Comedy has great cast

Press, 9 May 1984, Page 15

Comedy has great cast

The second half of director Richard Lester’s irreverent but amusing approach to Alexandre Dumas’s classic novel, “The Three Musketeers,” will be screen tonight on One. Filmed simultaneously with the first movie, “The Four Musketeers” retains the essential core cast, but the emphasis is less on slapstick this time round. Oliver Reed, Michael York, Richard Chamberlain and Frank Finlay star as the swashbuckling musketeers, with Christopher Lee, Jean Pierre Cassel, Geraldine Chaplin, Simon Ward, Faye Dunaway and Charlton Heston backing them to the hilt. The director, Richard Lester, became somewhat of a boy wonder when, at the tender age of 20, he was already a successful television director with C.B.S. Two years later, he left the United States to bum around Europe, playing the piano or the guitar for a meal. In 1956 he settled in England, where he resumed his activity as a television director. He piloted a short film in 1959 and his first feature in 1962. His experience with live television and commercials has had considerable influence on his film work. He often uses several cameras to shoot action simultaneously from several angles and relies a great deal on bewildering and dazzling cutting techniques. His concern with technical virtuosity irritates some’ critics, who find him flashy, fragmented and empty, but others see in him a bold, imaginative, creative stylist, says TVNZ.