The Four Musketeers [Blu-ray]

Director: Richard Lester

Overview

Chapter two of Lester's winking, rollicking takes on Dumas's famous swordsmen produced at the same time as his Three Musketeers with the same leads. Great swordplay (executed by the stars; York claims each was injured during shooting) and two great female

Product Details

Release Date:	10/18/2011
UPC:	5055201815897
Original Release:	0000
Source:	Ais
Language:	English
Sales rank:	55,188

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Oliver Reed	Athos
Michael York	D'Artagnan
Richard Chamberlain	Aramis
Frank Finlay	Porthos
Raquel Welch	Constance
Faye Dunaway	Lady de Winter
Christopher Lee	Rochefort
Jean-Pierre Cassel	Louis XIII
Geraldine Chaplin	Queen Anne of Austria
Simon Ward	Duke of Buckingham
Charlton Heston	Cardinal Richelieu
Roy Kinnear	Planchet
Nicole Calfan	Maid Kitty
Sybil Danning	Actor
Lalo Schifrin	Composer
Michel Legrand	Composer

Technical Credits

George MacDonald Fraser

Alexander Salkind	Producer,Executive Producer,Producer
George MacDonald Fraser	Screenwriter
Pierre Spengler	Producer
Simon Kaye	Sound/Sound Designer

Scene Index

Note on Transliteration xiii

Introduction: A Social Historian Looks at Early Modern Kabbalah 1

1 A New God: Theological Innovation 11

2 'Like giants sitting on the shoulders of dwarfs': The Rise of the Kadosh 44

3 Kabbalah, Halakhah, and Ritual 67

4 Religious Confraternities 83

5 'From my body I shall envision God': The Body and Sexuality 101

6 Sin and Repentance: Jewish Confession 123

7 Catholic Traditions in Safed Kabbalah: Sephardim and Conversos 146

Summary: Safed Kabbalah and Modernity 166

Bibliography 177

Index 203

Editorial Reviews

At moments the dark edges of Richard Lester's The Three Musketeers threaten to overwhelm its sequel. Here first seen working to quell a Huguenot rebellion, the musketeers recognize the absurdity of the conflict, but driven by duty and the love of action more than principle, they proceed to take part in the suppression anyway. Eventually the appearance of recognizable villains -- Heston, Dunaway and Lee -- puts the ambiguity to rest and allows Lester to bring on the slapstick -- albeit slapstick tempered with a bit more tragic potential than before. For all the lighthearted action, Lester has a keen sense of how ugly violence can be, a strand of his work that runs from How I Won the War through this film and on to the underrated elegiac swashbuckler Robin and Marian. It's a theme confined mostly to the background here, but its presence remains strong enough to set The Four Musketeers apart from its more lighthearted predecessor. Having fostered love for his merry soldiers, Lester now feels a need, perhaps a little too late, to make his audience confront the shadier aspects of their exploits.