The Three Musketeers / The Iron Mask (Blu-ray)

*This is NOT a comic! But silent film is about as close as film gets to comics!

**THIS DISC ARRIVED WITH AN UNEXPECTED "REGION A" LABEL!
So please only buy if you have a region free player.

By Fred Niblo (The Three Musketeers) and Allan Dwan (The Iron Mask). Published by Cohen. 

Blu-ray disc, 136 minutes / 104 minutes, 1.33:1 aspect ratio, B&W, 1921 / 1929 (2017 pressing)

Douglas Fairbanks, The King of Hollywood, stars in this action-packed spectacle featuring him in the role he was born to play: Alexandre Dumas’ D’Artagnan!  In THE THREE MUSKETEERS, we are introduced to the young D’Artagnan, a naïve and ambitious farm boy whose acrobatic swordsmanship earns him the respect of King Louis XIII’s elite regiment of guards, The Musketeers.  

For the restoration of THE THREE MUSKETEERS, a full frame 35MM fine grain positive was scanned at 4K.  At the suggestion of Fairbanks scholar Jeffrey Vance, the scan was done at an historically appropriate 21 frames per second.  Following this, more than 150 hours of digital clean-up was completed at 2K.   

Music composed, adapted, orchestrated and conducted by Robert Israel.  Performed by The Moravian Philharmonic Orchestra 

In 1929, as the silent cinema succumbed to the rise of sound technology, Douglas Fairbanks bade farewell to his swashbuckling persona with this lavish adventure film, the glorious last hurrah of big screen chivalry.  In a return to Fairbanks's favorite literary character - Dumas' heroic D'Artagnan, whom he portrayed in 1921's THE THREE MUSKETEERS - THE IRON MASK finds Dartagnan's romance with Constance (Marguerite De La Motte) and his brotherhood with the Musketeers threatened by the sinister Cardinal Richelieu (Nigel De Brulier) and Count De Rochefort (Ulrich Haupt).  This new restoration is based on the 1999 photochemical restoration done by Photoplay Productions, using Fairbanks's original nitrate print in association with the Museum of Modern Art.  Additional digital restoration was done by Cohen Film Collection at Roundabout Entertainment (Burbank).