Linbeymusol Wonderful character development!

Sexylocher Masterful Movie

Ezmae Chang This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Skyler Great movie. Not sure what people expected but I found it highly entertaining.

pyrocitor Okay - hands up if you were led here by V for Vendetta. Be honest.But hey - that's very okay. Suffice to say that 1934's crack at Alexandre Dumas' timeless tale of treachery and revenge is a robust and spirited enough adaptation to get your blood pumping as much as everyone's favourite alliterative rollicking revolutionary. The script, while necessarily abbreviated, holds up as one of the more faithful Dumas adaptations as a procedural account of Dantes' methodical vengeful takedown of his betrayers at least until the grand departure of its romantic, very 1930s-populist ending (which is too sweet to excessively fault). Still, the pace is lively and the action plugs along at a compelling jaunt. If the screenplay sometimes dallies with segments spelling out the narrative's themes a bit thickly, it more than compensates with its share of excellent barbed dialogue zingers along the way. Those more familiar with the 2002 Jim Caviezel remake than Dumas' novel might take some adjusting to the pace here, as Dantes' dual with Mondego (restructured as principle antagonist in the remake) is dispensed with fairly early and unceremoniously. Instead, we get a climactic trial sequence (another complete departure from the text), giving Donat a chance to do his best heroic shouting, which feels adequately conclusive in its stead. Being a product of its time, this Count of Monte Cristo's staging restrictions and performance conventions may make it a flatter and calmer rendition than the explosive catharsis our righteous indignation at Dantes' plight might expect or befit (the scenes of Dantes' captivity in the Château D'If in particular feel jarringly civil, compared to the gruelling, inhumane torment Dumas painted). This certainly isn't helped by the somewhat film's cheap, anachronistic costumes, and an overenthusiastic musical soundtrack which soars in to punctuate key emotional moments with such ferocity that it tends to quash rather than heighten their resonance. Still, the film's production values are excellent, juxtaposing some key location footage (Dantes' daring underwater prison escape is perfectly chilly and claustrophobic) with some stellar studio sets - Abbe Faria's cell has the austere artistry of a stained glass window, and Dantes' treasure horde discovery is rousing adventure stuff. Robert Donat is excellent as the titular rogue-hero. He drives Dantes' plunge from chirpy sailor to apoplectically bitter prisoner to debonair aristocrat clouded by acidic ruthlessness with grace and a piercing insistence, handling Dantes' nuances much more deftly than his on-the-nose dialogue. Elissa Landi is also terrific, sliding from warm and giddy to caustic and cautious as his warped love Mercedes, and her bold decision to play up Mercedes' grim detachment rather than mugging for soft focus close-ups throughout the film's latter half plays as appealingly emotionally truthful. Sidney Blackmer and Louis Calhern are appropriately seedy, but a bit too prissy and standoffish to make much of an impact as the villainous Mondego and De Villefort; however, Raymond Walburn is a colourfully boorish, charismatic highlight as greedy, corrupt banker Danglars. Finally, character actor O.P. Reggie is warm slyness personified as the cheekily inspirational Abbe Faria, Dantes' friend in captivity. Released the year before Captain Blood, it's easy to see Monte Cristo settling into the 1930s resurgence of seafaring adventure films. Director Rowland V. Lee feels most at home with Dantes' adventures at sea and crisply energetic sword fights than the talkier melodramatic romantic angst and political intrigue, which are done suitably, but with less pizazz. As such, 1934's Count of Monte Cristo remains a sturdy and heartily enjoyable Dumas adaptation, and one of the more bombastic and abiding costume dramas of Classical Hollywood.-8/10

