Le comte de Monte-Cristo (2024)
3 May 2026 06:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
igenlodeThe BBC decided to show a French "Count of Monte Cristo" on BBC4, so I thought I'd watch it as a change from watching Russian programming; I'm afraid that, since this is a modern production rather than having classical enunciation, I found that in this case I would have understood very little of it without the BBC's helpfully provided English subtitles, as opposed to "Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires" or "La Poupée Sanglante", where I could pick out practically every word. In this case there was some dialogue that I couldn't even back-translate from the subtitles, either because it was too colloquial or too mumbled or with too much background noise going on...
There were certain shots in this version that were very weirdly reminiscent of the Soviet adaptation (which I am quite certain the director would not have been watching) -- presumably because based on the same real-life locations and/or historical paintings... although I'm assuming Yungwald-Khilkevich didn't have the luxury of filming in Malta, let alone Marseilles! Since it was being shown as a serial in several parts, I had rather hoped that this was *not* the recent French film, of which I'd heard various mixed and on the whole less than approbatory reviews, but some earlier TV production, but according to the end-credits of the first instalment it was filmed in 2024 and is thus the new one after all.
On the basis of the parts that I've seen, I'd have to concur with the mixed reviews. This is *not* an immediate success; in fact the opening is one of the weakest parts, and might have turned me right off, but it does get better later on. As an adaptation, it makes quite a few changes to the original, many of which I imagine were made to try to streamline the plot of an incredibly long novel and to reduce the number of random coincidences, and some of which work well: for example, it is economically implied that Haydee here has been set up as a deliberate honey-trap for the young and romantic Albert, in precisely the same way and at the same time that 'Andrea Cavalcanti' is being trained in his imposture, which to me makes sense both as part of the Count's schemings and, story-externally, as a way to make more use of a character who otherwise basically only gets one meaningful scene. Likewise Monte-Cristo actively lures Albert into an ambush so that he can heroically 'rescue' him, and Danglars is portrayed as having obligingly married de Villefort's cast-off mistress, rather than Villefort being revealed as just happening to have had an affair with the wife of someone he doesn't actually know.
On the other hand, it makes no sense to me at all that Villefort (here 'monstered' as not only a Royalist (shock! horror! how can any right-thinking person support the incumbent administration rather than conspiring for Our Glorious Exiled Emperor?) but also 'a cruel Royalist' rather than an honest one) is terrified by the revelation that Dantès is aware of the name... Angèle. That's right: he is no longer trying to rescue his father, the inveterate old Jacobin whose name is infamous (surely airbrushing Noirtier out of the plot will have massive consequences for the second half of the story? Or maybe that was the intention, in order to simplify the plotline?), but is worried that someone might recognise the not-terribly-unusual Christian name of his sister, whom he doesn't care for in the least.
I actually thought he was going to murder her at one point, but apparently that would have been too merciful, so he sends her off to be a prostitute instead. This doesn't seem a particularly effective means of suppressing someone, even if you suppose that the shame and humiliation would cause her to keep quiet (Angèle de Villefort, who parades around in men's clothing, is clearly not that socially respectable in the first place), and indeed within a few weeks she apparently talks one of her clients into taking her to Paris so that she can assassinate her brother in revenge. But she is almost immediately recaptured by her pimps and apparently then gives up all further attempts to leave or communicate with anyone, even though Monte Cristo has no trouble tracking her down or getting her to reveal her knowledge fifteen years later. Which, frankly, seems out of character for this Not Like Other Girls representative who has been thus shoe-horned into the plot.
You see, the story now opens -- after a limp set of title cards attempting to summarise the political situation for a generation that can't be assumed to know anything about the Napoleonic Wars, but in a manner that is neither inspiring nor informative -- with a very generic and unconvincing action sequence featuring a burning ship in the middle of a storm (it couldn't just be sinking, but has to be inexplicably on fire), and this very modern-looking girlboss character swimming around as, conveniently, the sole survivor, to be rescued by Dantès. I know that female characters in historical dramas of *any* era always have inappropriately modern make-up for the period, but this one really does look as if she is out of some current superhero film; the face simply does not fit. But despite this prolonged submersion, she is carrying in some waterproof locket or other the damning letter from Napoleon, which is still legible. And Danglars (who is the Brutal and Proud of It captain; conscious plot simplification there, I assume, because nobody knows what a supercargo is or does, and it gives him a direct grudge against Dantès) seizes upon this as a means to get Dantès into trouble.
