The Count of Monte Cristo (2024)

Alexandre Dumas Makes an Epic Cinematic Return with The Count of Monte Cristo

It is possible that the timeless works of 19th-century literary titan Alexandre Dumas have been adapted to the stage and screen more than any other author save maybe William Shakespeare (but I’ll leave it someone else to do the tabulating). According to some quick research on my part (I went and looked at Wikipedia), his stories have been translated into over 100 languages and inspired over 200 motion pictures.

The Count of Monte Cristo (first published as a serial between 1844 and 1846), has been adapted for film and television over 50 times all on its own. Some of the more notable of these cinematic incarnations include a 1922 silent version with John Gilbert as wrongly incarcerated swashbuckling hero Edmond Dantès, a 1934 take starring Robert Donat, a two-part 1943 French version directed by Robert Vernay, a 1975 TV movie-of-the-week with Richard Chamberlain, and a rip-roaring (if highly streamlined) 2002 Disney edition (via their Touchstone Pictures brand) directed by Kevin Reynolds and starring Jim Caviezel and Guy Pearce.

Now comes a bold and brash retelling of the story courtesy of French filmmakers Alexandre de La Patellière and Matthieu Delaporte (What’s in a Name?). In some ways faithful to Dumas to a fault, in others a brazen rewrite and streamlining of some of the author’s most convoluted — and noticeably tragic — subplots, the end result is nothing short of flabbergasting. This is the type of lavish, unabashedly romantic historical epic auteurs like Jean-Paul Rappeneau (Cyrano de Bergerac, The Horseman on the Roof), Patrice Chéreau (Queen Margot), Jacques Rivette (Joan the Maid, La Belle Noiseuse) made all the international rage during the 1990s, de La Patellière and Delaporte following in their massive footsteps with confident enthusiasm.

The story is as familiar as ever. After two decades away, Edmond Dantès (Pierre Niney) returns to Paris disguised as the fabulously wealthy Count of Monte Cristo. Wrongfully imprisoned as a Napoleon loyalist — on his wedding day, no less — in the island prison Château d’If, not only does Dantès orchestrate an impossible escape, thanks to his friendship with fellow inmate Abbé Faria (Pierfrancesco Favino), he has trained his body and mind to serve a singular purpose: to clear his name and reveal the identities of the villains who did him wrong all those years prior.

For a three-hour retelling of the tale, de La Patellière and Delaporte are still forced to cram a great deal of shorthand into their otherwise immaculate script. They combine a few of Dumas’s characters into singular personas, alter the outcomes of a few of the romantic entanglements, and go out of their way to make Dantès even more of a Bruce Wayne/Batman-type figure than he’s ever been before. Signature events transpire as if they were short blasts of colorful exposition on the nightly news, and this includes the protagonist’s discovery of the treasure that will allow him to put his plans for revenge into action.

Yet they also keep much of the political and social machinations of the source material intact, including some of the more forward-thinking aspects involving sexuality. There’s zero ambiguity about flirtatious Eugénie Danglars’ (Marie Narbonne) lesbianism and the exiled daughter of the late Ali Pasha of Janina, Haydée (Anamaria Vartolomei), is every bit Dantès’ equal in this adaptation. The pair have also made the connection between powerful magistrate Gérard de Villefort (Laurent Lafitte) and Andréa (Julien De Saint Jean) viscerally personal in ways I did not anticipate and, considering the former is the illegitimate father of the latter (who tried to bury him alive as an infant), this is no small thing.

Then you have the dual love stories. One ends in a maddening tragedy before it even had the chance to begin. The other involves two potential adversaries who realize forgiveness and truth or far more powerful than hatred and retribution ever could be. Each of them is exquisite.

The core pieces of these two subplots are Anaïs Demoustier and Vassili Schneider, and both actors are sensational. Demoustier makes the most of her somewhat limited screentime, her emotional commitment to bringing Mercédès Herrera — the woman Dantès loved and lost, and who then went and marred the man most responsible for his imprisonment, Fernand de Morcef (Bastien Bouillon) — is nothing less than outstanding. Schneider is Albert de Morcef, the pair’s son, and where he isn’t much of a character in the source material, de La Patellière and Delaporte beef up his impact on the proceedings considerably, and the youngster is up to the challenge. His scenes with Vartolomei are particularly luminous.

However, it is Niney who makes the film essential. His determinedly multifaceted performance is a mesmerizing stunner. The winner of the César for Best Actor for 2014’s Yves Saint Laurent, and absolutely terrific in François Ozon’s 2017 spellbinder Frantz, I think his dashingly haunting turn as Dantès is his best work yet. His early joy at learning he will become the captain of his own ship and that the woman he loves will marry him is palpable, as is his latter despair as he angrily mumbles to himself while wandering in circles across the stone floor of his Château d’If cell. His otherworldly physicality is matched by his almost primal connection to this world and its various inhabitants, Niney leaping off the screen and right into the audience’s welcoming laps in the process.

Everything looks and sounds incredible, production designer Stéphane Taillasson, cinematographer Nicolas Bolduc, and costume designer Thierry Delettre are particularly worthy of praise. I also found the music composed by Jérôme Rebotier to be sweepingly rapturous, his passionately enveloping themes reminiscent of old school masters like Alfred Newman, Maurice Jarre, and Jerry Goldsmith while also having a thunderously modern intensity similar to the scores of Hans Zimmer, Hildur Guðnadóttir, or Tom Holkenborg.

While I never try to anticipate what my reaction to any film will be before I watch it, I can’t say I expected to be so fully enthralled and ultimately blown away by this latest adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. But I was. I walked away from de La Patellière and Delaporte’s take on the Dumas tale invigorated. Its intensity, its majesty, its larger-than-life virtuosity, all of that and more filled my heart with glee. Even its missteps had a vibrant electricity to them that held me magically spellbound. This is one of 2024’s best motion pictures.

Film Rating: 4 (out of 4)