Soviet Musketeers
22 February 2025 03:17 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeOne unexpected result of coming across that online review of different screen versions of "The 3 Musketeers" was that he mentioned the existence of a wildly popular Soviet Russian musical adaptation, available on YouTube with English subtitles... so I went looking for it, and absolutely loved it, to the extent that I found myself watching Russian fanvids :-D
Unsurprisingly I liked it a lot better than suggested by the rather tepid review that aroused my curiosity, although to be fair that was because (a) the reviewer seemed to struggle a bit with the whole concept of a musical ("are the songs supposed to be diegetic [i.e. are the characters singing in the actual story] or not?"), (b) he felt the slapstick elements were too silly (a problem he also had with the Lester "Musketeer" films) and (c) he wasn't able to review the actual music for fear of 'copyright strikes', and the music occupies about a third of the entire running time; strip that out, and it's hard to review the remainder very effectively.
I'm not sure the music is actually catchy in the way that classic Broadway and Lloyd Webber tunes are -- although yes, I do now have the theme song stuck in my head! -- but it works very well in context. I can entirely see why this became a cult hit, and why somebody went to the lengths of uploading a separate YouTube video containing nothing *but* the various musical sequences, neatly edited in some cases to remove intrusive moments of dialogue.
Indeed the first thing I found myself doing after finishing watching each 'part' (apparently this version was released as a three-part serial) was going to the soundtrack video and listening all over again to the songs I'd just heard from that segment ;-) And the next thing I was immediately trying to do was to work out the actual lyrics where I couldn't back-translate these from the subtitles; since people generally didn't helpfully post a transcript in the comments, as they often feel compelled to do for English-language songs, I ended up being pathetically grateful to those commenters who did quote their favourite line here and there when it turned out to be one of the bits I couldn't work out, or where the subtitlers had dutifully subtitled the actors' credits rolling on screen in place of the words of the closing song simultaneously playing underneath...!
I suspect the lyrics are actually a good deal more clever than the translation conveys, because of course "пора" ("it's time") and "пока" ("for the moment") are valid expressions in their own right as well as being repeated beginnings of the main lines in the chorus -- so the lyricist is obtaining the same effect as in the brilliant English translation of "Belle Hélène", where, for example, Achilles is made to proclaim himself as "mon-umental Achilles (mental Achilles, mental Achilles)" and Menelaus as "bu-reaucrat Menelaus (rat Menelaus, rat Menelaus)" :-p
https://verymuchrussian.com/russian-songs/mersi-boku-d-artanyan-i-tri-mushketera-1978/
My Russian was just about adequate to back-translate most of the short dialogue exchanges where people didn't go too fast, and to follow bits of the unsubtitled versions of the songs after having seen the subtitled version. It is of course grossly inadequate for following the plot of an entire film on its own, although I did have the satisfaction of spotting a couple of short untranslated phrases. But I managed to acquire several new and somewhat specialised bits of vocabulary by virtue of repetition: 'sword', 'blood', 'honour', 'Gascon', 'Eminence' :-D
The depiction of the characters is brilliant (with the possible exception of Milady, with a case of deplorable 1980s curls; she is supposed to be beautiful and spends much of the film looking frankly pretty awful!) The actor who plays d'Artagnan is naturally much too old to pass as the lofty age of eighteen to which his character so proudly lays claim, but it simply doesn't matter; I was strongly reminded of Douglas Fairbanks in the utter bounce, self-confidence and ridiculous zest of the performance. But it's sensitively done -- he can also portray him as convincingly distraught or appalled without losing a beat. The death of Constance (midway through the plot in this version) is played absolutely straight, and knocks a lot of the bumptiousness out of the character, as well as giving him a powerful grieving ballad.
