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Gene Kelly fresh off the set of The Pirate serves his special brand of swashbuckling clown, astride floppy equine with oversized saber belt. "D'Artagnan? The famous swordsman?" "The famous booby." The rural hothead in Paris, bounding rather than walking, hurling himself at foes. His acrobatics during a melee in the Jardin du Luxembourg impress the Royal Musketeers, his opponent is depantsed at bladepoint and dunked into a pond. "Don't send him back with his trousers dripping," warns the captain, the King (Frank Morgan) is a bit blunter: "Fine lot of brainless cutthroats!" Porthos (Gig Young) is a dashing blank and Aramis (Robert Coote) a fatuous dandy, Athos (Van Heflin) is in his own orbit of lost love and existential brooding. "To die among friends. Can a man ask more? Can the world offer less?" MGM on Dumas means glazed casting, storybook Technicolor, flagrant shifts in tone. Mamoulian's The Mark of Zorro is the model for George Sidney's treatment of duels like musical numbers, subsequently perfected in Scaramouche. The camera descends past suspended candles for a Meet Me in St. Louis introduction of June Allyson's Constance, in the room above D'Artagnan howls and writhes like Tex Avery's Wolf. "It takes a good man to prevent a catastrophe... and a great man to make use of one," so it goes with Richelieu (Vincent Price) and jewels incriminating the Queen (Angela Lansbury). As Milady de Winter, Lana Turner is an emblem of villainous allure abstracted into the image of a dainty hand discreetly stained with blood. "But that's a funny story. Did I leave something out?" A progress from slapstick toward somberness, a draft for Lester's two-part epic and no mistake. With Keenan Wynn, John Sutton, Reginald Owen, Ian Keith, Patricia Medina, Richard Stapley, Sol Gorss, and Marie Windsor.
--- Fernando F. Croce |