Only he doesn't. He brings Dantès up before their employer for insubordination, because he, Danglars, had apparently given orders *not* to approach the wreck or rescue anyone from it (despite the age-old mariners' convention to aid any vessel in distress). Whereupon Morrel gives Danglars the sack for failing to assist the wreck, and makes the impertinent youngster captain over his head... which means that Edmond now has enough social position to marry his Mercedes.
Because in this version Mercedes and her cousin Fernand are not impoverished Catalan fisherfolk, but members of the landed gentry, with young Dantès being the offspring of the faithful butler and nanny, and a protegé of the Morcerf household, befriended by the younger generation as a sort of foster-brother and pet, but not, in Fernand's eyes at least, really their equal. Which is an interesting relationship (although again, I suspect, basically done in the interests of plot economy, so that there is no need to spend time on explaining how the poor fisher-girl ends up as a Countess in the second half), but since it's not part of the original story they don't really have the space to do anything with it.
It means that we end up here with a Fernand who goes with apparently genuine motives to intercede with Villefort for his foster-brother's release (although since he is clearly far from happy about the marriage with Mercedes, this seems to display a surprising degree of selflessness!) and is talked out of it, rather than being active in the original denunciation. When he shows up again later he also seems to be suffering from serious undisclosed war wounds in addition to a visible eyepatch, so presumably his service was a very active one.
Distractingly, the actor playing the young Fernand (I'm not sure if the older character is even played by the same performer) bears a distinct resemblance to a young Gerard Depardieu -- similar ugly-blunt expressiveness. The actor playing Dantès also has a striking face that is not the generic Hollywood-leading-man style, and both are clearly talented. The women make less of an impression, which is presumably why it was felt necessary to introduce a girl-boss role :-p
I thought the Chateau d'If section was pretty well-handled on the whole (although it has to be the Treasure of the Templars so that everyone will have heard of it, which then requires new explanations as to how the Abbé Faria can possibly be a Templar...) The years of Dantès' education are neatly implied by a single speech from the Abbé, and the mechanism of the escape is conveyed succinctly, with the added introduction of a jailer doing a regular round to check that the prisoners are still alive, thus establishing a tension between the discovery of the Abbé's body and the subsequent discovery of Dantès' absence on resuming the same round of inspection. I was a bit confused by the implication that they are apparently hoping to tunnel out *underwater*, and was more than half expecting the end of the tunnel to flood in the collapse at the end of the first episode...
One would have thought the jailers would be able to tell the difference between a prisoner who had been crushed to death (and is still covered with dust!) and one who has expired of old age/natural causes, but presumably they don't care enough to check at all carefully, beyond the crude test that the prisoner is in fact dead and not faking it (ouch). Again, the change as to the cause of death is presumably made for the sake of abbreviating the amount of extra plot detail required -- as is the fact that this Dantès simply *swims* directly home across the bay, since there is no alarm cannon fired or search party sent out, rather than going to Monte Cristo first and returning only in his rich guise. Perhaps it was also felt that he would be a more sympathetic character if he went immediately to reunite with his nearest and dearest, rather than being carried off, willingly or not, into the wider Mediterranean!
(Blooper: the large and prominent sailor's tattoo across Dantès' back -- which will surely prove an embarrassment once he tries to pose as a nobleman -- isn't present when he climbs out of the water, although it has returned again in the next scene :-p)
I didn't think much of the way in which he then ventures into the depths of the Templars' cave bearing the traditional flaming torch (lamps have, by this point in history, been invented...), nearly falls into a deep chasm, and then proceeds to deliberately *drop* his one source of light down the hole to see what is at the bottom -- where it conveniently flares up and burns after its endless descent, rather than simply going out and leaving him stuck inside a mountain in the dark!
All in all, I felt, as I said, that after a rather painfully clunky beginning the production began to become more interesting; I liked the way that the statue from the Templars' cave shows up again silently in the grounds of the house that Monte-Cristo has hired in Paris, for example, and the way that we see him rehearsing his 'spontaneous' speech of welcome to Albert and Fernand. There is definitely an atmosphere of scheming going on, and it serves to bring the character into the foreground, as the screen requires, where Dumas' novel actually leaves him very much in the background for the whole second half. I assume that the reason why Maximilien Morrel has been aged-down from the ship-owner's son to his grandson is so that he can be more obviously in a similar generation to the offspring of Villefort and Fernand, who are not born until after the start of Dantès' imprisonment (though we have yet to meet a Valentine, and perhaps in the absence of Noirtier she doesn't exist?)