Aramis is just perfect. It hadn't occurred to me, but of *course* musical-Aramis is going to be an elegant, deceptively angelic show-off tenor role... who is also a beautifully economical and lethal swordsman, as well as being given to soulful melodies ;-)
I think this is the first adaptation I've seen where the role of Aramis is in danger of overshadowing Athos, at least until the identification of Milady, at which point Athos comes into his own as a character. But it's also the first live-action version I've seen where the portrayal of Athos actually resembles my conception of the character, rather than being another permutation of Oliver Reed's grumpy, stocky brawler: he doesn't have Aramis' obvious charm and good looks, but he is sensitive and distinguished in face and bearing, even when he is drunk. 'His' scenes are the ones in the tavern where (thanks to the compression of the plot) he relates to d'Artagnan the marital misadventures of his 'friend' the Comte de la Fère, overhears and confronts Milady, and then in true swashbuckler style saves d'Artagnan from drinking the poisoned wine by pulling the pistol from his belt with which he has just been threatening Milady, and using it to shoot the fatal glass out of his young friend's hand with unerring aim :-)
And that pivotal scene -- the 'ballad of Athos' -- is so beautifully done by both actors: d'Artagnan's dawning realisation and horror, Athos dishevelled and clearly haunted by the returning ghosts of his past, the recurring motif in the lyrics of the lilies that bloom in the dark pool (where, in this version, we presume Athos believed he had drowned his wife) and in the form of the fleur-de-lis on her shoulder, the moment where Athos momentarily burns himself on the candle flame and clearly has a flashback to the memory of that brand, then pulls himself together and tries to disclaim the whole story ("I tell such terrifying tales when I'm drunk") while d'Artagnan, aghast with pity, can't look away. The song itself is just that ominous little electronic motif (a repeated descending minor third?), but it's all in the delivery and the body language.
Porthos, who doesn't get a song of his own, other than a bit of occasional bass obbligato, is a bit of a caricature -- but then he always is, with the exception of the BBC version, which simply discarded Dumas' concept of the character altogether on the (presumable) grounds that he was the most easily dispensed with, and replaced him with someone quite different :-p This version of Porthos wears a bow tied in his hair, which I'm not sure is canon but neatly evokes the book-character's tastes in showy clothing, and oddly enough doesn't look in the least feminine. His catchphrase: "I agree with Aramis" :-)
He has a tendency to fight by simply picking up objects or people and ramming them together, showcasing his strength as versus Aramis' economy of movement and d'Artagnan's tendency towards crazy stunts; I really liked the way that all the characters are given distinctive fighting styles. I was also struck by the way that, ironically, the big tavern brawl does *not* have any 'action music' backing it (despite all the raucous group singing earlier in the scene!) so we get to hear all the unfiltered crashing, clinking and grunting that's going on, which is unusual in modern film terms.
(I'm not quite sure why it was done that way, since the previous group fight with the Cardinal's guards duly has a catchy little chorus running under it, which is in fact the same tune that gets reprised, as 'the Guards march', as part of the tavern singing earlier on; they didn't need to write a new one. Perhaps they wanted to avoid milking it too many times in a row?)
Another thing that I was struck by was the surprising rough edges in the singing/recording compared to modern films -- or, to be fair, compared to 1930s Soviet musicals! It's not done in a bad way; the effect, paradoxically, is to make the performance sound as if it is genuinely being sung by real people, because the performers aren't always perfectly positioned behind the microphone or producing immaculately filled-out tone. When Aramis does his show-off high tenor notes,they're very impressive, but they are also ever so slightly vulnerable and human. (Ironically, a lot of the singing, according to the vocal credits, was in fact dubbed by other performers; the cheerfully unpolished chorus in the theme song, which we see the musketeers singing as they ride through the streets, isn't being performed by the actors as an impromptu ensemble, although it sounds very much as if it is, and in a good way.)
One more memorable musical moment, in a film that has many, is the scene where Rochefort and Milady are conscripted, somewhat to their embarrassment, to demonstrate the content of a scurrilous song about the Cardinal at the request of the latter, only to eventually get carried away and clearly start enjoying the performance a little too much :-D
After my recent struggles with opening set-up, I was extremely impressed with the economy of the opening scene of this adaptation, which manages to establish pretty much the entire situation through song (a group of strolling players are satirising the Cardinal's spy network) and dialogue in a brief space of time. They even get the location (Meung) worked in plausibly!
