The Three Musketeers

This lavishly produced 1966 BBC telefilm generally maintains fidelity to the beloved Alexandre Dumas adventure novel, but it's hardly what one would call a rousing adaptation. In fact, what's sorely lacking is precisely that joie de vivre typifying the most entertaining swashbucklers (including other versions of this story). Action sequences with and without swordplay here are perfunctorily staged and stiffly executed by actors and stunt people alike under the direction of Peter Hammond, who seems to regard those scenes as incidental to the narrative, which he advances with a surfeit of longwinded dialogue. Under his testosterone-challenged helming, The Three Musketeers unfolds like a soap opera—and a fairly dreary one at that as leavening touches of humor are almost totally absent, and some cast members give the impression that they're playing Shakespeare. Still, the production is not without points of interest, perhaps the most significant one being the performance of Jeremy Brett as D'Artagnan, the young 17th-century commoner who comes to Paris to join the King's Musketeers and is immediately caught up in intrigues perpetuated by Cardinal Richelieu (blandly played by Richard Pasco). Brett, who later became famous as Sherlock Holmes, does his best to breathe life into Hammond's nearly moribund treatment of the Dumas novel, and his spirited turn goes a long way toward making the film watchable. Presented on an extra-less two-disc set, this is an optional purchase. (E. Hulse)