The Man with the Iron Mask (movie, 1998)

Synopsis

Paris, 1662. Athos , Porthos and Aramis are now retired. Only D’Artagnan is still serving the musketeers of King Louis XIV . Now the latter is a monarch with a cold and ruthless character, more concerned with the frivolities of the Court than with the misery of his people. In order to better seduce Christine, the betrothed of Raoul, the son of Athos, the king does not hesitate to send the young man to war where the latter is killed. The three former musketeers then decide to take revenge on the sovereign. To do this, Aramis has fomented a plan …

Technical sheet

• Original title: The Man in the Iron Mask
• French title: L’Homme au masque de fer
• Director: Randall Wallace , assisted by Frédéric Auburtin
• Scenario: Randall Wallace after Le Vicomte de Bragelonne , by Alexandre Dumas
• Photography: Peter Suschitzky
• Costumes: James Acheson
• Editing: William Hoy
• Special Effects: Rob Hodgson , Chris Holmes , Kent Houston , Kevin Kuwada and Jacques Levesque
• Music: Nick Glennie-Smith
• Production: Russell Smith for United Artists
• Budget: $ 35,000,000 ¹
• Country of Origin: United Kingdom / United States
• Format: Color (DeLuxe) – 35 mm – 1.85: 1 – DTS / Dolby Digital / SDDS sound
• Gender: cape and sword
• Duration: 132 minutes (2h 12)
• Release dates: United States :  March 13 , 1998 ; France : 1 ^st April 1998

Distribution

• Leonardo DiCaprio (VF: Damien Witecka ) : Louis XIV / Philip
• Jeremy Irons (VF: Robert Guilmard ) : Aramis
• John Malkovich (VF: Michel Papineschi ) : Athos
• Gérard Depardieu (VF: Himself ) : Porthos
• Gabriel Byrne (VF: Gabriel Doze ) : D’Artagnan
• Anne Parillaud (VF: herself ) : Anne of Austria
• Judith Godrèche (VF: herself ) : Christine Bellefort
• Peter Sarsgaard (VF: Mathias Kozlowski ) : Raoul of Bragelonne
• Edward Atterton (VF: Pierre Tessier ) : Lieutenant André
• Hugh Laurie : Peter, King’s Advisor
• David Lowe : a king’s adviser
• Emmanuel Guttierez : Francis, friend of the king
• Brigitte Auber : the lady-in-waiting of the mother of the queen

Home

The film was a major commercial success, earning about 182 968 000 $ in world ranking, including 56,968,000 $ in North America , with a budget of 35 million $ ² . In France , it achieved 2 291 139 entries ³ .

It received a rather unfavorable reception, receiving 33% of positive reviews, with an average score of 5.4 / 10 and based on 36 reviews collected, on the Rotten Tomatoes ⁴ aggregator site . On Metacritic , he gets a score of 48/100 based on 18 reviews collected ⁵ .

Distinctions

Leonardo DiCaprio received for this film the Razzie Award for the “worst couple on screen” for his dual role of Louis XIV and his twin.

Around the film

The film was shot in France in Fontainebleau , at Vaux-le-Vicomte , in the Old Mans and the home of Fontenay in Fontenay-sur-Vègre . Some scenes representing the Louvre Palace were shot at the studios of Arpajon .

D’Artagnan is presented in the film as having been the lover of Anne of Austria , which is not the case in Le Vicomte de Bragelonne and the previous works of Dumas.

King Louis has Raoul assassinated in order to obtain de facto his fiancée, Christine. For this, he sends him to death among the first lines on the English front. He then install Christine in his apartments. This plot is undoubtedly inspired by the Second Book of Samuel . Indeed, in chapter 11, King David is seduced by a woman named Bathsheba, which he gets by sending her husband Uriah to death. The final outcome is however not the same.

External links

• (In) The Man with the Iron Mask [ archive ] on the Internet Movie Database
• The man with the iron mask [ archive ] on Allociné

Notes and references