This is the film that modern film-makers should watch when contemplating the adaptation of a famous novel. By now, we're used to the convention of prefixing a film with the novel's author's name ("Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," "Bram Stoker's Dracula," "Alexandre Dumas' The Count of Monte Cristo) which serves as a dire warning that the story will bear no resemblance at all to the original.
As Kurosawa would later demonstrate in "The Bad Sleep Well," if you're not going to film the novel as is, don't do it halfway-- make something new from the story. That's what we have here, with an excellent version of Dumas' Monte Cristo.
An escaped prisoner, the falsely convicted Paul Lavond, wreaks his terrible revenge on those who conspired against him, unites two young lovers, bids his lost love goodbye, all with the aid of amazing secret science.
While Edmond Dantes became a master of alchemy and poisons, Lavond masters an alchemy of a different sort, removing and reducing one enemy after another. Lavond needs no Abbe' to lead him to a source of infinite wealth-- Lavond uses his enemies' own money, which they had embezzled from him and his bank, to destroy them.
And just as Dantes was a master of disguise, playing a variety of roles while being drawn irresistibly toward those he once loved, so Lavond puts on an amazing disguise to bring love and reconciliation to his loved ones, and a terrible revenge to those who destroyed his life.
O'Sullivan is delightful as always, by turns darling, petulant, defiant, and vulnerable; her final reunion, however brief, with her lost, still unrecognized, father is a wonderful climax to this film.
A wonderful story, beautifully told. The effects, delightful though they are, are the least amazing thing in this film. Browning deserves remembrance and homage for reminding us that films need a strong story _first_, and such effects as are convenient may come later, if at all.
As Kurosawa would later demonstrate in "The Bad Sleep Well," if you're not going to film the novel as is, don't do it halfway-- make something new from the story. That's what we have here, with an excellent version of Dumas' Monte Cristo.
An escaped prisoner, the falsely convicted Paul Lavond, wreaks his terrible revenge on those who conspired against him, unites two young lovers, bids his lost love goodbye, all with the aid of amazing secret science.
While Edmond Dantes became a master of alchemy and poisons, Lavond masters an alchemy of a different sort, removing and reducing one enemy after another. Lavond needs no Abbe' to lead him to a source of infinite wealth-- Lavond uses his enemies' own money, which they had embezzled from him and his bank, to destroy them.
And just as Dantes was a master of disguise, playing a variety of roles while being drawn irresistibly toward those he once loved, so Lavond puts on an amazing disguise to bring love and reconciliation to his loved ones, and a terrible revenge to those who destroyed his life.
O'Sullivan is delightful as always, by turns darling, petulant, defiant, and vulnerable; her final reunion, however brief, with her lost, still unrecognized, father is a wonderful climax to this film.
A wonderful story, beautifully told. The effects, delightful though they are, are the least amazing thing in this film. Browning deserves remembrance and homage for reminding us that films need a strong story _first_, and such effects as are convenient may come later, if at all.