Three Musketeers, The/The Four Musketeers: Two Films by Richard Lester (4K UHD Review)

• Reviewed by: Stephen Bjork
• Review Date: Jul 31, 2025
• Format: 4K Ultra HD
• 

Director

Richard Lester

Release Date(s)

1973/1974 (May 27, 2025)

Studio(s)

Film Trust S.A./Este Films/20th Century Fox (The Criterion Collection – Spine #1263)

• Film/Program Grade: B+
• Video Grade: A-
• Audio Grade: B+
• Extras Grade: A-

https://www.criterion.com/

Review

When the Salkinds—Michael, his son Alexander, and his grandson Ilya—decided to try to turn around their flagging fortunes with an adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’ 1844 novel The Three Musketeers, little did they know that they were going to end up changing film history. Yet they did just that, and in ways that they never could have anticipated, either—although frankly, they should have. While Michael may have been the one who actually started the family business as independent film producers, all three generations shared one key personality trait in common: they were a wee bit shady as businessmen (to put it delicately, which is probably more than they deserve). In choosing to adapt Dumas’ mammoth novel, they either bit off more than they could chew, or else they ended up doing exactly what they had planned all along in order to take advantage of the above-the-line talent. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves here, so stick a pin in that thought.

The Salkinds had just produced three films in a row, all of which had been failures at the box office: The Light at the Edge of the World, Kill! Kill! Kill! Kill!, and Bluebeard. They needed to turn the family business around, and turn it around quickly. So, they hit upon the idea of making an epic comedic adventure version of The Three Musketeers, and considered a variety of outlandish ideas like casting Danny Kaye, Jerry Lewis, and even The Beatles. Fortunately, wiser heads prevailed once they actually hired a director for the project.

The Salkinds had initially approached Tony Richardson, based on his success with Tom Jones, which had exactly the kind of comic tone that they were after. Yet Richardson didn’t quite see eye to eye with them, so they turned to the always reliable Richard Lester instead, who made the crucial suggestion of hiring George MacDonald Fraser to write the adaptation. Fraser had never penned a screenplay, but his Flashman novels had already demonstrated the perfect blend of adventure and humor. (Lester was a big fan, and a couple of years later, he ended up directing the only cinematic adaption of Fraser’s books to date: Royal Flash.) Fraser turned in a script that was remarkably faithful to the broad contours of the Dumas novel, preserving all of the primary characters and most of the important narrative details.

Of course, that also mean that it was going to be a lengthy film, so the Salkinds hired a cast and crew on the understanding that they were making a three-hour long roadshow production (even though roadshow films weren’t much of a thing anymore in 1973, which should have been a warning sign.) Fortunately, Lester was exactly the kind of director that the Salkinds needed in order to realize Fraser’s unwieldy script without creating budgetary issues. Lester worked quickly and efficiently, usually favoring multi-camera setups that allowed him to capture a single take from different angles, which provided more coverage for the edit without having to waste time changing setups. Despite a few challenges along the way, Lester exhibited his usual professionalism and brought the mammoth production in on time and on budget, and considering how much could have gone wrong with the extensive location shooting in Spain, that was no mean feat.

Yet while the Salkinds probably didn’t realize this at the time, Lester was also exactly the kind of director that their take on the story needed. While he had previously directed other films with historical settings like A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and How I Won the War, he wasn’t necessarily known for making period pieces at that point—he made films that captured the current period, yes, but previous periods, no. When the Salkinds hired Lester, he was primarily known as a director of light comedies (sadly, not enough people had seen his dark 1968 masterpiece Petulia), and the deft touch that he displayed was undoubtedly the main draw for The Three Musketeers. Yet before shooting had even commenced, he already demonstrated one of his greatest and most underappreciated gifts: a vivid attention to detail. Not necessarily to precise historical details, although he did plenty of research on that, but more of an attention the textural details that were necessary to bring period pieces to vivid life.

While there’s plenty of opulence on display in Lester’s take on The Three Musketeers, from the lavish costumes by Yvonne Blake to the splendor of Brian Eatwell’s sets, Lester was far more interested in the mundane details of 17th century life, no matter how earthy or grotesque that they may be. Instead of blood, sweat, and tears, he provided mud, sweat, and shit. There’s an obvious class imbalance in The Three Musketeers, so Lester offset the ostentatious displays of wealth by the ruling classes with his vision for the grimy existence of the commoners. It’s a look that had a profound influence on Monty Python and the Holy Grail as well as Terry Gilliam’s follow-up solo feature Jabberwocky. (And in return, Lester ended up doubling down on the mud and shit for Royal Flash and Robin and Marian.) Lester proved conclusively that a film doesn’t have to be historically accurate in order to feel accurate. His version of The Three Musketeers may not be perfectly true to all the minutiae of the real 17th century France, but it still lives and breathes that period in a way that few other films have.