ev_srikrishna Count of Monte Cristo, a splendid novel by Alexander Dumas, touching every person, every feeling, every character and every aspect of life. Hope and Despair being comparable to Light and Darkness are the main theme of the novel. It tells us not to despair in adversity but to hope for the best yet to come. It also ends up with a note that when one attains all the success in the life, he should not forget the Supreme, controlling all of us. One may think of everything is under his power. But, such a feeling is far from truth.One can compare the theme of the novel, with the wording of Lord Krishna in Bhagavadgita. Those words promulgate that, doing the activity cast upon you, is your duty. The result is in someone else's hands, for which you should not bother.Every character in the novel is specifically chosen to reflect one or more features of humankind. All the facets of human life, such as, greediness, jealousy, kindness, love, affection, courage, selfishness, misery, poverty, humbleness, integrity, intelligence, etc., are depicted in the most possible lucid manner.The ups and downs of the life, are the focal issue of the novel. A person may suddenly drop down to the earth, even without fault of his own. An innocent person can be made to suffer for something, he never committed. A person can crush the life of another human being, for the sake of his own growth and security. A person can also sacrifice and put his life in danger, for somebody.The process, thinking and evolution of a person, who was suddenly made to suffer, without fault of his is illustrated in detail. The conversion of Edmond Dante in to Count of Monte Cristo, is by no means a simple process. The agony and the misery of a person, resulted in such a conversion.The rigors of jail life are portrayed in a perfect manner. The loneliness of jail life will crush a man's belief in his own physical and physiological strengths. It will force him to despair. Anger will overcome one's rationality. One will think of all the evil to come to all those he hates or he believes to be the cause of his misery. In such a process, he loses balance and faith in God. One would think of committing suicide, losing interest in life.However, even a small or faint hope of freedom, which is so dear to such a person, would rejuvenate all his energies to focus and he comes back into life. All the energy, ability and ingenuity is focused and centralized when it comes to aspect of attaining freedom.The novel ultimately drives the reader to accept the fact that, forgiveness is supreme to punishment. As the Christ prays to His Holy Father, ' Forgive Father, for they know not what they do ' , one should ultimately come to such conviction that, hatred results in more hatred and it will end in nowhere. One should read the novel from beginning to the end, without interruption or diversion. It is not a material to have a look at and forget. A person's character is to be built upon by studying the nature and life of each person in the novel.The essence of life, viz., equilibrium in all phases of life is to be learned. One cannot fall in cases of adversity. One should not forget the Supreme, in cases of prosperity. Life of oneself or another is not in one's hands. The Supreme, controls the lives of humankind, without any bias, without any prejudice, without any compassion or without any injustice. A person should try to inculcate such abilities by making a humble effort keeping the Supreme as the model. However, in such a process one should not lose ground to put himself in place of the Supreme.As the writer himself puts, most appropriately at the end of the novel, there is hope. Only one should be able to believe in it. And, most importantly, one should be able to wait till such hope is realized.

