Of gorgeous doomed French love
Because of getting up at an unearthly hour again, due to jetlag, I ended up watching some of “D’Artagnan and Three Musketeers” before going to work. This is a Russian movie from the 1970s, a musical and very faithful adaptation of the story. It’s about 3+ hours long.
It’s one of those rare movies about which I cannot be rational. While I might realize that the production values are nowhere near Hollywood ones, or that some of it is cheesy or what not, it doesn’t matter. Every time I start watching it, I revert to the 9 year old breathless and giddy with pleasure and anticipation falling in love with the characters and the world. Any rationality goes out of the window. At one time I knew all the words to all of the songs (and there are a lot) by heart. And even now, when it’s been years and years since I’ve watched it, I realized I still know the words to most of the songs. It doesn’t hurt that I think of all the adaptations I’ve seen it screws least with the story. Dumas knew a good story. So the screenwriters who muck with it are just annoying.
And this brings me to the book I am rereading, my favorite ever Dumas novel, La Dame de Monsoreau. It’s not very well known in the US (last translation, and a clunky one at that, was done at the turn of the 20th century), but it’s quite well-known and popular in Russia.
I first discovered the wonder that was Monsoreau when the Russian TV broadcast the French miniseries based on the book when I was about 11. They showed it three times a day and I tried to sneak a view of all three. I still remember standing bare-footed on my grandmother’s entrance-hall carpet trying to peek into the living room where they were watching it at the ungodly hour of 11 pm even though I earlier watched the 5 pm broadcast. I got caught and sent to bed of course. All of our class in school discussed Monsoreau ad nauseam. The boys liked the duels and the girls the romance. It’s interesting now that I think back about it, how much more of a communal experience TV was back when I was growing up. I remember when “Gardemarins Forward” came out a few years later (yet another one of those utterly cheesy and utterly irresistible period musicals, it was set during the reign of the Russian Queen Elizabeth. My childhood is where I got my taste both for period movies and for unabashed melodrama), and all the girls in my school went crazy for Dmitri Haratyan who played one of the three male leads (All these years later I still remember that he also got to cross-dress as a nun because he was on the run from a duel gone wrong, and fell in love with the girl her family was forcing into a nunnery to get her inheritance. God, my head is full of useless junk). I remember walking into the Vice-Principal’s office and she had a poster of the guy on her wall. It’s an interesting phenomenon that could only occur when you had 3 channels and half of the programming on them was about the welfare of the pigs in kolhoz.
But yes, I still remember the class debating somewhat ambiguous ending and I still remember sneaking into another room after the last few minutes of the mini and pinching myself so as not to cry (this being Dumas, the ending was far from happy). And then I pulled down the deliciously thick volume that my parents owned (years before I ever read the book I remember thinking about the small silhouettes of a man on horseback carrying a woman and wondering what this was all about) and delved in. My first impulse was to check if the ending was happy. Unfortunately, the book ended lacked even the ambiguity of the mini. But I discovered a whole other wonderful world of complicated intrigue, hidden passion, mad quest for honor, funny escapades and everything one could ever want in a book, including the hero that is still high in my all-time crush pantheon. And I discovered that the mini, as exhaustive and faithful as it was, had to leave certain things out anyway. It’s been 15+ years since I first cracked open the very thick book and I still remain just as much in love with it as ever. In fact, when I mentioned the book to BFF who also grew up in Russia, she also got all misty-eyed about Louis de Clermont d'Aboise, Comte de Bussy, as well as his friend Francois d’Epine de Saint-Luke.
The plot: The novel is set during the reign of Henri III (it’s the middle part of a thematic trilogy about the last days of the Valois that was started with Queen Margot). The main character is Comte de Bussy, the favorite of Prince d’Anjou. He is not a favorite in the sense of the King’s minions (the first time I encountered the book, I couldn’t figure out why the King was so attached to these young men. Why was he so upset that St. Luke entered into a love match? Heee. I was naïve). Instead, he is basically the best duelist of the age and his one goal/fun in life is to bait the King’s party. He is apparently based on a real person. I fell in love with Bussy by page five or so. He is gorgeous, very proficient with weapons, extremely passionate and much too haughty. Someone who would fight to the death before he would reveal a weakness yet is brought to his knees by a woman. Also, he is intelligent and fun. One night he is ambushed by the King’s minions and manages to escape during the fight by b&e into an unknown house where a mysterious woman cares for him during the night and he falls in love with her. A very very complicated plot follows.