I felt that the film did tend to fall off a bit after the climax of d'Artagnan's return with the diamond studs, but that tends to be the case with pretty much all adaptations ("Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires" resorts at this point to filling out the episodes with a repeated series of foiled attempts by Milady on d'Artagnan's life, which become decreasingly believable), and I suspect the basic issue lies with Dumas and the source work. There is definitely a lot of compression and re-ordering going on, some of which works, e.g. the aforementioned combined tavern scene and the early death of Constance, and some of which results in material being retained (d'Artagnan's encounter with Kitty, the bastion at La Rochelle) which doesn't really have any purpose other than having occurred -- in some other context! -- in the original book.
One notable change is that Felton in this version is sent *by* the Duke of Buckingham (in a blink-and-you've-missed-it aside during d'Artagnan's visit to England) to deal pro-actively with Milady in France, where he captures her single-handed before being duly subverted to assassinate his master. This conveniently obviates the necessity for her to cross the Channel and get imprisoned there, and makes it easier for the Musketeers to pursue and catch up with her. Again, I'm not sure quite how much sense the execution sequence would make if you weren't already familiar with the story :-(
(To English ears, the scraps of (heavily accented) English dropped in by characters such as Buckingham and Felton to emphasise their foreign nationality do tend to be unintentionally hilarious: "Oah, sorree" :-p)
Having excised all this material they then choose to introduce a whole new section in which the characters return to the siege of La Rochelle and get accused of dereliction of duty for sitting around singing about roses, thus causing them to engage in the aforementioned breakfast under fire simply in order to defend their reputation. I'm assuming the idea was to end on a high note of triumph and cameraderie -- the film ends on a much-reproduced freeze-frame where the four advance towards the camera through a cheering crowd, extending their hands forward towards the viewer -- rather than on an extrajudicial execution and extracting themselves from ensuing reprisals, but it does feel a bit bizarre to re-insert the bastion scene there of all places.
So I'm not sure the production necessarily lives up to its fans' boast of "the most faithful adaptation of all time" (although this may say more about the extreme laxity of all the other remaining adaptations) or of "the best d'Artagnan ever" in the person of the ebullient Mikhail Boyarsky... but he is very good (and as I said, very reminiscent of Fairbanks in, say, the role of Zorro, though I haven't seen Fairbanks' d'Artagnan), and the film is very good too. I can absolutely understand why it has apparently become a cult classic, why people treasure memories of watching repeats on TV, why schoolgirls fell for Aramis en masse, and why it seems to have subsequently acquired a vigorous online fandom. I now have an entire playlist of related videos and excerpts!
Also, I did, inevitably, end up launching back into the novel in the original French, if only to work out how many of those dialogue lines genuinely are taken directly from the original ;-)
Unsurprisingly I liked it a lot better than suggested by the rather tepid review that aroused my curiosity, although to be fair that was because (a) the reviewer seemed to struggle a bit with the whole concept of a musical ("are the songs supposed to be diegetic [i.e. are the characters singing in the actual story] or not?"), (b) he felt the slapstick elements were too silly (a problem he also had with the Lester "Musketeer" films) and (c) he wasn't able to review the actual music for fear of 'copyright strikes', and the music occupies about a third of the entire running time; strip that out, and it's hard to review the remainder very effectively.
I'm not sure the music is actually catchy in the way that classic Broadway and Lloyd Webber tunes are -- although yes, I do now have the theme song stuck in my head! -- but it works very well in context. I can entirely see why this became a cult hit, and why somebody went to the lengths of uploading a separate YouTube video containing nothing *but* the various musical sequences, neatly edited in some cases to remove intrusive moments of dialogue.
Indeed the first thing I found myself doing after finishing watching each 'part' (apparently this version was released as a three-part serial) was going to the soundtrack video and listening all over again to the songs I'd just heard from that segment ;-) And the next thing I was immediately trying to do was to work out the actual lyrics where I couldn't back-translate these from the subtitles; since people generally didn't helpfully post a transcript in the comments, as they often feel compelled to do for English-language songs, I ended up being pathetically grateful to those commenters who did quote their favourite line here and there when it turned out to be one of the bits I couldn't work out, or where the subtitlers had dutifully subtitled the actors' credits rolling on screen in place of the words of the closing song simultaneously playing underneath...!
