“MONTE CRISTO.”

Star (Christchurch), Volume LXVI, Issue 20541, 16 February 1935, Page 25 (Supplement)

“MONTE CRISTO.”

Alexandre Dumas’s Famous Story in Third Week. In the film version of Alexandre Dumas’s celebrated story, “ The Count of Monte Cristo,” which is now in its third week at the Plaza Theatre, Christchurch, picturegoers have the opportunity of enjoying the spectacular character-acting of Robert Donat. He playes Edmond Dantes, a young officer on a French ship, who is given command and entrusted with a secret letter by the dying captain. Carrying out instructions to deliver the packet, he is torn from his sweetheart, Mercedes, and imprisoned in the grim Chateau d’lf on a trumped-up charge. The machinations of three enemies—de Villefort, Danglars and Mondega, who seek the hand of Mercedes—results in Dantes being declared dead. The film is good from all standards, and one experiences something of the atmosphere that Dumas instilled into his immortal story. “ The Count of Monte Cristo ” has been so well adapted to the screen that it carries the audience with it from the first exciting incidents. It is excellently photographed, and the work of the producer has skillfully blended and compressed the romance and adventures of more than twenty years into a comparatively short time. Good supports are also screened.