The Count of Monte Cristo **** (1934, Robert Donat, Louis Calhern, Sidney Blackmer, Elissa Landi, Raymond Walburn, William Farnum, O P Heggie) – Classic Movie Review 3003

The 1934 adventure movie The Count of Monte Cristo is a thrilling version of the Alexandre Dumas 1844 novel, with Robert Donat in the star role. Screen-writer Philip Dunne said he never read it and that there are only seven words of Dumas in the film.

Co-writer/ director Rowland V Lee’s vintage 1934 American adventure movie The Count of Monte Cristo is a thrilling classic version of the Alexandre Dumas Père 1844 novel story of Edmond Dantès, aka The Count of Monte Cristo, with Robert Donat in the star role.

Falsely jailed for aiding the exiled Napoleon, Dantès escapes from the island prison of Chateau D’If after 20 years with the help of the Abbé Faria (O P Heggie), who leaves him the treasure of Monte Cristo. Now known as The Count of Monte Cristo, Dantès is obsessed with his plan is to exact revenge on the three greedy men who conspired to frame him, leading to his unjust imprisonment for innocently delivering a letter entrusted to him. Meanwhile Dantès’s fiancée Mercedes (Elissa Landi) is told that he died in prison and she is forced to marry his rival Count Fernand de Mondego.

The Count of Monte Cristo is a real old-style crowd-pleaser thanks to the invigorating acting, exciting action and terrific handling. Robert Donat’s displays of heroics are as charismatic as the essays in villainy from Louis Calhern (as DeVillefort) and Sidney Blackmer (as Count Fernand de Mondego).

Also in the cast are Raymond Walburn, William Farnum, Luis Alberni, Irene Hervey, Douglas Walton, Clarence Wilson, Holmes Herbert, Clarence Muse, Georgia Caine, Walter Walker, Lawrence Grant, Juliette Compton, Eleanor Phelps and Lionel Belmore.

It is the first sound film adaptation of Dumas’s novel after five silent film versions.

The screenplay by Philip Dunne, Rowland V Lee and Dan Totheroh changes some major details of Dumas’s story and omits a long series of its prominent characters.

This was the third film producer Edward Small made for United Artists.

Robert Donat and Elissa Landi in The Count of Monte Cristo.

Rowland V Lee and playwright Dan Totheroh wrote a treatment based on the novel but Edward Small hired young screenwriter Philip Dunne to write the dialogue when Totheroh had to leave for New York. Dunne said that there are only seven words of Dumas in the film: ‘The world is mine!’ spoken by Edmund Dantes when he gets his treasure, and ‘one, two, three’ when he disposes of his enemies. Dunne recalled: ‘I told the director Rowland Lee I’d never read the novel. He said he’d act it out for me and he did such a good job I’ve never read it. In fact, I used all his dialogue, I just wrote it down. But I got my first credit.’

Filming started in May 1934 and it was released on 29 August 1934 in the US. The film was very popular. Philip Dunne said it ‘provided Eddie Small with a fortune almost as great as the Treasure of Spada’.

The film had two sequels, The Son of Monte Cristo (1940) and The Return of Monte Cristo (1946).

It was remade in Italy in 1943 with Pierre Richard-Willm as Edmond Dantès, in 1954 as The Count of Monte Cristo with Jean Marais, in 1961 as The Count of Monte Cristo with Louis Jourdan, in 1975 as The Count of Monte Cristo with Richard Chamberlain, and in 2002 as The Count of Monte Cristo with Guy Pearce, Jim Caviezel and Richard Harris.

Clips of the film’s first duel scene appear in the 2006 V for Vendetta as the title anarchist names The Count of Monte Cristo as his favourite film.

The cast are Robert Donat as Edmond Dantes / The Count of Monte Cristo, Elissa Landi as Mercedes de Rosas, Louis Calhern as Raymond de Villefort Jr, Sidney Blackmer as Count Fernand de Mondego, Raymond Walburn as Baron Danglars, O. P. Heggie as the Abbé Faria, Irene Hervey as Valentine de Villefort, Georgia Caine as Madame de Rosas, Lawrence Grant as de Villefort Sr, Luis Alberni as Dantes’s assistant Jacopo,  Douglas Walton as Albert Mondego, Paul Irving as Napoleon, Juliette Compton as Clothilde, Holmes Herbert as Judge, Clarence Muse as Ali, Lionel Belmore as Prison Governor, William Farnum as Captain Leclere, Paul Fix as Angry Citizen, Ferdinand Munier as Louis XVIII, and Eric Wilton as Dantes Servan.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 3003

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