Of course, none of that would have mattered without the right actors to help bring these familiar characters to life, and after flirting with disaster, the Salkinds ended up striking gold in that regard. Michael York brought the right balance of youthful inexperience and genuine sincerity to the role of d’Artagnan, while Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain couldn’t possibly have been more perfectly cast as Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. On the other side of the equation, Charlton Heston and Faye Dunaway threw themselves into the villainous roles of Cardinal Richelieu and Milady de Winter with genuine relish. Christopher Lee supported them admirably as the Count de Rochefort (and he brought some necessary sword fighting experience into the equation, too). Rounding out the cast was Raquel Welch as Constance, Spike Milligan as her husband M. Bonacieux, Jean-Pierre Cassel as King Louis the XIII (dubbed by Richard Briers!), Geraldine Chaplin as Queen Anne, Simon Ward as the Duke of Buckingham, Joss Ackland as d’Artagnan’s father, and Lester regular Roy Kinnear as d’Artagnan’s bumbling but faithful servant Planchet. (Sybil Danning also has a small role as Eugenie.)

Of course, just because the Salkinds hired the right cast doesn’t mean that they treated them right, and that fact ended up having long-term consequences. While they had always maintained that they intended to make a single epic film out of Dumas’ book, that changed during post-production when they announced that they would end up splitting the story into two separate films: The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers, both of which would be released a year apart from each other. To be fair, they had set an unrealistic release date that resulted in an impossibly short post-production period, and the full film was never going to be finished in time.

To be realistic, however, while it’s certainly possible that the Salkinds didn’t grasp that fact until it was too late, given their own histories as businessmen, it’s equally possible that they always intended to make two films but didn’t tell anyone in order to save a buck by only paying the above-the-line talent for a single film. Needless to say, that resulted in outrage from the cast and threats of lawsuits, with the Salkinds eventually paying them a pittance in compensation. It also resulted in the Screen Actors Guild requiring that future contracts stipulated up front exactly how many films were being produced, something that became known as “the Salkind clause.” While The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers were both substantial hits and did help turning around the family fortunes, the Salkinds also made a name for themselves in a way that wasn’t quite what they had in mind.

Yet regardless of their motivations, splitting the story into two films was the right decision. The Dumas novel is somewhat picaresque, and Fraser’s script reproduced the episodic nature of the story faithfully. Yes, there’s an overarching narrative, but it’s always secondary to the individual set pieces. At three-and-a-half hours, all of that would have felt a little redundant and unfocused. In two separate 105 and 108-minute bites, it feels just right. Plus, for all of the slapstick humor that Lester added to these swashbuckling adventures, Fraser also retained the dark turn that Dumas’ story takes toward the end. That might have been a bit much after three hours of non-stop fun. The tonal shift in The Four Musketeers can still be a bit jarring, but it works better after having already had an unambiguously triumphant ending in The Three Musketeers. Instead of being a complete downer, it’s more of a bittersweet conclusion for the entire saga. Making two films resulted in a far more satisfying experience as a whole.

Fortunately, the Salkinds learned from their experiences with The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers and lived happily ever after. Ha ha ha, just kidding. Paging Richard Donner, Richard Lester, and the even more torturous saga of making Superman and Superman II...

Cinematographer David Watkin shot The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers on 35mm film using Panavision Panaflex cameras with spherical lenses, framed at 1.85:1 for their theatrical releases. These versions use the recent digital restorations that were performed by StudioCanal, based on 4K scans of the original camera negatives, graded for High Dynamic Range in both Dolby Vision and HDR10 (and just like with StudioCanal’s releases, they’re encoded on BD-100s). Optical work like the opening title sequences were scanned from dupe elements instead, so they naturally look a bit rougher than the surrounding OCN material. That’s really noticeable during the multiple exposures in the titles for The Three Musketeers, which suffers from some density fluctuations in addition to the expected softness.

Aside from a few brief opticals in the rest of the films and the occasional diffusion filter, everything else looks crisp and clear. Watkin used 100ASA Eastman 5254 stock, which wasn’t necessarily fine-grained, but he used the fastest lenses that he could and kept the aperture wide open in order to expose a dense negative. As a result, the grain in both Musketeers is never obtrusive. StudioCanal resisted the temptation to use HDR to dial up the colors in both films, and while there’s still a myriad of fine shadings on display in Yvonne Blake’s extravagant costumes and Brian Eatwell’s colorful production design, they’re never oversaturated—the colors are relatively muted even when they’re bright, if that makes sense. The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers always look like film in these 4K presentations, never like video, and that’s exactly as it should be. (As a side note, the missing day-for-night filters from StudioCanal’s own 4K release of The Three Musketeers has been corrected here, and the scene now looks properly dark and stormy.)

Audio for both films is offered in English 1.0 mono LPCM, with optional English SDH subtitles. For some reason, the audio on the previous UHD and Blu-ray releases was pitched up slightly, but that’s finally been corrected in this version. It’s a little thing that probably wouldn’t be noticeable without comparing them side-by-side, but Criterion still deserves props for fixing the issue. In all other respects, it’s a clean track, and while the high end may not have quite as much sparkle as it could, the respective scores by Michel Legrand and Lalo Schifrin still retain their essential character. While the dialogue is clear, the ADR stands out as much as it ever has, but that’s just how the films were recorded and mixed (Lester’s multi-camera shooting methodology didn’t lend itself to clean production audio).

