The Count of Monte Cristo

[Cassiopeia]

I read this book back when I was 16 because there was as version of the book in film that starred Richard Chamberlain and I was so in love with him that I clung to the words of the book imagining it was him the whole time. It was GREAT!

[KTC]

I read this too and enjoyed it. Casi...it shows that somebody else started this thread, but that you replied to it...with 0 replies? What gives. Ghost in the machine? Did you start the thread?

[Spirit_Fire]

This is one of my favourites. How cool it would be to be the Count of Monte Cristo - the richest, most eccentric person EVER.

Anybody who hasn't read it - get it and read it.

[Cassiopeia]

I read this too and enjoyed it. Casi...it shows that somebody else started this thread, but that you replied to it...with 0 replies? What gives. Ghost in the machine? Did you start the thread?Honest Kev I didn't start it. I clicked on and thought what the heck? Where is the first post?

[KTC]

Interesting. Anyway...it's a good book. I guess the original poster must have deleted the thread as you were replying?

[blacbird]

One of the great novels of all time, by any standard, and clearly Dumas' best. I read it about 15 years ago, in Europe, including a couple of hours of quiet sitting on a rock outside the Chateau d'If, off the harbor of Marseille, where Dumas' hero Edmond Dantes was imprisoned. Cherished experience.

caw.

[Cassiopeia]

Wow...that must have been quite the experience to be there while reading it!

[P.H.Delarran]

Oh I just read this about a month ago. Enjoyed it immensly.

[Fahim]

This is my most favourite book ever, bar none :) I think I first read it when I was about 8 or 9 - it was a Sinhalese translation. Loved it ever since then and have read several versions since then (different abridged versions and one full English translation). I've seen several movie versions as well, including the one which starred Richard Chamberlain and Tony Curtis :) The book never ceases to thrill me and to make me think. In fact, it is so embedded in my brain that I was thinking of doing a science fiction version of it - got the story planned at least halfway but got too many other things (and too many other ideas) to do before I get to it :)

[LloydBrown]

I loved it, too. I can't see somebody driving a Mercedes without thinking about it.

[TrainofThought]

Cool, I recently bought this book. I'm excited about reading it, but want to wait for a snowy winter day. Thanks.

[Forbidden Snowflake]

I love this book. Not my favourite ever, many books are battling that space, but it's in my top ten. Well written and full of tension it's a perfect construction, everything comes together, it's a puzzle with all loose ends tied up in the end and it's just pure pleasure to read.

[aadams73]

I adore this book. So much passion of every kind within the story.

[Shadow_Ferret]

How does it compare to Dumas' Three Musketeers, because I enjoyed that book a lot.

[blacbird]

Better than Musketeers, in my opinion. Which is not a knock on d'Artagnan and the boys, just that Monte Cristo carries a far more universally powerful theme, one that elevates it above any of the other novels of Dumas with which I'm familiar (Iron Mask, various sequels to Musketeers, The Black Tulip), and puts it in my view among the great moral dilemma novels of the 19th Century. In that regard, Monte Cristo is to Musketeers what Huck Finn is to Tom Sawyer.

caw

[Fahim]

Basically what blacbird said :) The Count of Monte Cristo has much broader appeal on so many more levels than The Three Musketeers. I enjoyed The Three Musketeers but years later, I simply remember it as an adventure yarn. But the Count? Ah, I remember it as so much more - there's betrayal, there's friendship, there's love, there's intrigue, there's mystery and overall, there's the grand theme of how our actions can come to haunt us or help us. It's brilliant, just brilliant :)

[Shadow_Ferret]

Plus it's a really tasty sandwich. :D

[maestrowork]

I have to, shamelessly, admit that I have never read the book, but have seen countless TV and film adaptations. It's a classic story of betrayal, revenge, justice, love, friendship, mystery, twist of fate, reversal of fortune... The story is so ridiculously marvelous and fascinating that I am so eternally jealous of Dumas for coming up with it. Great characters too -- the motivations and desires are so clear and strong, and the conflicts so real. The tale is timeless.

[army_grunt13]

If you've seen either of the film versions and loved them, well you may not want to read the book because you'll never be able to watch the movies again. At least that's the way it was for me. I too loved (and still do like a bit) the version with Richard Chamberlain, which inspired me to read the book. What I found is that the only things they shared in common really was the name of the story and the characters. After Dantes escapes from the Chateu Dif (excuse my spelling), the story was COMPLETELY different in the book. I have to admit though, it is hard to think of Mondego without picturing Tony Curtis! I had trouble not seeing Richard Chamberlain as Dantes, even though his physical description in the book is drastically different (ie, clean shaven, with jet black hair in spite of his age).

I have to say I was thrilled when I heard they remade the movie a few years ago, and was subsequently appauled when I saw it. I mean, why is it Hollywood cannot take a priceless story and tell it the way it was written? It's infuriating for me to see my favorite stories butchered on the big screen (don't even get me started on what the movie "Troy" did to "The Illiad!").

Ok, enough ranting. I realize we are talking about the books, and not their movies. I have to say that The Count of Monte Cristo was one of the first "classic" books I read, and is still one of my favorites to this day. It is by far the ultimate story of revenge, one that I personally have never seen bested.

[blacbird]

It is by far the ultimate story of revenge, one that I personally have never seen bested.

. . . which is made all the better by the revelation of the corrosiveness revenge ultimately wreaks on the revenger, and the intriguingly open ending.

I agree about the movies. This novel seems made to be the base for a movie, and they just keep wrecking it every time they try.

