The Three Musketeers

The Three Musketeers (1973) is a swashbuckling adventure-comedy directed by Richard Lester that you can watch online on iFILM. Michael York plays a thoroughly unglamorous D'Artagnan — clumsy, easily duped, and hopelessly out of his depth — opposite Oliver Reed as Athos, Richard Chamberlain as Aramis, and Frank Finlay as Porthos. Faye Dunaway and Christopher Lee round out a cast that reads like a 1970s Hollywood reunion.

Lester threw out the romantic version of Dumas. The duels here get interrupted by farm animals. The musketeers are mostly motivated by drink, money, and women — loyalty to the Crown comes third, if that. The action was shot with real stunts and genuine physical chaos, which gives the film a grounded scrappiness missing from most period pieces.

Production left its own mark on cinema history: the material was originally one film, but the producers cut it into two separate releases without informing the cast — prompting a lawsuit from several actors. The continuation, The Four Musketeers, followed in 1974. Stream The Three Musketeers (1973) online on iFILM.