The Three Musketeers

The 1948 "Three Musketeers" is big time, Golden Age Hollywood filmmaking at its best. With big stars, lavish costumes, great sets, and lots of practical stuntwork, this Technicolor gem is as much fun today as it was the day it first screened.

Gene Kelly stars as D'Artagnan in this adaptation, and it's a terrific casting choice. Since filmed swordplay is basically dancing, putting an accomplished dancer in the role allows the fight choreographer to have some fun with his sequences. Kelly leaps, flips, thrusts, and parries with aplomb, convincing us that he is a hell of a swordsman. Combine this with his everyman attitude, and we believe in him as a rube just in from the country. His new comrades (Van Heflin, Gig Young, and Robert Coote) appear to be having a wonderful time, lending the proceedings precisely the devil-may-care attitude they need to capture Dumas's tone.

But you can't have heroes without villains. With Lana Turner as the Lady De Winter and Vincent Price as Cardinal Richelieu, our heroes are up against the very best. It's a pleasure to watch them all do their work.

It doesn't end there, however. Check out the undercard: June Allyson as Constance, Angela Lansbury as Queen Anne, Frank Morgan as King Louis the XIII, and Keenan Wynn as Planchett. Was there anyone sitting in the MGM cafeteria who didn't get roped into this thing?

All those names aren't enough for you, eh? Well, you can always enjoy the pretty pictures. MGM's costumers put some velvet wholesaler's kid through college with this one, with one lavish getup after another. It's wonderful, in that Golden Age way. Similarly, its set designers went to the trouble of getting every little detail just right, even if the location worked screamed "California." (An aside: the Musketeers are riding down a beach along the English Channel. Observed my 8-yr-old, "Hey, isn't that the beach from 'Planet of the Apes'?" That's my boy!)

But the fight scenes are what really sell this movie. I love practical stuntwork, and "The Three Musketeers" features some impressive stunts. You have the standard jumping on and off of horses, which we're used to, by now. But there are a number of multilevel falls that look challenging and authentic, and the swordplay is uniformly terrific.

In other words, the 1948 "The Three Musketeers" is great fun. Thanks again, TCM, for another wonderful presentation.

Point Blank

POINT BLANK is such a guy movie, they soaked the film stock in testosterone before putting it in the camera. Then they punched the lens a couple of times, just to toughen it up. This is a movie about money, broads, guns, cars, respect, and power: the source material for Mel Gibson’s PAYBACK, but with twice the grit. What a picture.

On the off chance that you’ve never before encountered either PAYBACK or POINT BLANK, here’s the setup: Lee Marvin’s been double-crossed and left for dead by a, erm, business associate who uses the money from a grab-and-go to buy his way in to the local mob. Marvin wants his money back, and there’s your movie. But this isn’t just a Bronsonesque revenge thriller; that’d be pedestrian. It’s a full-on neo-noir picture featuring femmes fatale, double- and triple- crosses, and shadowy figures who’d never waste their time telling you it’s Chinatown – buy a map, you pansy.

John Boorman directed POINT BLANK as only his second feature, but you wouldn't know it. The movie feels like the work of an old pro, and Boorman's crisp, no-nonsense direction keeps things stripped down to their basics, letting the players shine and the story move. And those players do shine. Lee Marvin had always cultivated the persona of a man who eats steel and shits bullets, and he puts that persona to excellent use here. When he tells a man, “I’m going to kill you,” we believe it - and we thank God that he isn’t coming after us, too. Angie Dickinson, who plays a woman straight out of a Dashiell Hammet novel, hits all the right notes: smooth and harsh, seductive and dangerous. She's perfect: pure movie magic in, well, nothing at all. And the villains - don't get me started.

In fact, everything about this movie is great. Even the print on this particular edition is perfect. It looks and sounds crisp, and it has every earmark of a painstaking restoration. Not only is POINT BLACK fun to watch, it’s beautiful, too. Yep, in your face and unblinking, POINT BLANK is one of the best guy movies out there. Enjoy.