I was in love with all the characters. Not only Bussy, but St. Luke, one of King Henri’s minions who (unfortunately for him) decides to marry for love. St. Luke becomes Bussy’s best friend but he is wonderful in his own right: laid-back, funny, deeply pragmatic and yet with a core of steely integrity and genuine affection for the King even if it’s not the kind of affection Henri wants, at least not any more. I do love that Dumas makes no bones and has no problems with a character who earlier clearly engaged in gay sex to get advancement. Heee.
I adore Jeanne, St. Luke’s wife, who is utterly delightful: also practical and irrepressible and inventive and someone who deeply loves her husband yet does not lose her sense of fun. Their wedding night is one of my favorite scenes in the book because while Bussy and Diane might have the doomed, angsty, star-crossed love, Jeanne and St. Luke are people you can actually see growing old happily together.
There is Chicot, the King’s Jester who is cleverer and wittier than any other character in the book (or a number of characters put together). There’s the mysterious and unappealing Monsoreau, the King’s Chief Huntsman, and husband of Diane, the mysterious woman Bussy falls for. There is Henri himself, sybaritic and entertaining, and d’Anjou who, years after, I still deeply loathe, Brother Goranflo, a monk who is more interested in worldly comfort than heavenly peace, and a whole bunch of historical characters including the Guise family. In fact, I think of all the main characters, Diane de Monsoreau is the weakest. She has certainly suffered a lot (she was forced into a marriage with a man she loathes and she can never openly have the man she loves). The problem is, the very reasons why Bussy falls so madly for her: she is not like the jaded corrupt women at Court. When she loves, there has been no one before and will be no one after, are the reasons that create so much of the tragedy. If Bussy fell for someone like Jeanne, who is genuine but much more practical, so much of the horrid stuff could have been avoided.
And now I am full of glee. Why the glee? I just bought a copy of the French miniseries that I used to adore so on ebay. All 6 hours and 15 minutes of it. It’s PAL so I’ll need to get it transferred (or buy a multi-region player) but I don’t care. It’s such a childhood memory for me.
ETA: The real story that Dumas based his story on is found here. Since most of people on my flist don't read Russian, this is the free translation of it, tweaked by me a little as to make it more understandable.
Castle Monsoro towers today in some distance from coast of Loire. The person most well-known in all history of the castle is undoubtedly Charles de Cambes who was immortalized by Alexander Dumas in the novel "Countess de Monsoreau ". This literary work, created three centuries after after described events, states Charles's history, the history of his wife Francoise (not Diane, as in the novel) and her lover - the seigneur de Bussy d'Amboise.
Francoise de Meridor married Charles as his second marriage; he was the main hunter of Duc d'Alancon and contrary to the novel, was neither old, nor ugly. In the castle, the countess got acquainted with Louis de Clermont d'Ambois, the seigneur de Bussy, a favorite of le Duc d'Alancon. Historical chronicles describe him as a handsome man with elegant features, with imperous, attractive pair of eyes, a person courageous and educated, and an admirer of Plutarch. His independent manner and mode of behavior, sometimes really much too haughty made him acquire many enemies. In 1579 he had decided to leave the court and to live on his estate. This is when his courtship of Francoise began. He even bragged of success in the letter to the friend at court: "I have caught the chief hunter's pet deer."
The rumors reached Charles's ears and he hastened to the castle where he forced his wife (who swore absolute innocence), to write a note to her beloved with the request for a meeting in the castle. The trap was set. Bussy went to the meeting with only one servant and as soon as he had crossed the threshold, all doors were immediately locked to prevent his flight. Battling with ten men attacking him, he fought back lion-like and was fatally wounded in the moment when, it appeared, he managed to evade his murderers, having jumped out in a window. Strangely, news of his death has left Francoise indifferent, and she found a consolation in her love of her spouse whom she made happy with a large number of children.
