Few books have been so widely adapted to films
as this masterpiece of cloak and dagger, doubtless the most famous from Dumas,
apart from The count of Montecristo, which will probably rank second in his
repertoire.
What the average person has got in mind is the
popular history revisited over and over again in more than 30 or 40 films. Both
original novels –for The three musketeers is only the first and best-known part
of a whole trilogy– and subsequent film versions have in common the body of the
plot, although it is only the first big adventure of D’Artagnan –that is, the
one of Buckinghman’s diamond studs delivery– which persistently appears movie
after movie.
An aspect rarely neglected in the film versions
that reflects well the feeling of displacement is the arrival of a provincial
D’Artganan at the city of Paris, yet a rushing metropoli up to that epoch,
being this foreigner’s solitude a sensation overrepeated a thousand times here
and there. But the aparent naivety of the young would-be musketter is not so
real in the novel, for the Gascon is brave and resolute and, although not
familiar to the customs of the Court, determined in his matters and soon
affairs of other kind.
Much of the plot is ruled through luck and
coincidence, being this way sometimes difficult to believe, but in general
facts are fisible and, as we will know much later, logical under the eyes of
the Big Brother of the era, Monsieur Cardinal Richelieu, the baddie behind the
scenes. And the ending of the book seems solved sort of hastily. 
Milady
Clarick’s perfidy has no limits, we all know that, but we don’t need five
chapters to get convinced of that, nor did por Felton, the integral puritan
corrupted by her beauty and manipulation into assassinating the Duke of
Buckinham and freeing her at the same blow.
Milady
Clarick’s perfidy has no limits, we all know that, but we don’t need five
chapters to get convinced of that, nor did por Felton, the integral puritan
corrupted by her beauty and manipulation into assassinating the Duke of
Buckinham and freeing her at the same blow.
And the execution of the Countess de la Fere, aka Milady, whereas
essential to the plot, has nothinh heroic on it so it’s frequently excluded in
filmed versions. As for the men of Meung, his apparitions are crucial and very
mysterious, but the long-awaited duel with the main character actually necer
takes place in the novel, and is only referred to in the epilogue.
The book hooks you and ask for more pages to
devour, but I don’t think I will take the second part Twenty years later. For
now I have had enough of cloak and dagger stuff. Maybe in 2033.