Igenlode Wordsmith The good news is that this turns out to be, as I hoped it might, my "long-lost Monte Cristo" -- the film I once caught the end of, thanks to the BBC, on holiday twenty years ago, and have never been able to find again since. The bad news is that, alas, the part I missed then isn't actually nearly so good as the remainder...The Reliance Pictures production of "Count of Monte Cristo" is a queer mixture of success and banality; of studio polish and poverty-row shortcuts; of efficient editing and crass musical indirection; of genuine emotional power and thumping cliché; of briskly-moving adaptation and bizarre moments of staging (revolving witness-box, anybody?) A literal version of Dumas it is not -- one would not expect it from any film spectacular of this period -- but many of the changes made are entertaining or effective, and the happy ending provided works at least as well as Dumas' rather unsatisfactory version. The meandering original is reduced to a bare two hours' running time by dint of concise scripting and cutting out most of the sub-plots involving the de Villefort and Morrel families, an attempt which is by and large successful. It works less well at the beginning, where there are simply too many unidentified characters popping up and scheming without any of them really being established properly, particularly as Morrel and de Villefort's father are then pruned from the plot, never to appear again. And de Villefort's downfall as presented here really doesn't work for me: lacking the damning evidence of infanticide, the script doesn't seem to come up with any terribly convincing alternative to turn the tables on the prosecutor. On the other hand, introduced material such as Mercedes' (completely uncanonical) aristocratic snob of a mother, or the tableaux in praise of Fernand at which Haydee accuses him, works very well.Ironically -- given the Hollywood studio's doubts as to their unknown English import's ability to pull off anything but a fresh-faced lead -- Robert Donat shines mainly in the latter half of the picture as the older, embittered and sophisticated Monte Cristo. His guileless Dantes makes little impression, for it could be any generic juvenile lead role -- the character as written is not so much naive as uninteresting. Donat fares better where he can give a sense of some hidden depths to the part, and his best features are his strong eyes and brows rather than his cheery grin. As Monte Cristo, however, he is both debonair and dangerous, an intelligent schemer with a dry wit at his enemies' unknowing expense, and he is supported ably by both Douglas Walton as the young Albert and Elissa Landi as Mercedes.It was Miss Landi's performance with which I was truly impressed here; she ages with utter conviction from the wilful girl to the resolute mother, and lends her scenes opposite Donat the real impact that is lacking from so much of the film. In a plot that has been re-angled to concentrate far more closely on the Edmond/Mercedes relationship, her role is vital, and her character provides most of the emotional engagement of the story, from light-hearted charm to heartbreak (Valentine de Villefort, here paired off with Albert, is a mere cypher in comparison).The film starts off in outright formulaic guise, from Napoleon's appearance (in full uniform and cocked hat, with his hand duly thrust in his breast 'like that') to the standard storm-at-sea sequence with water poured across the screen. It continues to suffer from crude musical underlining more or less throughout, almost sabotaging for example Donat's scene with the dying Abbe Faria, which he otherwise pulls off with conviction, while certain characters, such as Morrel and the mute Nubian Ali, appear to have been retained despite the loss of the plot elements which actually involved them (possibly as a result of cuts to the script later in filming?) Overall, however, the adaptation does a pretty good job of conveying information quickly and concisely -- Albert's entire Italian adventure is dealt with effectively in a matter of a few minutes with none of the essentials lost, and Haydee's brief role introduced without any seeming contrivance. It borrows little in practice from Dumas' wordy original save the bare outlines of its plot, and sometimes not even those; but as an initially uninspired Hollywood screen adaptation it improves considerably as it goes on. Literary fidelity isn't everything, and if it were not let down by certain sections I would have rated it considerably higher; alas, this production remains an odd mixture of the powerful and the pedestrian.

bkoganbing As a story The Count of Monte Cristo still has great power. Case in point, the movie Sleepers where four young men from Hell's Kitchen were sexually abused in a reform school they were sentenced to. They found in the Alexandre Dumas novel a man they could understand very easily given their street code. Edmund Dantes code of street justice translates very easily to just about every culture in the world, be it the mean streets of New York or the post Napoleonic Era in France.Robert Donat is Edmund Dantes an ordinary seaman who carries a letter from Elba about Napoleon Bonaparte's imminent return to France in 1815. Now he doesn't know he's carrying the letter, it was given to him by his dying captain. Three men who have their own reasons not to see the truth come out imprison Donat without trial in an island prison off Marseilles. After years there Donat effects his escape and plans to wreak vengeance on them, but not just to kill them, to expose them because all three have risen to importance in France. He's the Count of Monte Cristo now, having been bequeathed a hidden treasure by another inmate.The kids from Sleepers as well millions of others have learned what Dumas tried to convey, that hot blooded revenge killing won't do. If you have to take vengeance make sure it is an extremely calculated series of moves.Monte Cristo is the perfect kind of role for the cerebral Robert Donat. Donat makes us believe his transformation from the young and hopeful Edmund Dantes to the calculating Monte Cristo. If it were not for the Oscar Donat received for Goodbye Mr. Chips this one would have been the signature role of his career.Also look for some good acting by Elissa Landi, Louis Calhern and especially Raymond Walburn in their parts. He's usually the jovial gladhanding type, often a knave, but never a villain as he is here. Not a Walburn you're used to.