Maybe it’s because I’ve been reading Sidney Lumet’s Making Movies that I’ve started looking at movies differently. To Lumet, there are four types of movies: drama, melodrama, farce, and comedy. Ultimately, the characters or story will determine the type. For drama, the characters determine the story. For melodrama, the story determines the characters. Comedy is the inverse of drama, and likewise farce for melodrama.
Reading this breakdown in between watchings of Jacques Demy’s Umbrellas of Cherbourg – made at a time when musicals were beginning to grow stale in Hollywood as running times increased – and Richard Lester’s double bill of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, I had a renewed appreciation of the work that goes into making a movie. It’s a miracle one can get made at all.
But when something as sumptuous to the eyes and ears as Demy’s melodrama comes along how can you not be moved and swept away? Upon my initial viewing I jokingly remarked that when asked by his production designer and costume designer about what colors he wanted for the picture, Demy simply replied “Oui.” Celebrated for its vibrant use of color and Michael Legrand’s sung-through score, Cherbourg looks like a fairy tale but with the pathos of a romance thwarted on account of timing and unforeseen events.
Young mechanic Guy Foucher (Nino Castelnuovo) has passion in his heart, if not his loins, for Geneviève Emery (Catherine Deneuve), a shopgirl at an umbrella shop run by her widowed mother (Anne Vernon). Castelnuovo is sweet-natured yet when matched against Deneuve’s statuesque looks you get the feeling he’s out of her league and that any love between them will be diminish unless they remain together, free of obstacles. But when Guy receives his military draft notice and has to go to the Algerian War, leaving behind both Geneviève and his sick aunt, Élise (Mireille Perrey), the story ostensibly rests on our heroine and how she shoulders on without Guy in her life for the foreseeable.
The train farewell for the lovebirds might require an extra handkerchief, and the musical thereafter paints a different portrait of romance as Roland Cassard (Marc Michel), a Parisian jeweler who makes acquaintances with Geneviève in the umbrella shop prior to Guy’s departure, becomes a suitor much to her mother’s liking. And while it would be easy to label Roland as a rascal on account of his better means and wealth, he has his own burdens when it comes to lost love (a reference to Demy’s first feature Lola with Michel as Roland)
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg is a romantic melodrama set to song about the outward forces that cause the dissolution of a couple. By the time the film reaches its gas station finale, the scene looking like a shaken snow globe finally settled and Guy and Geneviève reunited by chance, it offers an everlasting gaze at two people whose lives are happy but whose hearts remain faraway.
Sixty years after its release in cinemas, Cherbourg continues to inspire, both tonally and in design, in films like La La Land and Barbie. As it should. Demy and his crew created such a musical that its effervescent colors would make the Mona Lisa smile.
Having gone through a few restorations already in the 2000s, including a 2013 master that had been previously available on Blu-ray in a Jacques Demy box set released by The Criterion Collection in 2014, this standalone 4K UHD release features a new 4K digital restoration, which was undertaken by Ciné-Tamaris, Eclair Classics, and L.E. Diapason laboratories in Paris, under the supervision of Demy’s son, Mathieu Demy, using the original 35mm negative scanned in immersion. The new remaster improves upon the 2004 full-color print which created a new color-negative film from the Eastman black-and-white negative stock that had three main color separation masters (for yellow, cyan, and magenta). That’s a bunch of technical detail babble that basically means the picture looks simply marvelous. We also get Michel Legrand’s brassy score in its original mono splendor as well as a DTS-HD 5.0 audio remix.
Aside from a new cover illustration by Michael Phillip Dunbabin, all of the extras found on the Blu-ray disc of the combo 4K UHD/Blu-ray release have been ported over from the previous The Essential Jacques Demy set. Chief feature is a 2008 documentary about the film’s production and lasting legacy. Also included are archival interviews with Demy, Legrand, and Deneuve, as well as one with film scholar and professor Rodney Hill (Hofstra University). We are also presented with a demonstration of the 2013 restoration for what would be for the Criterion Blu-ray. Finally, the included booklet essay by critic Jim Ridley (Nashville Scene) looks at both the film and Demy expressing what Ridley calls “the fullest expression of a career-long fascination with the entwining of real life, chance, and the bewitching artifice of cinematic illusion.”
In a different universe there is a version of Richard Lester’s The Three Musketeers where Porthos, Aramis, and Athos, along with D’Artagnan, would have been played by the Fab Four had they not gone their separate ways. Can you imagine John, Paul, George, and Ringo playing with swords instead of musical instruments?
No walrus, no problem as the filmmaker goes from A Hard Days Night and a string of British comedy flops to finally being able to adapt the Alexandre Dumas novel. I was always a Robin Hood guy growing up. The Adventures of Robin Hood is a textbook example as a classic adventure movie. I even enjoyed Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and could care less at Kevin Costner’s poor attempts at trying an English accent. And while I don’t recall the Disneyfied version of Dumas’ Muskeeters with Kiefer Sutherland, Charlie Sheen, Oliver Platt, and Chris O’Donnell all that well, I do remember Tim Curry as Cardinal Richelieu was the highlight. I also have a soft spot for the 1948 Technicolor release starring Gene Kelly and Lana Turner, however, as evident in my review.
However, it wasn’t until this Criterion double feature that I had ever watched the Richard Lester adaptation. Alas, I should have seen these sooner.
