It is said that Michael Wincott is an actor who "lives the character" and he himself says, "You have to be careful so you don't make your character dull and predictable. Sometimes you have to bend the script a little".  Well, just watch three different movies and you'll see three different characters, but not Michael.  He blends in like a chameleon.  Mind you, a gorgeous one.

This section of michaelwincott.org delves into some of the memorable characters Michael has so deftly brought to life.  There are screen capture photo galleries, Flash videos, and my review of the film.

A miserable prison warden . . .

Armond Dorleac from The Count of Monte Cristo

All too rarely do film adaptations of great literature deliver the story with proper reverence whilst remaining entertaining, but The Count of Monte Cristo helmed by director Kevin Reynolds does a fair job. You might recall Reynolds’ prior work and be wary. Can anyone forget how bad Waterworld was? However, Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves turned out pretty good, mostly due to Michael Wincott, Morgan Freeman and Alan Rickman, so give Count a chance as well. It has a good cast who all deliver taught performances.

Alexandre Dumas’ tale of the young Edmond Dantes and the injustice he suffered by selfish people in power and his struggle for revenge is well told with an old fashioned swashbuckling style that does not give in to too much contemporary embellishment. The screenplay adaptation by Jim Wolpert stays close to the original and compresses it into a nicely flowing narrative interspersed with just enough action to keep younger audiences interested. Jim Caviezel as the young Dantes is adequately dense, but not near as menacing or intensely driven for his revenge as I would have liked to see. The great Richard Harris as Abbe Faria delivers a standout performance in one of his last roles. Guy Pearce is delightfully slimy and yet restrained as Mondego.

Michael Wincott appears as Armond Dorleac, the warden of the island prison, Chateau d’If. Although not onscreen for long, he delivers memorable lines using both his flair of scene stealing and his ability to blend into the character so as not to appear to need a toothpick to get pieces of scenery out of his teeth. Dorleac is at once menacing and cruel, yet somehow Michael conveys a bit of the sad desolation of a man who is also a prisoner. He looks great with long hair and in terrific period costume.

Please consider reading the novel. Dumas’ style is formal yet easy to follow. I’ll compress the story for those of you who aren’t familiar with this classic.

Edmond Dantes is a French sailor during the 19^th century in the aftermath of Napoleon. His ship stops at an island seeking medical help for the captain and surprise, Dantes meets Napoleon Bonaparte himself who happens to be imprisoned there. Edmund is duped into taking a letter back to France. I did say he was dense.

Mondego, who he thinks is his friend, knows about the letter and decides to use it to get rid of Dantes so he can romance Mercedes, Edmond’s girlfriend. Conveniently for Mondego, the letter is addressed to the father of the magistrate who wants to protect his family from scandal. The young sailor is arrested and shipped off to the island prison where people are sent to disappear, Chateau d’If.

There he is tortured by the warden, Dorleac. “Let’s make a bargain, shall we? You ask God for help and I’ll stop the moment he shows up.” Time flies when you are in a dark hole, but Dantes meets Abbe Faria, an ex-soldier turned cleric, because the old guy tunnels into his cell on his way to escaping. Over the course of about a dozen years Faria teaches Dantes how to read and about life, weapons, fighting, and where to find a treasure on an island somewhere, all the while digging tunnels. (This part of the movie drags a bit, but I have always loved Richard Harris, so did enjoy it.)

Dantes escapes. (I won’t spoil the how for you if you’ve never seen the movie or read the book.) A rather clumsy portion of the story takes Edmond to the treasure via joining a band of pirates and befriending one of them who becomes his servant. They find the treasure and Dantes sets off for home. He realizes everyone thinks him dead, so he decides to become the Count of Monte Cristo. A multi-faceted plot ensues to exact revenge on everyone who wronged him, including Mercedes, who married Mondego.

(Okay, this is where I have trouble. Dantes was supposed to be about 18 when imprisoned. Jim Caviezel did not look 18. Upon his return he really didn’t look much older. His disguise was a beard and wealth. I would have preferred a teen actor to start then have Caviezel play the vengeance hungry man who unjustly lost his youth.)

In general this adaptation is a quality project and worth viewing. On a personal note; I prefer the French version which starred Gerard Depardieu as the older Dantes and his recently deceased son, Guillaume as the younger.

The videos on this page require a Flash player and you may need to allow Active X controls.

This video was captured from my own legally purchased DVD.

Click a thumbnail to see a larger image . . .

 

 

Alexandre Dumas wrote Count of Monte Cristo in 1844. Unlike the adventures of the musketeers, the book takes place between 1815-1838, in Dumas’ own time. The writer was inspired by another work, a true story of a man named Pierre Picaud.  Edmond Dantes is the fictional character based on him.

 

 

Dantes is imprisoned in the French prison, Chateau d’If. The island of If where the prison was located lies only about a mile offshore from Marseille, France. The original structures were built in 1529. Three towers 3 stories each began to be used as a prison in 1634. Its isolated locale and the fierce currents surrounding it made it nearly escape proof and it was a popular dumping ground for political prisoners. The poorest prisoners, like Dantes, were put in windowless rooms in the underground base of the towers. Chateau d’If remained a prison operated by the French government until the end of the 19^th century when it opened to the public as a tourist attraction in 1890.

 

The character of Armand Dorleac was obviously an invention of screenplay writer Jay Wolpert. In the novel by Dumas, the governor of Chateau d’If is never named and is in fact not a significant character. He is not a bad guy, and Edmond is not beaten in the book only kept in isolation.

 

Isle If  and the remaining structures is not that visually striking, so in the film, St Mary’s Towers in Comino, Malta was used. Jim Caviezel and Michael Wincott filmed scenes there. Some interiors were shot in Ireland.

 

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