D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers

D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers
Directed by	Georgi Yungvald-Khilkevich
Written by	Alexandre Dumas, père Mark Rozovsky
Starring	Mikhail Boyarsky Veniamin Smekhov Igor Starygin Valentin Smirnitsky
Music by	Maksim Dunayevsky
Cinematography	Aleksandr Polynnikov
Edited by	Tamara Prokopenko
Distributed by	Gosteleradio Odessa Film Studios
Release date	December 24, 1978
Running time	220 minutes (3 parts)
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Russian

D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers (Russian: д'Артаньян и три мушкетёра, D'Artanyan i tri mushketera) is a three-part musical miniseries produced in the Soviet Union and first aired in 1978. It is based on the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père.

The film stars Mikhail Boyarsky as D'Artagnan, Veniamin Smekhov as Athos, Igor Starygin as Aramis, Valentin Smirnitsky as Porthos, Margarita Terekhova as Milady de Winter, Oleg Tabakov as King Louis XIII, Alisa Freindlich as Anne of Austria, Aleksandr Trofimov as Cardinal Richelieu, and Lev Durov as Captain de Tréville. The film, and its numerous songs became extremely popular in the Soviet Union throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, and is now considered a classic.

Three sequels were made: Musketeers Twenty Years After (1992), The Secret of Queen Anne or Musketeers Thirty Years After (1993) and The Return of the Musketeers, or The Treasures of Cardinal Mazarin (2009).

Plot

The film consists of three parts:

• Part I: "Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan" (Атос, Портос, Арамис и д'Артаньян)
• Part II: "The Queen's Diamond Studs" (Подвески королевы)
• Part III: "The Adventures Continue" (Приключения продолжаются)

EPISODE ONE D’Artagnan, a young country bumpkin rides to Paris in hopes of becoming a musketeer. In Meung he is insulted by Rochefort, an agent of the Cardinal. A fight ensues, and d’Artagnan Is robbed and left bleeding. Later he meets M. De Tréville, captain of the king’s musketeers. Suddenly, he sees Rochefort and jumps out the window. He crashes into Athos, a wounded musketeer who calls him an idiot and challenged him to a duel at noon. D’Artagnan continues his chase, crashing into two other musketeers, Porthos and Aramis and gets challenged to two other duels. Arriving for the first duel, Athos duels d’Artagnan until Porthos and Aramis arrive, and are astonished that they will all fight the same boy. The Cardinals Guards arrive and a fight ensues. The musketeers kill most of the guards and a few lucky ones escape. The musketeers make friends. Later d’Artagnan rescues Constance, a married seamstress for the Queen and they fall in love.

Location

The miniseries was filmed in different locales around the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (current day Ukraine), using several of the country's fortresses and old cities, such as L'viv (L'vov, Lwow). Some scenes were filmed in the Historic Centre (Old Town) of Tallinn in Estonia.

See also

• Dog in Boots, an animated parody film that satirizes D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers.
• The Three Musketeers (2013), a Russian film adaptation by Sergei Zhigunov

External links

• D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers at AllMovie
• D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers on IMDb