The Count of Monte Cristo: Pierre Niney imperial as an angel of vengeance (review)

The Count of Monte Cristo: Pierre Niney imperial as an angel of vengeance (review)

Modern, lively and crossing all genres, this Monte-Cristo is a success.

With more than 9 million admissions in French cinemas, The Count of Monte Cristo has well deserved its place in the Canal + blockbuster evening! Here is our enthusiastic review, interspersed with interviews with his entire team.

“We’re living a waking dream!” The directors of Monte Cristo decipher the success of the film

After the Three Musketeers (parts 1 and 2), here is the second stone of the Dumas Cinematique Universe. The Count of Monte Cristo. It was obvious. This novel by Dumas is one of the great mythological stories of our literature. He is not the first to tell the story of revenge, but he is the first to give it a universal dimension. Mythical. Legendary. We know the story, so let’s be brief. Edmond Dantes is a good young man in all respects until the rotten people from the July Monarchy steal everything from him: his money, his bride, his hopes. His life. Prison box. Then resurrection. Helped by an improbable fortune, he changes his identity, and devotes himself only to his revenge. His reprisals will overthrow everything, right down to the pillars of society: financial power, judicial power and military power.

For decades, this novel has obsessed cinema. The problem is simple: how to avoid making it one of these elaborate liners, stuck between cultural added value and national heritage. It’s probably enough to go back to the book. We know Dumas’s sentence: “Start with interest instead of starting with boredom, start with action instead of starting with preparation.”. Dumas, it’s Ford, it’s Walsh, it’s Huston… Instinct (the guts). The breath. Vitality. Narrative liveliness and speed. Everything is there, ready to use. Better in fact. Without knowing it, his Monte Cristo invented the superhero. Fortune, masks, illusion and supervillains: Dantes / Cristo is Wayne / Batman, a guy traumatized by an injustice who decides to restore order by totally illegal means (even fascistic?).

A pure cinema fantasy therefore. Good news: Delaporte and De la Patellière obviously had all this in mind when they embarked on the adventure. Their film, very faithful to the text and its language, perfectly embraces the ups and downs of the story. His madness, his outrageous grandeur. Everything is said from the opening. In a truly epic sequence, in the middle of a storm, a sailor saves a woman’s life. There is excitement (the film goes on and on all the time), exoticism and thriller. But above all there is this strong idea: here, it is the character who drive the movie. A bit like the good Rappeneaus (of whom we think a lot), this Monte Cristo has only one engine: movement. The one from Cristo who wants his revenge.

Excluded – Pierre Niney: “I prefer Monte Cristo to all these superheroes”

Obviously, what immediately impresses is Pierre Niney. Crazy elegant and fluid. His gestures and words are precise, deadly. His Dantes is naive and sunny, but he plunges his Monte Cristo into intoxicating abysses of darkness. The embodiment of this duality is stunning. Great idea again: the hero here is not an actor who invents a new identity (traditional reading of the character), he is a creator of false pretenses, a builder of settings in which he will trap his prey. He is a director who deceives his people and whose play will be played in three acts. Mortals. This version allows the two directors to play with the viewer’s anticipation, to create suspense. By transforming their character in this way, they write the scenario of a revenge of which he will remain the master.

Helped by a breathtaking cast, this version of the book is a success. Lively, intelligent and superbly embodied.

Trailer:

Pierre Niney tells us about his transformation into the Count of Monte Cristo (video)

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