The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers (1948)

Genres - Action, Adventure, Drama, Romance, Language & Literature, War, Sports & Recreation  |   Sub-Genres - Costume Adventure, Swashbuckler  |   Release Date - Oct 19, 1948 (USA), Oct 19, 1948 (USA - Limited)  |   Run Time - 126 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - NR
  • AllMovie Rating
    6
  • User Ratings (0)
  • Your Rating

Share on

Synopsis by Hal Erickson

The third talkie version of Dumas' The Three Musketeers, this splashy MGM adaptation is also the first version in Technicolor. Gene Kelly romps his way through the role of D'Artagnan, the upstart cadet who joins veteran Musketeers Athos (Van Heflin), Porthos (Gig Young) and Aramis (Robert Coote) in their efforts to save their beloved Queen Anne (Angela Lansbury) from disgrace. They are aided in their efforts by the lovely and loyal Constance (June Allyson), while the villainy is in the capable hands of Milady De Winter (Lana Turner) and Richelieu (Vincent Price). Notice we don't say Cardinal Richelieu: anxious not to offend anyone, MGM removed the religious angle from the Cardinal's character. While early sound versions of Three Musketeers eliminated the deaths of Constance and Milady, this adaptation telescopes the novel's events to allow for these tragedies. True to form, MGM saw to it that Lana Turner, as Milady, was dressed to the nines and heavily bejeweled for her beheading sequence. Portions of the 1948 Three Musketeers, in black and white, showed up in the silent film-within-a-film in 1952's Singin' in the Rain, which of course also starred Gene Kelly.

Characteristics

Keywords

against-all-odds, bad-guy, courage, friendship, good-guy, swashbuckler, sword