Originally planned as a single epic with intermission, The Three Musketeers would be split in half (as The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers) to help ease distribution and increase profit potential. While this wasn’t a new concept for Hollywood, only some of the cast was aware of the production decision to split the film. This caused derision as the actors were being paid for one film yet their contracts made no mention of a second feature. The change was so notorious it caused the Screen Actors Guild to create what is known as the “Salkind clause” (which is named after the film’s producers Alexander and Ilya Salkind). The clause stipulates that single productions cannot be split into film installments without prior contractual agreement.
Moving away from contract law to the films themselves, and what we have is pure matinee entertainment full of swordplay and satirical humor. Both are lively and funny, and are endearing in spite of budget constraints and production demands.
We begin with the lowborn d’Artagnan (Michael York) seeking to become one of France’s heroic Musketeers. Making his way to Paris, he finds himself a pesky aggravation or enemy to three men who he eventually charms: Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay – who I initially mistook for Peter O’Toole), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain). Three elite fighters of noble pride and ignoble vices for women and wine, and a little skulduggery here and there.
While the four swordsmen find themselves in the midst of political intrigue under the command of Louis XIII (Jean-Pierre Cassel), neither Lester nor screenwriter George Macdonald Fraser lose focus of the chicanery spun by Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) as he exerts his influence in the halls of government. In between bedding his landlord’s wife and Musketeer shenanigans against the cardinal’s guards, d’Artagnan must avert a royal embarrassment by stealing back a pair of diamonds. Forget a thrilling duel to end the first half in cliffhanger fashion; young d’Artagnan proves his worthiness by concealing Queen Anne’s (Geraldine Chaplin) affair with the Duke of Buckingham (Simon Ward). What was to be an embarrassing debacle plotted by the cardinal and his agents, Milady de Winter (Faye Dunaway) and Rochefort (Christopher Lee), becomes a promotion.
The Four Musketeers is less playful and becomes more serious as the plot advances and Athos espouses about a former love he had supposedly killed. The story takes place during the Anglo-French War and the siege of La Rochelle and suppressing the Protestant rebels. Milady de Winter still wants revenge on d’Artagnan for spoiling what Cardinal Richelieu was trying to accomplish. Her deceitfulness includes seduction, attempted poisoning, and getting a murder warrant. Hell hath no fury like Milady de Winter.
Even with a darker tone, The Four Musketeers: Milady’s Revenge still engages the viewer with physical stunts and physical comedy, and old reliable sight gags to inspire laughs. Scene highlights from The Three Musketeers involve the Musketeers fighting the cardinal’s guards in the laundry; the Musketeers stealing lunch; and a nighttime skirmish with swords and holding lanterns. The Four Musketeers gives a pair of rescues full of pratfalls; breakfast under siege; and the great duel between d’Artagnan and Rochefort. The sword-fighting is inventive and looks exhausting. Though, these movies wouldn’t be nearly as fun or memorable if it wasn’t for Oliver Reed as Athos. Taking him out of these movies would be like removing Val Kilmer from Tombstone. He has a presence about him that his fellow Musketeers can’t match. And outside of Faye Dunaway, he may just be the sexiest person here. Which is saying something when you have the sinewy svelte Michael York, voluptuous Raquel Welch, plus Richard Chamberlain and Charlton Heston in the cast.
Arriving as a four-disc set (two 4K UHDs, two Blu-rays), from 4K restorations undertaken by STUDIOCANAL of the original camera negatives, the visual presentation has a subdued quality in outside sequences with some shots washed out. Though, this has more to do with filming on location and an inability to scatter the light well. Where the transfer really pops is in the interior production design and costumes, specifically any clothing that’s red (the cardinal) or purple (the royals). The nighttime duel in The Three Musketeers is also splendid.
Michel Legrand, composer of The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, handles the score for the first half of the double feature, but was replaced by Lalo Schifrin on The Four Musketeers. Both scores are presented in their original monaural soundtracks.
In a bit of a surprise, the 4K discs are as bare bones as they get. No extras, and the menus don’t even include music cues from either score. The Blu-rays are a different story as we get a new documentary that’s cleverly titled: Two for One. Critic and visual essayist David Cairns’s documentary is a behemoth. Four parts, with two reserved for The Three Musketeers and the other two for The Four Musketeers. Drawing from cast and crew diaries, memoirs, and old audio interviews, Carins delivers a retrospective that is akin to the polished features produced by Charles de Lauzirika and Laurent Bouzereau.
Criterion also includes the program The Saga of the Musketeers, a two-part documentary (50 minutes) originally produced by Blue Underground and Anchor Bay Entertainment in 2002 and released as an extra on a double-disc DVD set. Here we get a history of the production with interviews from stars Michael York, Frank Finlay, Charlton Heston, Christopher Lee, and Raquel Welch. Production director Pierre Spengler and executive producer Ilya Salkind are also featured. A vintage EPK on The Making of The Musketeers and trailers for both films round out the disc extras. The illustrated leaflet features artwork in the style of “Where’s Waldo” with the characters and features an essay by film critic Stephanie Zacharek (Time) and technical credits. Perhaps a literary classic shouldn’t be based purely on what’s on the page but by how many adaptations it has had. There’s a reason why The Three Musketeers has been adapted so many times. It’s action-adventure in its purest form. It’s just a shame it has taken me so long to finally see Richard Lester’s version. If using the Eifel Tower as a symbol, the film adaptations of Dumas’s novel may have peaked in the 1970s.
Don’t be like me wait too long to see this duology. Come to think of it, seeing what is going on in the U.S. government right now, this release couldn’t have come at a better time.
The Umbrellas of Cherbourg
Grade: A
The Three Musketeers / The Four Musketeers
Grade: B / B-