I'll try to catch the next episode next Saturday, and we'll see.
There were certain shots in this version that were very weirdly reminiscent of the Soviet adaptation (which I am quite certain the director would not have been watching) -- presumably because based on the same real-life locations and/or historical paintings... although I'm assuming Yungwald-Khilkevich didn't have the luxury of filming in Malta, let alone Marseilles! Since it was being shown as a serial in several parts, I had rather hoped that this was *not* the recent French film, of which I'd heard various mixed and on the whole less than approbatory reviews, but some earlier TV production, but according to the end-credits of the first instalment it was filmed in 2024 and is thus the new one after all.
On the basis of the parts that I've seen, I'd have to concur with the mixed reviews. This is *not* an immediate success; in fact the opening is one of the weakest parts, and might have turned me right off, but it does get better later on. As an adaptation, it makes quite a few changes to the original, many of which I imagine were made to try to streamline the plot of an incredibly long novel and to reduce the number of random coincidences, and some of which work well: for example, it is economically implied that Haydee here has been set up as a deliberate honey-trap for the young and romantic Albert, in precisely the same way and at the same time that 'Andrea Cavalcanti' is being trained in his imposture, which to me makes sense both as part of the Count's schemings and, story-externally, as a way to make more use of a character who otherwise basically only gets one meaningful scene. Likewise Monte-Cristo actively lures Albert into an ambush so that he can heroically 'rescue' him, and Danglars is portrayed as having obligingly married de Villefort's cast-off mistress, rather than Villefort being revealed as just happening to have had an affair with the wife of someone he doesn't actually know.
On the other hand, it makes no sense to me at all that Villefort (here 'monstered' as not only a Royalist (shock! horror! how can any right-thinking person support the incumbent administration rather than conspiring for Our Glorious Exiled Emperor?) but also 'a cruel Royalist' rather than an honest one) is terrified by the revelation that Dantès is aware of the name... Angèle. That's right: he is no longer trying to rescue his father, the inveterate old Jacobin whose name is infamous (surely airbrushing Noirtier out of the plot will have massive consequences for the second half of the story? Or maybe that was the intention, in order to simplify the plotline?), but is worried that someone might recognise the not-terribly-unusual Christian name of his sister, whom he doesn't care for in the least.
I actually thought he was going to murder her at one point, but apparently that would have been too merciful, so he sends her off to be a prostitute instead. This doesn't seem a particularly effective means of suppressing someone, even if you suppose that the shame and humiliation would cause her to keep quiet (Angèle de Villefort, who parades around in men's clothing, is clearly not that socially respectable in the first place), and indeed within a few weeks she apparently talks one of her clients into taking her to Paris so that she can assassinate her brother in revenge. But she is almost immediately recaptured by her pimps and apparently then gives up all further attempts to leave or communicate with anyone, even though Monte Cristo has no trouble tracking her down or getting her to reveal her knowledge fifteen years later. Which, frankly, seems out of character for this Not Like Other Girls representative who has been thus shoe-horned into the plot.
You see, the story now opens -- after a limp set of title cards attempting to summarise the political situation for a generation that can't be assumed to know anything about the Napoleonic Wars, but in a manner that is neither inspiring nor informative -- with a very generic and unconvincing action sequence featuring a burning ship in the middle of a storm (it couldn't just be sinking, but has to be inexplicably on fire), and this very modern-looking girlboss character swimming around as, conveniently, the sole survivor, to be rescued by Dantès. I know that female characters in historical dramas of *any* era always have inappropriately modern make-up for the period, but this one really does look as if she is out of some current superhero film; the face simply does not fit. But despite this prolonged submersion, she is carrying in some waterproof locket or other the damning letter from Napoleon, which is still legible. And Danglars (who is the Brutal and Proud of It captain; conscious plot simplification there, I assume, because nobody knows what a supercargo is or does, and it gives him a direct grudge against Dantès) seizes upon this as a means to get Dantès into trouble.
Only he doesn't. He brings Dantès up before their employer for insubordination, because he, Danglars, had apparently given orders *not* to approach the wreck or rescue anyone from it (despite the age-old mariners' convention to aid any vessel in distress). Whereupon Morrel gives Danglars the sack for failing to assist the wreck, and makes the impertinent youngster captain over his head... which means that Edmond now has enough social position to marry his Mercedes.
