I Watch Films: The Count of Monte Cristo

The Count of Monte Cristo

The novel The Count of Monte Cristo is a sprawling, convoluted novel, with multiple plot-lines over several time periods, dozens of characters of several generations with differing relationships with each other, details that depend on period appropriate international and French politics, sailing ships and trade routes and technology. When people make films about it they trim it down, and re-arrange bits. So we lose (for example) the Count’s use of hashish, the wide variety and number of children the main characters have, their intensely important military careers, the lesbian elopement, and, in fact, most of the female characters.

They usually keep the swordfights in.

This version (2002) keeps the character of Luigi Vampa, who often drops out of films, though it makes him a genial smuggler rather than a ruthless and unreadable bandit. I like Vampa, and I like him in this version.

They mess with the timeline a bit, Dantes knows who has informed on him rather than having to figure it out in prison. Cavaziel is good as naive sailor, better as smooth enigmatic count, and believable as ruthless avenger. The rest of the cast do okay, though some seem to be a bit broader in their interpretation than needed.

I’m unconvinced by the way he traps and destroys his enemies. Every set-piece is good but I don’t really feel it. And here we come to a problem; I’ve seen three, I think, previous adaptions, all of which had good points. Like this one! So if I were to recommend just one... it would probably not be this one.

Even if it does have Napoleon in it.

Watch This: For a fun swashbuckling adventure

Don’t Watch This: Watch the 1934 version (Robert Donat as Dantes), or the 1975 version (Richard Chamberlain as Dantes) or the 1998 miniseries that keeps some of the complexity of the novel (Gerard Depardieu as Dantes, in French with subtitles)

Here's Luigi Vampa from 1:10.