|
The aim is to combine Fairbanks and Keaton, D'Artagnan (Michael York) swings from a rope to topple a foe and lands instead in the mud. "I may not have the tunic, but I have the heart of a musketeer!" Ratcatchers and slop and painful early dentistry fill a typical ancien régime street, by contrast the royal elite has the King (Jean-Pierre Cassel) playing chess with costumed dogs while the Queen (Geraldine Chaplin) twirls on a serf-cranked carousel. (David Watkin's cinematography is one of various points of contact with Russell's The Devils.) Chivalry at the service of asinine rulers supplies the Seventies vinegar beneath the ebullience, thus Athos (Oliver Reed), Aramis (Richard Chamberlain) and Porthos (Frank Finlay) suspended between dash and pratfall. "And you people complain about the English..." Dumas according to Richard Lester, not a spoof despite such asides as a servant's glance of irritation as his candles are sliced by the callow Gascon's stereotypical swashbuckling gesture. Richelieu (Charlton Heston) has Countess de Winter (Faye Dunaway) and "Monsieur Cyclops" (Christopher Lee) on his side, his Bastille dungeon keeps branding iron and baked potato side by side on coals. Raquel Welch as Constance specializes in fetching klutziness, as her hapless husband Spike Milligan folds The Goon Show into The Canterbury Tales. "Great lumbering bullock, indeed." Bars of soap and vats of ecclesiastical purple during a laundry-set melee, lanterns dangling from blades at a darkened crossroads, an acrobatic mock-brawl to score a free meal at the tavern—cheerfully choreographed jousts, all high spirits until a sword pokes someone's belly. Yorkin's Start the Revolution Without Me is a nearby precedent, Edwards' The Pink Panther is invoked for the resolution of the tell-tale jewels. "Oh, a gallop, a skirmish, a thrust or two... What we do, it's a day's work." The sequel darkens the mood, though not before the Jesuit's stifled chuckle at the knocked-over ingénue. With Roy Kinnear, Simon Ward, Georges Wilson, and Joss Ackland.
--- Fernando F. Croce |