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igenlodeOh horror, Mordaunt is still alive... (not -- surely not -- canonical?)
And there is a Part Four to this series, which I had not anticipated, assuming it was only three episodes like the others. Makes sense, as we are very far from being anywhere near the end of the book, although I have absolutely no idea what happens next. The Fronde, presumably.
The book appears to follow Athos and Aramis, while the screen version instead follows the fate of Porthos and d'Artagnan (captured by Jussac, which again is probably not strictly as in the original!), so I can't read up to clarify those events without spoiling myself for future scenes. The comedy stuff with Mazarin and the pigeon post is probably not in there anyway :-p
I went back over the previous chunk, having ended up reading the text in far more detail than I'd originally intended, but am not sure I got a great deal more out of it than on the original viewing, despite a lot of stopping and looking up of subtitles in the dictionary. (They are clearly very unreliable; the software simply can't handle d'Artagnan's voice, and unfortunately he speaks fast and forcefully.)
One thing I hadn't picked up on during the original viewing was that during the duel Mordaunt hits d'Artagnan over the head with a saucepan (having manoeuvred him near a cooking-bench that probably wouldn't have been there in an English house :-p) and subsequently leads him on to very nearly stab Porthos by accident; that fight is very well choreographed, and it's definitely not clear who is going to win. I remember being terrified all the way through on d'Artagnan's account, even though logically speaking I know that he survives for several further books...
Another thing I definitely hadn't noticed is that d'Artagnan appears to attack Mordaunt initially with his *left* hand -- not a reversed shot during editing, but apparently a deliberate character choice, because Mordaunt promptly inflicts a scratch on his wrist during the first exchange and he switches the sword to his other hand, presumably as a signal that he is now taking the fight seriously! Is he possibly showing off in front of Athos, who assured him on their first meeting that he could fight equally well with his left hand as with his right? ;-p (Or, like Athos, is he actually anticipating taking a right-handed opponent at a possible disadvantage?)
We shall never know, as it is not in the book :-p
The major thing I didn't understand on the first viewing and couldn't work out even on repeated rewinds is what on earth, in this version, the rescue plan actually *is* :-(
Porthos turns up, having according to the dialogue apparently stripped the armour and clothing from some official/soldier (it's a word that's not in the dictionary), and Athos disappears under the scaffold with it following a dialogue exchange that refers to an unguarded door, and d'Artagnan worrying that Athos can't do 'it' alone, to which he replies that he will manage. But I never gathered what exactly he was intended to be doing; not mining a hole through the wall, as in the novel, but apparently pulling down the supporting beams of the scaffold by sheer force, a role that would surely have made more sense in Porthos' hands (as would the mining, but in canon I think we can deduce that the hole simply wasn't big enough by dawn to fit Porthos' shoulders, which feature in the initial plan as the means by which the floor slabs were to be raised: avec une pince et de bonnes épaules, et cela regardait Porthos)
My best guess is that he was supposed to be clearing a way through the maze of supports towards an exit, although it's not clear how removing the vertical pillars would help in that respect. Aramis tells the King that Athos is busy below the scaffold rather than, as in the book, below the floor of his room, so there is presumably a different escape plan that involves whatever he is doing there, but I obviously missed some vital scraps of dialogue that would have clarified it. Frankly I'm surprised the whole top level of the scaffold didn't collapse as a result of the sabotage when all that crowd of people were marching over it to the execution, which would I suppose have been one potential escape route, although not a very certain one...
Otherwise I got a few more scraps of dialogue, including bits that weren't in the subtitles, or even the novel -- Porthos' reference to being attacked by 400 men at the bastion at La Rochelle -- but I had basically picked up all the plot-important bits on the first time through, and couldn't make out the obscure sections even on repeat.
Mordaunt's song (Я боюсь этой тьмы) appears to take the place of the entire argument in the boat, which is seen in abbreviated pantomime behind it; this makes more sense when you know what the content of the argument *was*, but is arguably a bit obscure without. But after all I did manage to pick up the essential, which is that Mordaunt tries to drown Athos when the latter insists in trying to rescue him.
Even on careful rewatching this entire sequence is still very obscure, in both senses of the word; we don't see Athos go into the water, just vague underwater swimming figures, and the others don't clearly react to one of their number being suddenly snatched from them but just stay huddled and staring, although they do react when Athos (presumably, although it's off-screen) reappears. Possibly the producers didn't want to risk actually putting an aging and respectable actor into a struggle in the water -- or Soviet TV simply didn't possess a large enough water tank to film the sequence :-p (But they do show d'Artagnan, or his stunt double, going hand over hand down the cable towards the boat, and the others dropping into the water earlier on...)
On the other hand one thing I did realise was that the reason why I was having trouble recognising the characters in the boat, in particular Aramis and Porthos, was presumably that their long hair realistically was all wet :-p Aramis with his beautiful chevelure all straggling looks all of a suddenly very much more like an aging Igor Starygin out of character, whom fortunately I had just seen in a documentary!