The Criterion 4K Ultra HD release of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers is a four-disc set that includes each film on a separate UHD, as well as two separate Blu-rays with 1080p copies of each film, all of them in a double-thickness Amaray case There’s also a 12-page foldout booklet with an essay by Stephanie Zacharek. There are no extras on either of the UHDs, but the following extras are on the Blu-rays only:

DISC THREE: BD (THE THREE MUSKETEERS)

• The Saga of the Musketeers, Part One (Upscaled SD – 23:03)
• Two for One: Pre-Production (HD – 29:54)
• Two for One: Principal Photography (HD – 43:03)
• The Making of The Three Musketeers (HD – 6:50)
• The Three Musketeers Trailer (HD – 3:01)

DISC FOUR: BD (THE FOUR MUSKETEERS)

• The Saga of the Musketeers, Part Two (Upscaled SD – 24:53)
• Two for One: Principal Photography (Part Two) (HD – 42:07)
• Two for One: Post-Production (HD – 26:06)
• The Four Musketeers Trailer (HD – 2:51)

The Saga of the Musketeers is a two-part documentary that was produced and directed by David Gregory for the 2003 Anchor Bay DVD release of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers. It includes interviews with Ilya Salkind, Michael York, Frank Finlay, Charlton Heston, Raquel Welch, Christopher Lee, production executive Pierre Spengler, and production designer Brian Eatwell. Part One covers the origins of the project; the casting process; and working with Richard Lester. Part Two covers the action scenes, stunts, and injuries; working with Oliver Reed; and the decision to split the project into two films for its successful theatrical release. There are plenty of juicy stories here about shooting in Franco’s Spain (where you could go anywhere as long as bribes were applied in the right places), as well as the challenges of dealing with Reed’s off-screen behavior and Spike Milligan’s on-screen antics. It also openly presents the conflicting perspectives of the actors and Salkind regarding the split into two films (unsurprisingly, Salkind is pretty cagey in his responses to questions about it).

Two for One is a new four-part retrospective look at The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers by critic David Cairns, blending his own thoughts with those of various audio-only interview subjects like Richard Lester, David Watkin, Pierre Spengler, script supervisor Ann Skinner, assistant editors Peter Boyle & Richard Hymns, assistant sound editor Peter Hollywood, and music editor Peter Watson. Cairns also reads quotations from print interviews with other cast and crew members.

Pre-Production focuses on the origins of the project, from the development of the script to financing, casting and location scouting. It also explores the research that was done to provide the distinctive period details in the films. Principal Photography covers the shoot in Spain, breaking down many of the primary location and describing what was shot there. It also explains how the fight scenes were choreographed and shot. Principal Photography (Part Two) continues in the same vein, this time including some of the sequences that were shot on stage, as well as some of the wilder locations like the fake “frozen” lake that was actually shot in 104° weather. Interestingly enough, while The Saga of the Musketeers reports some strife on the set between Raquel Welch and the rest of the cast, Cairns ends up debunking most of that. Finally, Post-Production explores the editorial process and the sound mixing. It also covers the Salkinds’ secret decision to split the project into two films, the threats of lawsuits over that fact, and the reasons why Michel Legrand didn’t return for the second film.

Two for One is a wonderful history of the making of both films, but if there’s one criticism, it’s that Cairns doesn’t always provide onscreen text to identify who is speaking in the audio clips that he plays (he does usually put up a picture of the individual, but it’s still easy to get lost sometimes). That’s a very minor complaint, though, as this is a first-rate documentary, and an excellent companion piece to David Gregory’s The Saga of the Musketeers.

The Making of The Three Musketeers is a vintage promotional film that was shot in 1973 during the making of the films. It offers some behind-the-scenes footage and on-set interviews with Richard Lester, Charlton Heston, Michael York, Raquel Welch, Richard Chamberlain, and property manager Eddie Fowlie. (Most of the behind-the-scenes footage in The Saga of the Musketeers and Two for One was derived from this featurette).

While Criterion’s set doesn’t include Lester’s belated (and troubled) sequel The Return of the Musketeers since it’s probably still licensed to Kino Lorber in North America, the only extra of any significance that’s missing here is the 2023 interview with Neil Sinyard that was on various StudioCanal releases. Yet it’s far, far outweighed by the new Two for One documentary. I’ve always said that one good making-of documentary is worth its weight in static interviews, and Criterion’s set has not one, but two (okay, six if you want to count each part individually). Plus, the picture quality seems on a part with StudioCanal’s 4K releases, the missing day-for-night filter has been fixed, and the audio has been corrected. As a result, Criterion’s UHD version of The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers has the definite edge. It’s a fantastic release of a fascinating saga.

- Stephen Bjork

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