Because in this version Mercedes and her cousin Fernand are not impoverished Catalan fisherfolk, but members of the landed gentry, with young Dantès being the offspring of the faithful butler and nanny, and a protegé of the Morcerf household, befriended by the younger generation as a sort of foster-brother and pet, but not, in Fernand's eyes at least, really their equal. Which is an interesting relationship (although again, I suspect, basically done in the interests of plot economy, so that there is no need to spend time on explaining how the poor fisher-girl ends up as a Countess in the second half), but since it's not part of the original story they don't really have the space to do anything with it.
It means that we end up here with a Fernand who goes with apparently genuine motives to intercede with Villefort for his foster-brother's release (although since he is clearly far from happy about the marriage with Mercedes, this seems to display a surprising degree of selflessness!) and is talked out of it, rather than being active in the original denunciation. When he shows up again later he also seems to be suffering from serious undisclosed war wounds in addition to a visible eyepatch, so presumably his service was a very active one.
Distractingly, the actor playing the young Fernand (I'm not sure if the older character is even played by the same performer) bears a distinct resemblance to a young Gerard Depardieu -- similar ugly-blunt expressiveness. The actor playing Dantès also has a striking face that is not the generic Hollywood-leading-man style, and both are clearly talented. The women make less of an impression, which is presumably why it was felt necessary to introduce a girl-boss role :-p
I thought the Chateau d'If section was pretty well-handled on the whole (although it has to be the Treasure of the Templars so that everyone will have heard of it, which then requires new explanations as to how the Abbé Faria can possibly be a Templar...) The years of Dantès' education are neatly implied by a single speech from the Abbé, and the mechanism of the escape is conveyed succinctly, with the added introduction of a jailer doing a regular round to check that the prisoners are still alive, thus establishing a tension between the discovery of the Abbé's body and the subsequent discovery of Dantès' absence on resuming the same round of inspection. I was a bit confused by the implication that they are apparently hoping to tunnel out *underwater*, and was more than half expecting the end of the tunnel to flood in the collapse at the end of the first episode...
One would have thought the jailers would be able to tell the difference between a prisoner who had been crushed to death (and is still covered with dust!) and one who has expired of old age/natural causes, but presumably they don't care enough to check at all carefully, beyond the crude test that the prisoner is in fact dead and not faking it (ouch). Again, the change as to the cause of death is presumably made for the sake of abbreviating the amount of extra plot detail required -- as is the fact that this Dantès simply *swims* directly home across the bay, since there is no alarm cannon fired or search party sent out, rather than going to Monte Cristo first and returning only in his rich guise. Perhaps it was also felt that he would be a more sympathetic character if he went immediately to reunite with his nearest and dearest, rather than being carried off, willingly or not, into the wider Mediterranean!
(Blooper: the large and prominent sailor's tattoo across Dantès' back -- which will surely prove an embarrassment once he tries to pose as a nobleman -- isn't present when he climbs out of the water, although it has returned again in the next scene :-p)
I didn't think much of the way in which he then ventures into the depths of the Templars' cave bearing the traditional flaming torch (lamps have, by this point in history, been invented...), nearly falls into a deep chasm, and then proceeds to deliberately *drop* his one source of light down the hole to see what is at the bottom -- where it conveniently flares up and burns after its endless descent, rather than simply going out and leaving him stuck inside a mountain in the dark!
All in all, I felt, as I said, that after a rather painfully clunky beginning the production began to become more interesting; I liked the way that the statue from the Templars' cave shows up again silently in the grounds of the house that Monte-Cristo has hired in Paris, for example, and the way that we see him rehearsing his 'spontaneous' speech of welcome to Albert and Fernand. There is definitely an atmosphere of scheming going on, and it serves to bring the character into the foreground, as the screen requires, where Dumas' novel actually leaves him very much in the background for the whole second half. I assume that the reason why Maximilien Morrel has been aged-down from the ship-owner's son to his grandson is so that he can be more obviously in a similar generation to the offspring of Villefort and Fernand, who are not born until after the start of Dantès' imprisonment (though we have yet to meet a Valentine, and perhaps in the absence of Noirtier she doesn't exist?)
I'll try to catch the next episode next Saturday, and we'll see.
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Date: 2026-05-04 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2026-05-04 04:16 pm (UTC)