The 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; ( Read more... )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. ( Read more... )

I finished watching The prisoner of the Chateau d'If, and did finally feel something (and there were a couple of songs that I actually liked, though I'm not sure why there were any songs in it at all, as this isn't a musical and there were only a handful of random songs at wide intervals throughout). The reason why there seemed to be "an awful lot of plot to be covered in the final episode" turns out to be that it is much longer than the other two, which are about 65 minutes each while this one runs about ninety minutes...

Even so it still seems quite rushed, and I don't see the point of including such characters as Valentine de Villefort and Maximilian Morrel when the subplot involving them has been entirely removed (also an issue, as I recall, with the Robert Donat version!) I was able to follow more of what was going on in this episode thanks mainly to my familiarity with the original plot, although where departures from this took place I was quickly confused. ( Read more... )

( Soviet Musketeers music )

I watched the first episode of the BBC's new drama "This City is Ours", mainly because it *was* the first episode and I often miss the beginnings of things and then have no interest in watching the remainder. But I shan't be bothering with any further episodes, I'm afraid. ( Read more... )


The second half/series of Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires was actually very intriguing as a set-up, because since they had (like the BBC "Musketeers") abandoned canon and were apparently writing their own material using the established characters and setting, pretty much anything was up for grabs and you couldn't tell which way the story was going to come out. ( Read more... )
At least d'Artagnan has finally confessed to lying to his friends about Milady's supposed death (although Athos nobly points out that, having, as I had suspected, guessed the truth some time previously, the fault was as much his in not speaking out earlier; even though he doesn't share the background of Dumas' character, this animated version of Athos is actually one of the few who looks and feels 'right' to me)

It has been warmer, and I sowed a batch of chilli, towel-tomato and Roma tomato seeds. (Although there was ice on the top of the water this morning, so night-time temperatures are still plummeting!)

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As a compromise to embarking upon Twenty Years After, I tried watching the Soviet "Count of Monte Cristo", The Prisoner of the Chateau d'If, which gets mentioned in a similar vein and apparently features Boyarsky as Fernand (I haven't seen any sign of him so far).
And... frankly, if I hadn't already been familiar with the plot I would not have had even the faintest idea what was going on -- the film opens with a scene at the opera which turns into what turned out to be a flashback sequence -- and even with my knowledge of the book and characters I was guessing wildly. I could barely pick out a single word of the unsubtitled dialogue, never mind one word in five :-(

I suspect that the vocabulary and construction of the text for this one was a lot more sophisticated than for something along the lines of "The Treasure of Cardinal Mazarin", while my 'listening age' is still stuck at somewhere around the level of "Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds" :-(

( Enter Boyarsky as Fernand )

The National Film Theatre has just started running a 'Robert Donat season'; the star exhibit is of course Hitchcock's "Thirty-Nine Steps", which I'm afraid I never much cared for (I'm going off Hitchcock in general, after a promising start), but there are other films I'm interested to see, quite apart from the question of Donat himself. On that matter, on current showing, I remain mildly well-disposed but still to be convinced — on the other hand, at this stage in the Buster Keaton season I didn't think much of Keaton either...

Exhibit Number One was "The Private Life of Henry VIII", which of course I remember like everyone else for the famous chicken-bones on the floor scene... and had no idea that Donat was even in it. It was Charles Laughton's film, of course, and remains rightfully so, even though it's a bit creaky. (He over-does the swaggering and laughing at the beginning of the film, and the structure remains inherently episodic, despite an attempt to use Donat's character as a linking device — unfortunately it's not really much of a role. John Loder, in another very minor part, made more of an impression on me...)

Today's exhibit was Donat's sole Hollywood movie, the 1934 "Count of Monte Cristo". I was eager to see this, as I like swashbucklers and it has a good reputation; I also had an ulterior motive! The good news is that this turns out to be, as I hoped it might, my "long-lost Monte Cristo" -- the film I once caught the end of, thanks to the BBC, on holiday twenty years ago, and have never been able to find again since. The bad news is that, alas, the part I missed isn't actually nearly so good as the remainder...( Read more... )