The Count of Monte Cristo
                                                                 
Director: David Greene
Year: 1975
Rating: 5.5
After watching the 1929 three and half version of this Dumas book, this TV film felt like The Count of Monte Cristo Light. It still comes in at a respectable 103-minutes but had to drop multiple sub-plots and rush others. It felt like Cliffs-Notes. It shortened the first half of the tale of Dantes in prison but extended the revenge section by increasing the number of targets from two to four. Any Dumas is good Dumas and it was always an opportunity for Richard Chamberlain to get some work. For whatever reason, when Hollywood did Dumas, they turned to Chamberlain. He was in three Musketeer films, The Man in the Iron Mask and the Count. It made for a good living. He is often forgotten these days I think but in his time he played some big characters - Alan Quatermain, Thorn Birds, Jason Bourne, Shogun and of course Dr. Kildare.  Some other notable names are in the cast - Trevor Howard as the Abbe Faria who is Dantes's companion in jail, Kate Nelligan as his love Mercedes and as three of the four men he plans revenge against - Tony Curtis, Donald Pleasence and Louis Jourdan. Still, it felt very much like the TV movie it was.



With a few odd changes to the story, it is still the same basic plot we know so well. Or these days perhaps not. A friend of mine just told me that he read it - over 1,000 pages - but I have my doubts and that was decades ago when people still read books. Hard to picture many young people sitting down with a huge book and sticking to it. So, the next best thing is watching a film of it. There is the 1934 version that stars Robert Donat who makes a wonderful Dantes but it only comes in at 97-minutes and so cuts out a lot. It also has a happy romantic ending which neither the book nor this or the 1929 version have. But Donat is the best Dantes. Chamberlain plays him initially as too smug and then as too cruel with those icy blue eyes. In the book and in the 1929 film, they make room for his generosity and kindness to those who did not imprison him. Very colorful, slick and shot in Italy and France.