I have always been fascinated by the story of the Count of Monte Cristo. I first became aware of this way back when I was in my early teens and there was a dramatization of the same on the BBC. This was in the early sixties, so in black and white, and was one of the regular classic serials that the BBC used to show on tv at 6pm on a Sunday. I remember them well.
Edmund Dantes, the wrongly imprisoned hero was played by Alan Badel and I found his aristocratic good looks impressive at the time.
Since then I have watched numerous versions. Gerard Depardieu was excellent in a series made in 1998 which is available on DVD but as I no longer have a dvd player I was checking where I could find it and good old You Tube comes to the rescue again
Richard Chamberlain played the Count in a 1970s film which I recently watched and it has not aged well. As the Count he had white hair and spent all his time in severe elegantly cut black and I felt the producers were cashing in on is popularity at the time (remember Dr Kildare and the Thorn Birds?) and were out to make him as beautiful as possible. The actress who played Mercedes was decked in heavy make up and false eyelashes and was not convincing.
A film starring Jim Cazaviel was made in 2002 and I really love this one. Very much in the Errol Flynn mold with a dashing swordsman and good looking hero. All very glamorous but at the same time, Edmond’s suffering in the Castle D’if was well portrayed. Richard Harris turned in a good performance of the Abbey as well.
In the last three years there have been two new versions. One, which I watched last week, was made in France and I watched with sub titles. I found it fairly unconvincing and the actor playing the Count was lacking in any sort of charisma.
And then we come to the one made in 2024 which I have now watched twice and loved. Looks sumptuous and beautifully filmed and the casting is excellent. Jeremy Irons plays Abbey Faria and the Count is played by Sam Clflin and I think he is very very good indeed. Quiet and charming and the iron in his soul and his search for revenge is subtly done.
All of the above have either truncated the story or made changes. Inevitable I suppose. The recent French version creates a romance between two characters which does not exist. The Chamberlain version does retain the correct ending and the other two fall somewhere between two stools.
So, after all this and having blitzed The Count again I decided it was time to actually read the book. I read the Three Musketeers many moons ago and, having been reared on the swashbuckling film versions, found the book very difficult to get into. Well, I am now a bit older and wiser and as a life long lover of literature of the 19th century decided to have a crack at Dumas again.
I ordered a lovely hardback edition, thought I may as well do it in style, and the delivery man had to knock on my door as it could not be popped through the letterbox and when I saw it I understood why. Over 1400 pages and as weighty as a doorstop my heart quailed. No way am I going to get through that thinks I so I decided to set myself a chapter a day.
By the end of the week I could not put it down so gripped was I. Full of detail that obviously has to be left out of dramatizations, great chunks of politics re the Bourbons and Bonapartists, which I found fascinating but would not have years ago.
It is a simply magnificent book. I am not making any attempt to review it, I am totally unable to do so and pretty sure I could not say anything that has been said by others better than I, but gosh I am so glad I finally got round to reading it. I felt so sad when I read the final page and this time found out the ending that the author wanted.
I might try the Three Musketeers again but have to say that I am not terribly interested in Athos, Porthos or Aramis so while I make up my mind have ordered and received The Black Tulip and am looking forward to reading that one.
Since writing this, I was checking up the versions of the Count and lo and behold I have found the Alan Badel version on You Tube. It is pretty clunky and totally studio bound but I am enjoying it all over again. One main scene with Villefort, the Prosecutor and his mother in law who doubted his Bourbon loyalties was wonderfully scripted and lifted straight from the book. It was an intelligent and well done interaction and I doubt the BBC would produce something of this calibre today…..
If any of you have read The Count of Monte Cristo I would really be interested in hearing from you.
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