ETA 2: Apparently there was also a Russian mini in the 1990s. Haven't seen it, but here are a couple of pictures of their version of Bussy because I don't like having posts with no pics.
Not sure he fits my mental image, but he's cute in any event.
It’s one of those rare movies about which I cannot be rational. While I might realize that the production values are nowhere near Hollywood ones, or that some of it is cheesy or what not, it doesn’t matter. Every time I start watching it, I revert to the 9 year old breathless and giddy with pleasure and anticipation falling in love with the characters and the world. Any rationality goes out of the window. At one time I knew all the words to all of the songs (and there are a lot) by heart. And even now, when it’s been years and years since I’ve watched it, I realized I still know the words to most of the songs. It doesn’t hurt that I think of all the adaptations I’ve seen it screws least with the story. Dumas knew a good story. So the screenwriters who muck with it are just annoying.
And this brings me to the book I am rereading, my favorite ever Dumas novel, La Dame de Monsoreau. It’s not very well known in the US (last translation, and a clunky one at that, was done at the turn of the 20th century), but it’s quite well-known and popular in Russia.
I first discovered the wonder that was Monsoreau when the Russian TV broadcast the French miniseries based on the book when I was about 11. They showed it three times a day and I tried to sneak a view of all three. I still remember standing bare-footed on my grandmother’s entrance-hall carpet trying to peek into the living room where they were watching it at the ungodly hour of 11 pm even though I earlier watched the 5 pm broadcast. I got caught and sent to bed of course. All of our class in school discussed Monsoreau ad nauseam. The boys liked the duels and the girls the romance. It’s interesting now that I think back about it, how much more of a communal experience TV was back when I was growing up. I remember when “Gardemarins Forward” came out a few years later (yet another one of those utterly cheesy and utterly irresistible period musicals, it was set during the reign of the Russian Queen Elizabeth. My childhood is where I got my taste both for period movies and for unabashed melodrama), and all the girls in my school went crazy for Dmitri Haratyan who played one of the three male leads (All these years later I still remember that he also got to cross-dress as a nun because he was on the run from a duel gone wrong, and fell in love with the girl her family was forcing into a nunnery to get her inheritance. God, my head is full of useless junk). I remember walking into the Vice-Principal’s office and she had a poster of the guy on her wall. It’s an interesting phenomenon that could only occur when you had 3 channels and half of the programming on them was about the welfare of the pigs in kolhoz.
But yes, I still remember the class debating somewhat ambiguous ending and I still remember sneaking into another room after the last few minutes of the mini and pinching myself so as not to cry (this being Dumas, the ending was far from happy). And then I pulled down the deliciously thick volume that my parents owned (years before I ever read the book I remember thinking about the small silhouettes of a man on horseback carrying a woman and wondering what this was all about) and delved in. My first impulse was to check if the ending was happy. Unfortunately, the book ended lacked even the ambiguity of the mini. But I discovered a whole other wonderful world of complicated intrigue, hidden passion, mad quest for honor, funny escapades and everything one could ever want in a book, including the hero that is still high in my all-time crush pantheon. And I discovered that the mini, as exhaustive and faithful as it was, had to leave certain things out anyway. It’s been 15+ years since I first cracked open the very thick book and I still remain just as much in love with it as ever. In fact, when I mentioned the book to BFF who also grew up in Russia, she also got all misty-eyed about Louis de Clermont d'Aboise, Comte de Bussy, as well as his friend Francois d’Epine de Saint-Luke.
The plot: The novel is set during the reign of Henri III (it’s the middle part of a thematic trilogy about the last days of the Valois that was started with Queen Margot). The main character is Comte de Bussy, the favorite of Prince d’Anjou. He is not a favorite in the sense of the King’s minions (the first time I encountered the book, I couldn’t figure out why the King was so attached to these young men. Why was he so upset that St. Luke entered into a love match? Heee. I was naïve). Instead, he is basically the best duelist of the age and his one goal/fun in life is to bait the King’s party. He is apparently based on a real person. I fell in love with Bussy by page five or so. He is gorgeous, very proficient with weapons, extremely passionate and much too haughty. Someone who would fight to the death before he would reveal a weakness yet is brought to his knees by a woman. Also, he is intelligent and fun. One night he is ambushed by the King’s minions and manages to escape during the fight by b&e into an unknown house where a mysterious woman cares for him during the night and he falls in love with her. A very very complicated plot follows.
