Bearing a superficial similarity to the 1884 Andre Dumas novel of the same name, the 1993 production of The Three Musketeers is the very definition of a Hollywood blockbuster of that time; an ensemble cast, non-stop action interspersed with witty wisecracks, and just a little bit of romance thrown in for good measure. Stir, and serve with a well-seasoned pop song to serve as an aperitif embedded into the trailer (and, to stretch the metaphor, to become a kind of faux-dégustation sprinkled within the score, to be finally presented as dessert during the credits; this was all standard ‘90s fare). It would not be a stretch to assume that it was a practical imitation of the massively successful 1991 film Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves which preceded it.
Naturally, as I was in my mid-teens at the time, the most appealing character to me was the edgelord Athos, one of the titular musketeers, whose sullen demeanour and irascible irritability reminded me enough of my ideated self to overlook the film’s many other flaws. Kiefer Sutherland was at that moment of time straddled between his youthful era of stardom which had made his name—80s films like Stand By Me, Young Guns and, most of all for the 90s-credentialed, The Lost Boys—but was certainly still a good distance from his rugged Jack Bauer years.
Charlie Sheen—the top-billed performer in the film—was also at the height of his fame at the time, and it is easy to forget just how ubiquitous he was in the late 1980s, with Platoon (and a cameo in the cult favourite Ferris Bueller’s Day Off), Wall Street, Young Guns (also with Kiefer Sutherland), and Major League all in successive years. Watching Sheen act the penitent and well-spoken poet of the group seems utterly incongruous in light of his utterly bizarre real-life antics, his “tiger-blood” and “winning” themed Twitter-rants, multiple failed marriages and legal troubles (usually related to substance abuse).
The two actors who genuinely seem to have the most fun in the film are Oliver Platt, playing Porthos—as the film would have it, also the alliterative “Pirate”, a bit which to be fair does actually pay off—whose comedy relief is largely amusing, and the suave and ever-sultry Tim Curry, whose villainous Cardinal Richelieu grins, groans and leers in ways which sway uncomfortably between the charming and the lecherous (though usually the latter). Curry can also put on a British accent, still the go-to inflexion for any true villain even in 1993. I have little to say about Chris O’Donnell, whose D’Artagnan is plagued by the wrong combination of wide-eyed immaturity and cocksure imbecility in the pursuit of an equally-stupid sense of “honour”, all as irritating and bland as they are par for the course for this kind of material. Then, as now, I spend the entire film secretly wanting him to be taught a brutal and painful physical lesson by someone… anyone (Michael Wincott’s devilish Rochefort would be my first choice—the moment where he clocks D’Artagnan over the head with his own sword, and mutters, “idiot” under his breath is one of my personal favourites).
On the subject of stereotypical material, other than the Queen, her handmaiden, and Sabine, literally all the other women in the film who are not background extras are “wenches”, except for a married woman Aramis is instructing, from whose husband he must flee after she kisses him and they are caught in the act. There is not a single woman among all the musketeers, the cardinal’s guards (their enemies), nor even within the entire palace prison, so far as I could tell. Any argument to be made about “historicity” in that regard should be careful to note this film’s utter disdain for that principle, in more ways than simply the deviation from the source material, the accents of the protagonists, the costumes, or the film having been shot in Austria rather than France, or the delineation between the Musketeers of the Guard who were akin to a personal guard for the French monarch outside his estates and that of any regular soldier who wielded a musket (and was, hence, also a ‘musketeer’), for example. That there were not female members of the “historical” musketeers holds little contextual value as an argument.
So, most of the women in this film are literally insignificant. There is Queen Anne, around whom the boyish, insecure King Louis XIII is shy and reticent, and her handmaiden Constance, who pulls a musket on D’Artagnan after he assaults their bodyguards but quickly forgives him for that assault and says something along the lines of, “with that kind of bravery you will soon become [a musketeer]”. Neither have any character of their own (Anne worries for the King and about Richelieu’s evil ways, and Constance merely pines over D’Artagnan and wonders if she is in love with him). Both are, by design, insipid tokens of reward for male characters (though Queen Anne, more compelling than she ought to be judging by the script alone, is invested with a reserved dignity by Gabrielle Anwar). Sure enough, D’Artagnan wins his kiss from Constance, and the King is able to reassure his trembling wife, incapable and helpless, only after he has finally acted personally against Richelieu.
