The Count of Monte Cristo is a great yarn by Alexander Dumas, though I admit I couldn’t get into the unabridged edition. The 1934 film THE COUNT OF MONTE CRISTO (1934) stars Robert Donat as Edmund Dantes, condemned to life imprisonment by three schemers (one wants his lover Mercedes, one wants his promotion as ship captain, one has political reasons), sent to the inescapable Chateau d’If, and pronounced dead to ensure the bullshit charge will never come to trial.
Decades later, Dantes breaks out of prison, having received a world-class education from a fellow prisoner along with directions to a horde of treasure. Dantes uses the money to establish himself as a nobleman, then comes to France to arrange revenge on his three tormentors.
The movie takes considerable liberties with the book. I can understand giving Dantes a happy ending (Mercedes has never stopped loving him) but there’s a lot of emphasis on Dantes as an agent of justice rather than revenge — he’s not hunting these men down in retaliation but because of the crimes they’re committing against France. Was that some issue with the Production Code? A desire to keep him sympathetic? I’ve no clue. “I have followed your brilliant career with some interest.”
Not having seen the Jules Verne adaptation THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1961) since I was a tween, I was disappointed to discover this Ray Harryhausen film has way less kaiju and a lot more Robinsonade material (i.e., desert-island survival a la Robinson Crusoe) than I remembered. A group of Civil War soldiers break out of a Confederate prison by balloon (accompanied by one Southerner—the film formula for a long time was that both sides were valiant and noble, the war was a bad mistake, nothing personal), get caught in a storm and wind up on a Pacific Island. Their struggle to survive is enlivened by occasional giant monsters, pirates, pretty women washing up on the beach and finally an encounter with Herbert Lom as Captain Nemo. This badly needs a stronger cast; Gary Merrill as a cynical war correspondent is good but he needs a strong, idealistic character to play against. Plus the Southerner’s accent is horrendous. “Considering the ships and crews you’ve sent to the bottom, you can’t disturb my conscience.”
It’s weird watching THE ROAD TO GLORY (1936) and realizing that just three years before WW II broke out, they were still making movies about the glory and tragedy of WW I. This Howard Hawks film is impressively dull, cobbled together from bits of The Dawn Patrol (the terrible burden of command in a doomed fight) —
—and Tiger Shark, with burnout commander Warner Baxter and womanizer Fredric March (in a surprisingly weak performance) in love with the same woman. As Films of Howard Hawk puts it, the film starts out with the insight that War is Hell and doesn’t add anything to it. John Barrymore plays Baxter’s father. “You know if one man fails, ten others may die with him.”
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