I was in love with all the characters. Not only Bussy, but St. Luke, one of King Henri’s minions who (unfortunately for him) decides to marry for love. St. Luke becomes Bussy’s best friend but he is wonderful in his own right: laid-back, funny, deeply pragmatic and yet with a core of steely integrity and genuine affection for the King even if it’s not the kind of affection Henri wants, at least not any more. I do love that Dumas makes no bones and has no problems with a character who earlier clearly engaged in gay sex to get advancement. Heee.
I adore Jeanne, St. Luke’s wife, who is utterly delightful: also practical and irrepressible and inventive and someone who deeply loves her husband yet does not lose her sense of fun. Their wedding night is one of my favorite scenes in the book because while Bussy and Diane might have the doomed, angsty, star-crossed love, Jeanne and St. Luke are people you can actually see growing old happily together.
There is Chicot, the King’s Jester who is cleverer and wittier than any other character in the book (or a number of characters put together). There’s the mysterious and unappealing Monsoreau, the King’s Chief Huntsman, and husband of Diane, the mysterious woman Bussy falls for. There is Henri himself, sybaritic and entertaining, and d’Anjou who, years after, I still deeply loathe, Brother Goranflo, a monk who is more interested in worldly comfort than heavenly peace, and a whole bunch of historical characters including the Guise family. In fact, I think of all the main characters, Diane de Monsoreau is the weakest. She has certainly suffered a lot (she was forced into a marriage with a man she loathes and she can never openly have the man she loves). The problem is, the very reasons why Bussy falls so madly for her: she is not like the jaded corrupt women at Court. When she loves, there has been no one before and will be no one after, are the reasons that create so much of the tragedy. If Bussy fell for someone like Jeanne, who is genuine but much more practical, so much of the horrid stuff could have been avoided.
And now I am full of glee. Why the glee? I just bought a copy of the French miniseries that I used to adore so on ebay. All 6 hours and 15 minutes of it. It’s PAL so I’ll need to get it transferred (or buy a multi-region player) but I don’t care. It’s such a childhood memory for me.
ETA: The real story that Dumas based his story on is found here. Since most of people on my flist don't read Russian, this is the free translation of it, tweaked by me a little as to make it more understandable.
Castle Monsoro towers today in some distance from coast of Loire. The person most well-known in all history of the castle is undoubtedly Charles de Cambes who was immortalized by Alexander Dumas in the novel "Countess de Monsoreau ". This literary work, created three centuries after after described events, states Charles's history, the history of his wife Francoise (not Diane, as in the novel) and her lover - the seigneur de Bussy d'Amboise.
Francoise de Meridor married Charles as his second marriage; he was the main hunter of Duc d'Alancon and contrary to the novel, was neither old, nor ugly. In the castle, the countess got acquainted with Louis de Clermont d'Ambois, the seigneur de Bussy, a favorite of le Duc d'Alancon. Historical chronicles describe him as a handsome man with elegant features, with imperous, attractive pair of eyes, a person courageous and educated, and an admirer of Plutarch. His independent manner and mode of behavior, sometimes really much too haughty made him acquire many enemies. In 1579 he had decided to leave the court and to live on his estate. This is when his courtship of Francoise began. He even bragged of success in the letter to the friend at court: "I have caught the chief hunter's pet deer."
The rumors reached Charles's ears and he hastened to the castle where he forced his wife (who swore absolute innocence), to write a note to her beloved with the request for a meeting in the castle. The trap was set. Bussy went to the meeting with only one servant and as soon as he had crossed the threshold, all doors were immediately locked to prevent his flight. Battling with ten men attacking him, he fought back lion-like and was fatally wounded in the moment when, it appeared, he managed to evade his murderers, having jumped out in a window. Strangely, news of his death has left Francoise indifferent, and she found a consolation in her love of her spouse whom she made happy with a large number of children.
ETA 2: Apparently there was also a Russian mini in the 1990s. Haven't seen it, but here are a couple of pictures of their version of Bussy because I don't like having posts with no pics.
Not sure he fits my mental image, but he's cute in any event.