The meta-narrative is this: a male character acts with bravery or resolute action, completes their story arc, or retrieves the grail; here is your kiss, sir, representing the “love” of a woman who is your due “reward”. No doubt this is precisely the kind of symbolic transaction which has endowed a generation of men with a sense of entitlement in regard to women; “I have achieved this thing, engaged in appropriate chivalry, made sacrifices in the name of the so-called honour I have been told will reward me with the princess at the end of the story, so now I deserve to have her.” Not useful. But, I digress.
Because I admired Athos as a boy, I also enjoyed the backstory he tells about his “friend” (himself) who lost everything he cherished because of “love”. This reads, initially, as a cynical cautionary tale because Athos is still in pain himself, but as we see throughout the film he is not as hard-hearted as he seems (and nor is the subject of his betrayal). The tragic sub-plot (that is, their retaining feelings for one another but stubbornly refusing to acknowledge it) is absent from Les Troise Mousquetaires, and embellished for the film to give Athos some pathos. And, presumably, a reason for his being so sullen. In the novel, Milady de Winter (who is not known as Sabine as far as I can recall) is one hundred percent villainous femme fatale, without a shred of good character.
And so we come to that slippery backstory, the tale that Athos tells about the woman he loved who betrayed him by hiding her dishonourable past, and whom he in turn betrayed for fear that her stain would contaminate him. Rebecca de Mornay’s extraordinary character, Sabine, is the one exception to the two-dimensional tropes which the other female characters embody. She is the only woman in the film with real purpose, or character, since she has actual reason to behave the way she does, and perhaps because of her prominence in the Dumas novel, is an important part of the overarching narrative. She acts as an intermediary between Richelieu and the unseen Duke of Buckingham who, as Aramis notes, “rules England like the Cardinal rules France.”
Interestingly, in the novel Queen Anne is conducting a secret affair with Buckingham, and part of D’Artagnan’s task is to recover some jewels (if I remember rightly) in order to save her from the indignity of appearing at the King’s birthday celebration without them. This would reveal her infidelity and gift the Cardinal an opportunity to turn the King’s presumed dishonour into a war with England. In the film, Richelieu is simply plotting to kill Louis outright at the celebration and take his place on the throne (which is patently ridiculous given the nature of monarchy at the time, particularly in France, where we are precisely one generation away from Louis XIV, le Roi Soleil, who embraced divine right and whose famous “L’état, c’est moi”, or “I am the state” reflects his being perhaps the most striking example of absolute monarchy that ever existed. So take the Cardinal’s assumptions with a grain of salt). In this version, Milady de Winter is the chosen bearer of the written agreement between Richelieu and Buckingham.
Image: Disney
And so, she has agency. Milady de Winter, introduced early in the piece as a mysterious aide to the schemes of Cardinal Richelieu to further that purpose, is later drawn into the tragic story Aramis tells, when revealed as Sabine—the woman whom he abandoned when he saw the fleur-de-lis upon her shoulder, the brand of a criminal destined for execution. That Sabine had hidden it from him was her crime; his was an act of utter abandonment (in the novel he even hangs her, unsuccessfully it seems, so read into that what you will). The facet buried in this scenario which always interested me was that Aramis already knows he has done the wrong thing, and regrets it. Which, ironically, means the story is not tragic in the true sense of the word. He has actually learned from his error, even though he has not yet made amends.