I suspect the lyrics are actually a good deal more clever than the translation conveys, because of course "пора" ("it's time") and "пока" ("for the moment") are valid expressions in their own right as well as being repeated beginnings of the main lines in the chorus -- so the lyricist is obtaining the same effect as in the brilliant English translation of "Belle Hélène", where, for example, Achilles is made to proclaim himself as "mon-umental Achilles (mental Achilles, mental Achilles)" and Menelaus as "bu-reaucrat Menelaus (rat Menelaus, rat Menelaus)" :-p
https://verymuchrussian.com/russian-songs/mersi-boku-d-artanyan-i-tri-mushketera-1978/
My Russian was just about adequate to back-translate most of the short dialogue exchanges where people didn't go too fast, and to follow bits of the unsubtitled versions of the songs after having seen the subtitled version. It is of course grossly inadequate for following the plot of an entire film on its own, although I did have the satisfaction of spotting a couple of short untranslated phrases. But I managed to acquire several new and somewhat specialised bits of vocabulary by virtue of repetition: 'sword', 'blood', 'honour', 'Gascon', 'Eminence' :-D
The depiction of the characters is brilliant (with the possible exception of Milady, with a case of deplorable 1980s curls; she is supposed to be beautiful and spends much of the film looking frankly pretty awful!) The actor who plays d'Artagnan is naturally much too old to pass as the lofty age of eighteen to which his character so proudly lays claim, but it simply doesn't matter; I was strongly reminded of Douglas Fairbanks in the utter bounce, self-confidence and ridiculous zest of the performance. But it's sensitively done -- he can also portray him as convincingly distraught or appalled without losing a beat. The death of Constance (midway through the plot in this version) is played absolutely straight, and knocks a lot of the bumptiousness out of the character, as well as giving him a powerful grieving ballad.
Aramis is just perfect. It hadn't occurred to me, but of *course* musical-Aramis is going to be an elegant, deceptively angelic show-off tenor role... who is also a beautifully economical and lethal swordsman, as well as being given to soulful melodies ;-)
I think this is the first adaptation I've seen where the role of Aramis is in danger of overshadowing Athos, at least until the identification of Milady, at which point Athos comes into his own as a character. But it's also the first live-action version I've seen where the portrayal of Athos actually resembles my conception of the character, rather than being another permutation of Oliver Reed's grumpy, stocky brawler: he doesn't have Aramis' obvious charm and good looks, but he is sensitive and distinguished in face and bearing, even when he is drunk. 'His' scenes are the ones in the tavern where (thanks to the compression of the plot) he relates to d'Artagnan the marital misadventures of his 'friend' the Comte de la Fère, overhears and confronts Milady, and then in true swashbuckler style saves d'Artagnan from drinking the poisoned wine by pulling the pistol from his belt with which he has just been threatening Milady, and using it to shoot the fatal glass out of his young friend's hand with unerring aim :-)
And that pivotal scene -- the 'ballad of Athos' -- is so beautifully done by both actors: d'Artagnan's dawning realisation and horror, Athos dishevelled and clearly haunted by the returning ghosts of his past, the recurring motif in the lyrics of the lilies that bloom in the dark pool (where, in this version, we presume Athos believed he had drowned his wife) and in the form of the fleur-de-lis on her shoulder, the moment where Athos momentarily burns himself on the candle flame and clearly has a flashback to the memory of that brand, then pulls himself together and tries to disclaim the whole story ("I tell such terrifying tales when I'm drunk") while d'Artagnan, aghast with pity, can't look away. The song itself is just that ominous little electronic motif (a repeated descending minor third?), but it's all in the delivery and the body language.