And there is a Part Four to this series, which I had not anticipated, assuming it was only three episodes like the others. Makes sense, as we are very far from being anywhere near the end of the book, although I have absolutely no idea what happens next. The Fronde, presumably.
The book appears to follow Athos and Aramis, while the screen version instead follows the fate of Porthos and d'Artagnan (captured by Jussac, which again is probably not strictly as in the original!), so I can't read up to clarify those events without spoiling myself for future scenes. The comedy stuff with Mazarin and the pigeon post is probably not in there anyway :-p
I went back over the previous chunk, having ended up reading the text in far more detail than I'd originally intended, but am not sure I got a great deal more out of it than on the original viewing, despite a lot of stopping and looking up of subtitles in the dictionary. (They are clearly very unreliable; the software simply can't handle d'Artagnan's voice, and unfortunately he speaks fast and forcefully.)
One thing I hadn't picked up on during the original viewing was that during the duel Mordaunt hits d'Artagnan over the head with a saucepan (having manoeuvred him near a cooking-bench that probably wouldn't have been there in an English house :-p) and subsequently leads him on to very nearly stab Porthos by accident; that fight is very well choreographed, and it's definitely not clear who is going to win. I remember being terrified all the way through on d'Artagnan's account, even though logically speaking I know that he survives for several further books...
Another thing I definitely hadn't noticed is that d'Artagnan appears to attack Mordaunt initially with his *left* hand -- not a reversed shot during editing, but apparently a deliberate character choice, because Mordaunt promptly inflicts a scratch on his wrist during the first exchange and he switches the sword to his other hand, presumably as a signal that he is now taking the fight seriously! Is he possibly showing off in front of Athos, who assured him on their first meeting that he could fight equally well with his left hand as with his right? ;-p (Or, like Athos, is he actually anticipating taking a right-handed opponent at a possible disadvantage?)
We shall never know, as it is not in the book :-p
The major thing I didn't understand on the first viewing and couldn't work out even on repeated rewinds is what on earth, in this version, the rescue plan actually *is* :-(
Porthos turns up, having according to the dialogue apparently stripped the armour and clothing from some official/soldier (it's a word that's not in the dictionary), and Athos disappears under the scaffold with it following a dialogue exchange that refers to an unguarded door, and d'Artagnan worrying that Athos can't do 'it' alone, to which he replies that he will manage. But I never gathered what exactly he was intended to be doing; not mining a hole through the wall, as in the novel, but apparently pulling down the supporting beams of the scaffold by sheer force, a role that would surely have made more sense in Porthos' hands (as would the mining, but in canon I think we can deduce that the hole simply wasn't big enough by dawn to fit Porthos' shoulders, which feature in the initial plan as the means by which the floor slabs were to be raised: avec une pince et de bonnes épaules, et cela regardait Porthos)
My best guess is that he was supposed to be clearing a way through the maze of supports towards an exit, although it's not clear how removing the vertical pillars would help in that respect. Aramis tells the King that Athos is busy below the scaffold rather than, as in the book, below the floor of his room, so there is presumably a different escape plan that involves whatever he is doing there, but I obviously missed some vital scraps of dialogue that would have clarified it. Frankly I'm surprised the whole top level of the scaffold didn't collapse as a result of the sabotage when all that crowd of people were marching over it to the execution, which would I suppose have been one potential escape route, although not a very certain one...
Otherwise I got a few more scraps of dialogue, including bits that weren't in the subtitles, or even the novel -- Porthos' reference to being attacked by 400 men at the bastion at La Rochelle -- but I had basically picked up all the plot-important bits on the first time through, and couldn't make out the obscure sections even on repeat.
Mordaunt's song (Я боюсь этой тьмы) appears to take the place of the entire argument in the boat, which is seen in abbreviated pantomime behind it; this makes more sense when you know what the content of the argument *was*, but is arguably a bit obscure without. But after all I did manage to pick up the essential, which is that Mordaunt tries to drown Athos when the latter insists in trying to rescue him.
Even on careful rewatching this entire sequence is still very obscure, in both senses of the word; we don't see Athos go into the water, just vague underwater swimming figures, and the others don't clearly react to one of their number being suddenly snatched from them but just stay huddled and staring, although they do react when Athos (presumably, although it's off-screen) reappears. Possibly the producers didn't want to risk actually putting an aging and respectable actor into a struggle in the water -- or Soviet TV simply didn't possess a large enough water tank to film the sequence :-p (But they do show d'Artagnan, or his stunt double, going hand over hand down the cable towards the boat, and the others dropping into the water earlier on...)
On the other hand one thing I did realise was that the reason why I was having trouble recognising the characters in the boat, in particular Aramis and Porthos, was presumably that their long hair realistically was all wet :-p Aramis with his beautiful chevelure all straggling looks all of a suddenly very much more like an aging Igor Starygin out of character, whom fortunately I had just seen in a documentary!