The Count of Monte Cristo is visually stunning, a throwback to classic adventure movies. Its spectacle is something to behold as it attempts to navigate Dumas’ knotty, complex story of love, revenge, and retribution, led by the magnetic performance of Pierre Niney as Edmond Dantès, otherwise known as
Like Charles Dickens, Alexandre Dumas brought us a world of epic yet intimate tales of love, revenge, adventure, family, secrets and lies in captivating serialised stories that would later become novels. His stories from The Man in the Iron Mask to The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo captured the public imagination in the 19th Century and became some of the most celebrated works of fiction worldwide.
Alexandre Dumas was of Haitian descent; his mother was an enslaved woman in Saint-Domingue, and his father was a Haitian soldier who would be the first black man to reach the rank of general in the French army. However, his father’s celebrated position would not last, and following a disagreement with Napoleon, he was imprisoned for two years and died shortly after. Unlike his father, Alexandre would follow a literary path, not a military one, and, among his novels, there are elements of The Count of Monte Cristo that may well be personal to his life, his family, and the treatment of his father. It is a story of slavery, revenge, poverty and wealth: a tale of identities hidden and forged through suffering, false imprisonment and retribution.
The Count of Monte Cristo has been adapted for film several times, from the 1954 version starring Jean Marais to the 2002 adaptation starring Jim Caviezel. Each has had its strengths, and each has struggled to fully embrace the 1312 pages of Dumas’ sweeping novel. Now, Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte, who shared writing credits on the lavish The Three Musketeers Part I and II, have come together to bring Dumas’ story to life in an epic three-hour production.
The Count of Monte Cristo is visually stunning, a throwback to classic adventure movies. Its spectacle is something to behold as it attempts to navigate Dumas’ knotty, complex story of love, revenge, and retribution, led by the magnetic performance of Pierre Niney as Edmond Dantès, otherwise known as The Count of Monte Cristo. However, even a three-hour runtime somewhat limits this dutiful adaptation in its embrace of some elements of Dumas’ novel. Although it skips over some aspects of the story, Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte’s adaptation is an epic, sweeping, and beautiful slice of cinema that deserves much praise for its artistry and conviction.
With a stellar ensemble cast featuring Anaïs Demoustier, Anamaria Vartolomei, Laurent Lafitte, Vassili Schneider, Patrick Mille and Julien De Saint Jean, to name just a few, The Count of Monte Cristo is like a fine French wine you decant and then slowly savour over three hours. There is no doubt that Hollywood has a lot to learn from the flair of Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte in breathing new life into literary classics that belong on the big screen. It’s a masterful adaptation, in my opinion, the best yet. The Count of Monte Cristo may be epic, and some would say bum-numbing, in its runtime, but it utilises every minute to its advantage, pulling you into its hauntingly beautiful tale of injustice, jealousy, revenge, and obsession. The Count of Monte Cristo is modern French cinema at its most spectacular, adventurous, and bold.
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