The Three Musketeers (1921)

The Three Musketeers is a 1921 American silent film based on the novel The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, père. It was directed by Fred Niblo and starred Douglas Fairbanks as d'Artagnan. The film originally had scenes filmed in the Handschiegl Color Process (billed as the "Wyckoff-DeMille Process"). The film had a sequel, The Iron Mask (1929), also starring Fairbanks as d'Artagnan and DeBrulier as Cardinal Richelieu.

The athletic Douglas Fairbanks's one-handed handspring to grab a sword during a fight scene in this film is considered as one of the great stunts of the early cinema period.

Fairbanks biographer Jeffrey Vance enthuses, "The Three Musketeers was the first of the grand Fairbanks costume films, filled with exemplary production values and ornamentation. Indeed, one ornament extended beyond the film: Fairbanks wore d'Artagnan's moustache--cultivated for The Three Musketeers--to the end of his life. With The Three Musketeers, he at last found his metier and crystallized his celebrity and his cinema.

Synopsis

Le jeune gascon d'Artagnan arrive à Paris, prêt à rejoindre les mousquetaires du roi. Il est pris sous les ailes des trois mousquetaires les plus respectés et les plus redoutés, Porthos, Aramis et Athos. Ensemble, ils se battent pour sauver la France et l'honneur d'une dame des machinations du puissant cardinal Richelieu.

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