Review: The Count of Monte Cristo
In the early 1800s, Sidney Blackmer’s dastardly Count Fernand de Mondego lusts after Mercedes (Elissa Lanndi), the fiancé of Edmond Dantes (Robert Donat), the first officer of a French merchant ship. The captain of the ship (Lawrence Grant) is handed a letter from the exiled Napoleon, and at the moment of his death he hands this letter to Dantes. City magistrate Raymond de Villefort (Louis Calhern) realises that his father – the aforementioned ship’s captain – has aided the exiled Napoleon, and conspires to frame Dantes for the crime instead. He does this with the cooperation of the scheming Count and a third man named Danglars (Raymond Walburn), the ship’s ambitious second officer. Dantes is jailed, and an unawares Mercedes ends up married to the Count, having been told that Dantes died in prison. O.P. Heggie plays Dantes’ only company in his island prison stay. There Dantes stews and seethes for years, planning his revenge. A top-drawer cast delivers in this classic 1934 sc...