Porthos, who doesn't get a song of his own, other than a bit of occasional bass obbligato, is a bit of a caricature -- but then he always is, with the exception of the BBC version, which simply discarded Dumas' concept of the character altogether on the (presumable) grounds that he was the most easily dispensed with, and replaced him with someone quite different :-p This version of Porthos wears a bow tied in his hair, which I'm not sure is canon but neatly evokes the book-character's tastes in showy clothing, and oddly enough doesn't look in the least feminine. His catchphrase: "I agree with Aramis" :-)
He has a tendency to fight by simply picking up objects or people and ramming them together, showcasing his strength as versus Aramis' economy of movement and d'Artagnan's tendency towards crazy stunts; I really liked the way that all the characters are given distinctive fighting styles. I was also struck by the way that, ironically, the big tavern brawl does *not* have any 'action music' backing it (despite all the raucous group singing earlier in the scene!) so we get to hear all the unfiltered crashing, clinking and grunting that's going on, which is unusual in modern film terms.
(I'm not quite sure why it was done that way, since the previous group fight with the Cardinal's guards duly has a catchy little chorus running under it, which is in fact the same tune that gets reprised, as 'the Guards march', as part of the tavern singing earlier on; they didn't need to write a new one. Perhaps they wanted to avoid milking it too many times in a row?)
Another thing that I was struck by was the surprising rough edges in the singing/recording compared to modern films -- or, to be fair, compared to 1930s Soviet musicals! It's not done in a bad way; the effect, paradoxically, is to make the performance sound as if it is genuinely being sung by real people, because the performers aren't always perfectly positioned behind the microphone or producing immaculately filled-out tone. When Aramis does his show-off high tenor notes,they're very impressive, but they are also ever so slightly vulnerable and human. (Ironically, a lot of the singing, according to the vocal credits, was in fact dubbed by other performers; the cheerfully unpolished chorus in the theme song, which we see the musketeers singing as they ride through the streets, isn't being performed by the actors as an impromptu ensemble, although it sounds very much as if it is, and in a good way.)
One more memorable musical moment, in a film that has many, is the scene where Rochefort and Milady are conscripted, somewhat to their embarrassment, to demonstrate the content of a scurrilous song about the Cardinal at the request of the latter, only to eventually get carried away and clearly start enjoying the performance a little too much :-D
After my recent struggles with opening set-up, I was extremely impressed with the economy of the opening scene of this adaptation, which manages to establish pretty much the entire situation through song (a group of strolling players are satirising the Cardinal's spy network) and dialogue in a brief space of time. They even get the location (Meung) worked in plausibly!
I felt that the film did tend to fall off a bit after the climax of d'Artagnan's return with the diamond studs, but that tends to be the case with pretty much all adaptations ("Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires" resorts at this point to filling out the episodes with a repeated series of foiled attempts by Milady on d'Artagnan's life, which become decreasingly believable), and I suspect the basic issue lies with Dumas and the source work. There is definitely a lot of compression and re-ordering going on, some of which works, e.g. the aforementioned combined tavern scene and the early death of Constance, and some of which results in material being retained (d'Artagnan's encounter with Kitty, the bastion at La Rochelle) which doesn't really have any purpose other than having occurred -- in some other context! -- in the original book.
One notable change is that Felton in this version is sent *by* the Duke of Buckingham (in a blink-and-you've-missed-it aside during d'Artagnan's visit to England) to deal pro-actively with Milady in France, where he captures her single-handed before being duly subverted to assassinate his master. This conveniently obviates the necessity for her to cross the Channel and get imprisoned there, and makes it easier for the Musketeers to pursue and catch up with her. Again, I'm not sure quite how much sense the execution sequence would make if you weren't already familiar with the story :-(
(To English ears, the scraps of (heavily accented) English dropped in by characters such as Buckingham and Felton to emphasise their foreign nationality do tend to be unintentionally hilarious: "Oah, sorree" :-p)
Having excised all this material they then choose to introduce a whole new section in which the characters return to the siege of La Rochelle and get accused of dereliction of duty for sitting around singing about roses, thus causing them to engage in the aforementioned breakfast under fire simply in order to defend their reputation. I'm assuming the idea was to end on a high note of triumph and cameraderie -- the film ends on a much-reproduced freeze-frame where the four advance towards the camera through a cheering crowd, extending their hands forward towards the viewer -- rather than on an extrajudicial execution and extracting themselves from ensuing reprisals, but it does feel a bit bizarre to re-insert the bastion scene there of all places.
