No Cigar for Monte Cristo

I didn’t know Charles Dickens and Alexandre Dumas both died in 1870, nor did I fully appreciate that some of their best known novels were published as serials.

I have read both authors; neither extensively. My pleasure in their work has come to a large extent from adaptations on film. David Lean set the tone in the 1940s with Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. Gosh, I’m lucky to have seen so much Dickens on screen and not to have to read the novels. (I make an exception for The Pickwick Papers.) My experience of Dumas is the same. The adaptations of his novels on TV and the big screen have brought me huge pleasure – the critics seldom agree with me. I thought I had read some of them but they were by Anthony Hope: The Prisoner of Zenda (1894), Rupert of Hentzau (1898).

“Vengeance and retribution require a long time; it is the rule.” That’s the indefatigable knitter, Madame Defarge, in A Tale of Two Cities. It sums up the plot of The Count of Monte Cristo. I saw the 2024 film earlier this month. Vengeance and retribution take three hours in a film that sticks to the plot like a greyhound coursing a hare. When Edmond Dantes is imprisoned for fourteen years you feel every boring year. I like to think Lean or Hitchcock would have done a better job – “Fourteen years later” on the screen would suffice. There are too many drone shots; there is too much CGI and too much plot. This is at the expense of exploring the characters and their motives. On the other main (the film is in French) it has a good cast, some good locations and I didn’t go to sleep. But where was the swashbuckling drama I remember from the TV version of The Three Musketeers? Disney doesn’t always hit the mark but what child and some grown-ups don’t love The Three Mousqueteers?

Dumas’s serial may have been suspenseful and compelling in the 19th century but this year’s film makes its hero out to be the C*nt of Monte Cristo.