This is much closer to the flavor of the novel than the 2002 version. I highly recommend it...as long as you can put up with the Brooklyn accent of Tony Curtis trying to act French...
shareIt's more faithful than the 2002 version ... but not nearly as good.
shareI think this version is far superior to the 2002 version w/ Cheekbones McJesusFace (er, James Caviezel). For one thing, the screenwriters of this version knew enough to take their time with the Count's revenge--which is, after all, the meat of the story. Chamberlain's Count is rich enough to have his enemies killed quickly and neatly by assassins, but that isn't what he wants: he wants first to take everything away from them, disgrace them publicly, and make them suffer--fully cognizant at last of their crimes and of their vileness as human beings. He sees himself as the instrument of God's justice, and what makes the story great is his godlike role of all-knowing puppet-master, slowly manipulating his enemies with his intellect and money until they finally destroy themselves by way of their own guilt and greed, right in the heart of Parisian society. The 1975 version is far from perfect, but it gets a lot of this right.
The lame Caviezel version misplaces the emphasis: it frontloads the story and spends almost no time on the revenge, which looks almost like an afterthought, and most of the acting and characterizations are pretty awful. The filmmakers took an intelligent, subtle, masterfully plotted epic and turned it into a sort of pirate movie w/ a dim bulb at its center. (Good photography, though).
While your analysis of the thwo movies in form and content is correct, I disagree with your assessment. The 2002 version is a fascinatingly entertaining film, and although the execution of the Counts revenge in it shows little to no resemblance to the (endlessly dragging) scheme of the novel, I found, that it still remained true to what’s at the core of Dumas writing: revenge may seem fulfilling for a while, but it will alter the revenge seeker too and it might harm innocents just as well as the bad guys.
What I do like about the Chamberlain version is how it reflects the bitterness of Mercedes departing from France and Monte Christo.
I think so.
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