So I'm not sure the production necessarily lives up to its fans' boast of "the most faithful adaptation of all time" (although this may say more about the extreme laxity of all the other remaining adaptations) or of "the best d'Artagnan ever" in the person of the ebullient Mikhail Boyarsky... but he is very good (and as I said, very reminiscent of Fairbanks in, say, the role of Zorro, though I haven't seen Fairbanks' d'Artagnan), and the film is very good too. I can absolutely understand why it has apparently become a cult classic, why people treasure memories of watching repeats on TV, why schoolgirls fell for Aramis en masse, and why it seems to have subsequently acquired a vigorous online fandom. I now have an entire playlist of related videos and excerpts!
Also, I did, inevitably, end up launching back into the novel in the original French, if only to work out how many of those dialogue lines genuinely are taken directly from the original ;-)
no subject
Date: 2025-02-22 11:38 am (UTC)Your post is very informative! I had no idea that Athos thinks he drowned his wife, this certainly makes the line "the lily is blooming there" very chilling.
Soviet adaptations of classics have the reputation of being very faithful, which perhaps is a bit overblown.
no subject
Date: 2025-02-22 04:58 pm (UTC)It's never stated outright (or mentioned anywhere other than in this song), but I definitely think that's what's implied. Athos tells d'Artagnan in the dialogue "they both died in that pond".
It's one of those cases where the lyric at first appears to be simply a poetic expression and then in a later context takes on first one and then another all too literal meaning... and yes, the realisation is chilling. The scene is really powerful:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IBlgD0ggmjY
Just as I have never seen "Top Gun" or "Scream" but have absorbed their existence by cultural osmosis ;-p
I do strongly recommend it, especially minus the translation barrier; it is riotously bouncy and full of joie-de-vivre, and yet at times, as in the aforementioned scene, played absolutely straight and in grim earnest. If you like swashbucklers -- and I tend to take it for granted that people do, as that sort of thing was my introduction to the Internet -- then it is a joy to watch, and d'Artagnan is delightful.
So far as accuracy goes... well, compared to the plot summaries of the two more recent Hollywood productions that were covered (including the one where the Duke of Buckingham is invading France at the head of a fleet of airships...!) this version is fidelity itself; practically verbatim Dumas, especially given that chunks of the dialogue appears to *be* verbatim Dumas :-D
And exact fidelity to the source material is never everything when it comes to adaptation in any case. The important thing is that what you show on screen has the flavour and meaning of the original, and this one certainly does.
no subject
Date: 2025-03-02 08:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2025-03-03 02:19 am (UTC)This isn't a 10/10 production; it's got rough edges and not all the scenes are as good as each other. It's not even 'my period' of popular music (early-mid 20th century).
But it is immensely endearing. It takes the story seriously while not taking it seriously at all. As DutchS and I used to say when discussing classic swashbucklers, it has Bounce; utter unselfconscious joyous excitement. The actors apparently had a great time while making the film and hung around together offscreen as well as on, and it shows.
And, as someone else commented and I think hit the nail on the head, the thing is that this production isn't all about the stunts and the action scenes and delivering big showpiece sequences onscreen; it's not that they don't have action scenes, including plenty of extra ones that aren't in the book, or stunt moves. It's that those aren't the main selling point. It's not being marketed as an action movie, but a literary adaptation with friendship as its main theme, and the music and comedy is in the service of the characters. We laugh at d'Artagnan's over-enthusiasm, but we love his audacity, and we warm to the loyalty and teasing amongst the four.
I don't think it ever had any ambitions to be great art. It's just one of those cases where everything -- actors, script, performances, music, direction -- somehow came together right, and to heartwarming effect.