The Three Musketeers
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Short description
In seventeenth-century France, the young Gascon D'Artagnan travels to Paris hoping to join the King's Musketeers. Soon after arriving he offends Athos, Porthos and Aramis and arranges duels with each of them, but the guards of Cardinal Richelieu interrupt the meetings. D'Artagnan fights alongside the three musketeers, and the encounter begins a lasting friendship between them. The cardinal, meanwhile, works against Queen Anne of Austria, using the scheming Milady de Winter, while the musketeers try to protect the queen's reputation. Constance Bonacieux, the queen's friend and D'Artagnan's love interest, is drawn into the intrigue.
Richard Lester directed this 1973 adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's novel, working from a screenplay by George MacDonald Fraser. It was the fourth of the thirteen films Lester directed, arriving after Petulia and followed by The Four Musketeers in 1974. Michael York plays D'Artagnan, with Oliver Reed as Athos, Richard Chamberlain as Aramis and Frank Finlay as Porthos; Faye Dunaway appears as Milady de Winter and Raquel Welch as Constance. Alexander Salkind produced the film, which cost about 5 million dollars and returned roughly 22 million worldwide.
On IMDb the film holds a rating of 3.2 from 76 votes, while on TMDB it has 6.7 from 379 votes. A film critics' rating of 7.1 from 16 reviews is considerably higher than the IMDb figure and closer to the TMDB result.
What's left behind the scenes
- Christopher Lee played Rochefort so convincingly that his portrayal became canonical; in all subsequent adaptations of the novel, Rochefort is shown with an eyepatch, although there was no such detail in the original literary source.
- Roy Kinnear (who played Planchet) performed all his equestrian stunts himself, as they were unable to find a stunt double for him. Unfortunately, while Richard Lester was filming the adventure action film 'The Return of the Musketeers' (1989), Kinnear fell from a horse, and the fall proved fatal. The accident had such an impact on Michael Constantine that he flatly refused to continue filming and left the project. Richard Lester was also deeply affected; after this project, he practically stopped directing films.
- During the filming of the duel at the mill, Oliver Reed took a rapier blow to the throat, which nearly resulted in the actor's death.
- While filming one of the duels, Michael York, who played d'Artagnan, suffered a serious cut to his leg, and during another, he nearly lost an eye. Oliver Reed, who played Athos, took a rapier blow to the arm. Frank Finley, the actor playing Porthos, got off with a blow to the face and several burns. The luckiest was Christopher Lee (who played Rochefort), who suffered only minor injuries to his leg and shoulder. At one point, York even had to step in for his own injured stunt double. Later, he began stuffing stacks of script pages under his clothes for extra protection.
- When it came time to film the fights, the doubles and stuntmen were genuinely afraid to go up against Oliver Reed, who would occasionally start fencing without warning and without prior rehearsal of the strikes and movements. It got to the point where the doubles drew lots to determine who would face Reed in combat.
- Spring and summer in Spain, where the filming took place, were scorching. During filming in Aranjuez (where the scene of d'Artagnan being accepted into the Musketeers was shot), the temperature rose to 50 degrees Celsius. It is claimed that during the filming of this complex scene, the massive cast and crew drank a total of 7,000 bottles of water.
- Director Richard Lester liked to film rehearsals and keep the camera running at other times, just in case something worthwhile happened that wasn't in the script. Additionally, he used several cameras simultaneously (up to five) during a single take.
- Raquel Welch and Faye Dunaway rehearsed the fight scene between their characters with a trainer to make the clash as brutal and uncompromising as possible, as requested by director Richard Lester. Everything went fine during rehearsals and training, but when Dunaway pushed Welch after the shout of "Action!", Welch lost her balance, fell, and suffered a minor wrist injury.
- Initially, the film was around three hours long, but it was subsequently split into two parts. The second part was released a year later under the title «The Four Musketeers». With the exception of Charlton Heston, whose character had limited screen time, all the actors were outraged by the producers' decision: none of them knew they had played in two films for the price of one. Following this precedent, all contracts concluded with actors belonging to the guild now include the so-called «Salkind clause», which specifies the number of films for which the footage will be used.
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