I am, by the way, highly gratified that so many people here have both read this book and regard it so highly. Maybe my judgment isn't quite as bad as I thought it was.

caw.

[henriette]

there is a wonderful french mini series starring gerard depardieu in his many disguises. highly recommended if you can find it! :)

this book (unabridged, of course) is one of my all time faves, a true epic.
i hope that one day my french will be good enough so i can read it in its original language.

[pdr]

The BBC made a television adaptation of the novel with Alan Badel as the count back in the 1960s. It was true to the novel and up to the usual BBC brilliant level of adaptation of the classics.

It's a wonderful book isn't it? Pure melodrama in the classical sense of melodrama.

Do you really think the ending is so open? I always think, on reading it, that there's a strong sense of the possibility of remorse. That revenge is indeed a hollow dish and the count is clever enough to know it. What will he do with his life now that his sole aim for surviving in and escaping from prison has gone? What will he do now that he has manipulated events and heaped down coals on his transgressors?

[army_grunt13]

What will he do now that he has manipulated events and heaped down coals on his transgressors?

Have a beer, maybe? :e2drunk: Let us not forget that he viewed Albert and Valentine as his own children, plus he had his Royal Greek ladyfriend (I can't remember her name) so he wasn't alone in the world by any means. The way the book ends, Dumas leaves it up to the reader to interpret what he or she thinks happens to Dantes, since it is human nature to place ourselves in the roles of the heroes in our stories. So I think "what would I do in Edmond's shoes?" Me, I'd get a hobby. . .

[army_grunt13]

I know everyone has heard of The Three Musketeers and The Man in the Iron Mask, but how many people know that these are in fact part of a trilogy? It baffled me to find out that there was a book in between called "Twenty Years After." There was a great movie loosely based on the book called "Return of the Musketeers" with Richard Chamberlain, Michael York, and Oliver Reed. It's a comedy in a number of ways, doesn't follow the book very much, but doesn't have any pretensions of doing so.

Anybody else ever read this one?

[Fahim]

Actually, the third novel in the series is "Vicomte De Bragellone" :) I believe "The Man in the Iron Mask" is actually a volume in the three volume "Vicomte De Bragellone". I've read all three but I don't like the other two as much as I liked "The Three Musketeers".

ETA - Actually, the version of "Vicomte De Bragellone" (or "The Man in the Iron Mask" as the movie was - and I believe always has been - called) that I really liked was the old Selznick Classics version but that was nothing like the book, if I recall correctly :)

Hmm ... looks as if I was wrong. Did some checking and the version of "The Man in the Iron Mask" that I'm thinking about was not produced by David Selznick :p The one I'm thinking about (I think) is the 1977 version with Richard Chamberlain.

[army_grunt13]

Richard Chamberlain seems to be synonomous with Dumas movies. I've actually never heard of Vicomte De Bragellone. Will have to check that out.

Is it me, or is it the more "classic" a book, the more hollywood butchers it? The only one they seem to have gotten right in recent years is Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings. I think the difference here was that Peter Jackson actually knows how to read. . .

[pdr]

You're not wrong. The latest Hollywood version od 'Pride and Prejudice' is an abomination that appears to have borrowed the title and little else.

[thefantasticmrfox]

Nothing like a timely response, but anyhow - I would like to point out that while this is a fantastic book, and you are all correct that Hollywood blows it very often of adaptations, The Count of Monte Cristo couldn't be made into a satisfying movie because in order to fulfill the demands of the book, it would have to be far longer than any Hollywood production could reasonably allow. Likely, it could only be done proper justice via miniseries.

[DavidZahir]

Actually, when I arrived in LA almost twelve years ago, I had a screenplay adaptation of this novel in my hot little hand. A lot of folks found it puzzling, methinks maybe because it was so relatively faithful to the novel. Not a story of revenge per se, but a tale of a man who gives up on revenge.

Break it down. Dantes/Monte Cristo is going after (essentially) three men who did all they could to destroy him. One (Mondego) did it to get the woman he loved. Another (de Villefort) did it in a panic of self-defense. These two he destroyed utterly, causing a lot of collateral damage in the process. But the third (Danglars) did it for money. Yet in the end Dantes lets him go, reclaims his name, returns to the sea with a new love, someone who understands the Inferno and Purgatory he has just traversed (and not for a second do I think this guy's name--DANTE--is a coincidence). That was the arc that fascinated me--a man going sane.

Besides, that way there is but one climax to the story instead of three (or four).

The French miniseries with Gerard Depardieu has some nice things going for it, but there are troubles as well. One is the theme of "country VS city" plastered on top of the story for no readily apparent reason. Another is the ridiculous ending in which Edmund and Mercedes are reunited. No. Don't buy it. They are different people now, with way too much baggage to even try to be together. In this respect, the Richard Chamberlain version is superior IMHO.

My own screenplay began with the escape from Chateau d'If, and (in theory) the audience learned who this mysterious man was along with the characters. I played up the begun-in-mutual-pain love between Haydee and Edmund. And I included what was clearly a lesbian relationship between Danglars' daughter and her friend. The de Villefort plot I reworked extensively to streamline and accentuate what I thought most vital to the story. Like many versions I conflated Albert Mondego with the Valentine de Villefort's paramour. Also, I worked in some visual clues--such as circumstances giving both Edmund and Albert similar facial scars by the end.

And I included a sword fight. C'mon, don't we all want a sword fight in a Dumas story? Even if the original lacked one?