The Counts of Monte Cristo. The film review

A sumptuous version between action and sentimental costume film, elegant but colorless which ends up in a harmless reading of Dumas’ text with too many lapses in pace. CANNES77. Out of Competition.

Is this what remains of the ‘cinéma de papa’? The new version of The Count of Monte Cristo, from the famous novel by Alexandre Dumas written in collaboration with Auguste Maquet which was published in installments starting from 1844, could walk on the rubble of that cinema so detested by Truffaut that cinema began to bring to the screen in 1922 with the star of the silent John Gilbert. In reality, of the various adaptations of 1954 by Robert Vernay with Jean Marais after the one that the same director had created in 1943 and of 1961 by Claude Autant-Lara with Louis Jourdan, only the narrative skeleton remains. The duo Delaporte and De La Patellière create a sumptuous version of action and sentimental costume film. It takes up the French tradition of ‘swashbuckling’ and mixes it with the saga of Pirates of the Caribbean especially in the initial part when the protagonist saves the life of a young woman, Angèle. From there the new begins The Counts of Monte Cristo, in Marseille in 1815 when Edmond Dantès was arrested on the day of his wedding to Mercedes for a crime he did not commit – he was denounced as a conspirator of Napoleon Bonaparte – and locked up in the Château d’If. There he meets Abbot Faria (played by Pierfrancesco Favino) who gives him the strength to move forward and who passes on his profound knowledge of him, from classical texts to different languages. After 14 years he manages to escape and on the island of Monte Cristo he finds a hidden treasure following the abbot’s instructions. Having become rich and powerful, he enacts his revenge against those who betrayed him by passing himself off as various characters, including the Count of Monte Cristo.

Delaporte and De Patellière are attracted by the text as if it were a luminous jewel which they are however afraid to touch and only skim. The two filmmakers, who had already taken steps with the historical adventure cinema written for the two recent versions of The Three Musketeers (D’Artagnan And Milady), produce an elegant but faded version of the text that holds up until the moment Dantès pretends to be dead and is brought out of captivity as a corpse. At that moment the growing tension is engaging. And even knowing the story, there is still the doubt that the plan could fail at any moment. The Counts of Monte Cristo However, it leaves few doubts, especially when Dantès finds himself face to face with his enemies. Pierre Niney, in the role of the protagonist, mainly shows the external appearance of his character but what he feels is only sporadically felt. Just as his plan for revenge is shown following the text but is brought to the screen in a cumbersome way, not adequately focusing on his accomplices who would have deserved more adequate investigation. Yet there was no shortage of time available (almost three hours) for the film. From the moment of the escape, Le Comte de Monte Cristo has several moments of failure and partially wastes the new meeting between Dantès and Mercedes where Anaïs Demoustier’s usual skill is not exploited when instead the character would have given him every opportunity to do so. Furthermore, this clean version becomes colorless as in the hunting trip and in the finale where the dramatic power is instead dispersed. There is none of the grime of Reynolds’ uneven adaptation with Jim Caviezel, and Delsporte and De La Patellière come to Dumas as strangers. Hidden Identity was much more effective in their crossover between comedy and drama than The best is yet to come. In this case however it is a dead end road. No more ‘cinema de papa’. One direction could have been that which leads to Besson and his EuropaCorp. For a heated spectacle and not a good read and nothing more than behind the genre it shows too little.