly’s miraculous and seemingly inexhaustible vigor that delights on more than one occasion in The Three Musketeers, his athletic swordplay, part technician/part pantomime, with a touch of the clown all rolled into one. Quite simply, it remains a tour de force. Evidently, Kelly’s incorrigible horseplay and risk-taking incurred Mayer’s ire on more than one occasion. Mayer’s utmost concern was likely Kelly’s safety as this translated into his making money for the studio; also, Mayer’s plans to keep one of his most bankable stars steadily churning out some of the best musicals ever made on the back lot. Had Mayer not been forced out of office in 1951 he might have been the one to nix Kelly’s tenure at the studio mid-decade after the slow, sad and unstoppable decline in popularity of the Hollywood musical. The tragedy in this, was that it would have still left Metro with an enviable cavalcade of classically trained musical/comedy stars, alas, with a genuine dearth of viable showcases for their enviable talents. With very few exceptions, Kelly would remain perennially slotted into this top spot as the studio’s ‘go to’ hoofer, his only real competition, Fred Astaire.

Kelly brings balletic maneuvers, wed to a genuinely earthy and masculine appeal in his D’Artagnan, smug joie de vivre too, especially when asserting his robust physicality in the company of men. He is altogether less convincing as the adoring suitor/later husband to Constance, June Allyson’s virginal ‘girl next door’ passionlessly at odds with Kelly’s slightly tarnished man of the world. Indeed, the scenes between Kelly and Lana Turner are more up to speed in achieving this crackle in romantic chemistry, albeit, of a highly toxic nature. Turner usually devoured the men she was paired with on screen – all, except for frequent costar, Clark Gable and, ironically, Gene Kelly in this movie. It has something to do with Kelly’s bravura, as dazzling and devil-may-care dancer, a confidence matched by Turner’s bodice-ripping harlot and schemer. Depending on one’s point of view, it is either a pity or a triumph the plot weighs so heavily on D’Artagnan, as the rest of the cast are generally wasted in his shadow. The worst of these noble sacrifices is Angela Lansbury – barely glimpsed as Queen Anne, a thankless part. Ditto for Frank Morgan’s hapless Louis XIII and Vincent Price’s skulking Richelieu, never given the opportunity to go beyond a venomous twinkle in the eye or coy, but cutthroat grin.

Whatever its shortcomings, The Three Musketeers can be forgiven virtually everything in glorious Technicolor. Robert H. Planck’s cinematography is a veritable ice cream sundae for the three-strip process, the violent green plumage atop Lady De Winter’s bonnet, gold brocade and embroidery in D’Artagnan’s riding ensemble and flowing blood-red robes of state for Price’s grey-haired and goateed Richelieu are all given over to eye-popping representation on the screen. And then there is Herbert Stothart’s fine underscore to consider. Stothart, a workhorse at Metro with a very fine pedigree (1935’s Anna Karenina, and, Mutiny on the Bounty, 1936’s A Tale of Two Cities, 1938’s Marie Antoinette and 1939’s The Wizard of Oz, for which he won Best Original Score, among his many commendable credits) lends ballast to MGM’s in-house style, with a pompously romanticized regality. Stothart, although not yet ill, would die of lung cancer barely a year after this picture’s release. And even if it charts an all-too-familiar course into some very MGM-esque musical territory, Stothart’s bombastic prompts to follow the dueling sabers, or imperious marches and dainty waltzes harks to a heritage of even better work done elsewhere. In the end, The Three Musketeers emerges as an unapologetic and gushingly elegant bedazzlement without any genuine substance to anchor its effect. Perhaps the best that can be said of it, as with a good many of MGM’s supremely well-crafted spectacles from this vintage, is that we exit the theater smiling, superficially entertained by the distraction of it all.

The Warner Archive’s new-to-Blu release is another breathtaking Technicolor dazzler. Sourced from a 4K scan of an original camera negative, the results here reveal the infinite beauty of MGM’s in-house style in the 1940’s. Colors are robust and close-ups bear a striking amount of fine detail. The biggest overall improvement here is in background detail. On Warner’s old DVD it tended to look soft and fuzzy. On the Blu-ray, it is rock solid and razor sharp. Flesh tones markedly improve and appear very natural. Contrast is excellent. Age-related artifacts have been eradicated for an incredibly detailed and smooth video presentation sans any obvious digital tinkering. Warner adds a few unrelated short subjects and trailers to this mix; vintage stuff that likely appeared before and after the feature theatrically. Looking at London is a vintage FitzPatrick Traveltalks short, while What Price Fleadom is a grandly amusing Tex Avery Cartoon. We also get MGM’s Radio Promo for the picture, featuring Lana Turner and the original theatrical trailer. Bottom line: The Three Musketeers is a swashbuckler with class and spectacular visuals to boot. The Blu-ray is a no-brainer. Wow!  

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+

EXTRAS

1.5