De Mornay portrays Sabine/Milady with a remarkable range of approach depending on whose company she is in. We first see her as she is summoned to the chambers of the Cardinal Richelieu, whose very presence in most scenes is accentuated by a rumbling sound design which is quite effective at signalling his threat. Initially, she oozes sexual suggestion, to which Curry’s Cardinal slavishly—almost slobberingly—succumbs. Yet even here Milady de Winter is cognisant of her situation; she draws him in, threatens him with a knife (at which point her demeanour shifts, hardens, and freezes him out), and despite her aggression she still manages to please her erstwhile master. Seemingly unafraid of his power—or so drawn in by it she is willing to suppress that urge—she reveals herself to be remarkably formidable.
She stumbles across D’Artagnan by accident, takes a liking to him and has her servants—whom she regards with an aloof disdain—haul him into the carriage. When they first interact, she is wily enough to treat him with a tone which deftly treads the line between a fond, motherly innocence and, not unlike her smooth interaction with Richelieu, seductive lasciviousness. Yet underscoring her interaction with him is a firm tone of condescension; and rightly so.
Because D’Artagnan, our hopelessly naïve hero, awakens and immediately bumbles around like the largely helpless boy that he is (other than running, riding, pushing sacks of flour, and sword-fighting, he is useless at much else; during a chase, Aramis hands him a chest of gold to ‘distribute’ and yet has to explicitly instruct him to throw it overboard). In the hands of Sabine, he is quickly lured into revealing his secret mission to discover—hilariously—the “spy” right in front of him. A few meagre prods of his brittle vanity and she has him in her clutches.
Finally, once she is captured (by the musketeers; D’Artagnan is, again, a helpless idiot throughout), we have her third demeanour revealed: her true self. In this aspect, she engages with Athos, the betrayer who she once loved. Now, with all pretence gone and no need to threaten or seduce, her face is one of stoic defiance. She has struggled to survive, using what means she has, and survived she has. Quietly enraged, she is filled with tearful indignation toward Athos, and despite his pleas for her to reveal the Cardinal’s plan, she maintains her dignity and hisses, “I shall take my secret to the grave.” Stone-faced, she refuses to yield even to the man she once loved. People rave about Tim Curry’s performance in this film, but Rebecca de Mornay is the film’s true star.
I cannot help (and not merely because of the Principle) but compare Sabine to the Roman god Janus; two-faced, most famously, but also a god of beginnings and journeys, as well as of doorways and transitions. Sabine is present at the beginning of the film, and first seen by D’Artagnan through a doorway. She re-emerges at the critical point where the protagonist is on an important journey (D’Artagnan is captured by Milady de Winter as he is returning to Paris to warn the King of the plot against him), and is essential to the narrative transitions of the film. She literally carries the means by which both the villain, in Richelieu, can succeed as well as the proof the musketeers require in order to prove his villainy. All turns on Sabine.
One of the founding myths of Janus (after whom the month of January is named, incidentally) is turning the waters of a spring near Rome from cold to boiling hot—arguably a potent symbol of duality and changing loyalties—in order to delay an army of a nearby city from exacting its revenge and obtaining justice. And who are these vengeful people? The Sabines. So too does Sabine turn hot, then cold; she also prevents the musketeers from exacting justice against Richelieu.
Sabine has become a villain because of the indignant rejection of her lover; she is exiled and forced to fend for herself, and in doing so murders Lord de Winter, taking his title and fending off the revenge his brother seeks. In both cases, the vengeance sought is righteous, even though what triggered the wrongdoing was enacted out of necessity (in Sabine’s case, survival in exile; in Rome’s case, a need for women to breed another generation of Romans).
Like Janus, Sabine is two-faced, though figuratively rather than literally. Arguably, even more than that; she alters her demeanour like a mask, using flattery and guile and seduction with equal measure and ease. In Roman culture, the temple of Janus Geminus was required to be open in times of war (and it was a mark of pride to many kings and emperors of Rome that they were able to keep it closed); in a similar fashion, Sabine represents this catalyst for war; she literally carries the means of engaging an alliance between Richelieu and Buckingham which, according to the film, would start a war which would presumably benefit both (the subtext being that they might each be able to wrest the throne from a weak ruler during such trying times). She is open to this violent game, but she has the power to close the door through which Richelieu wants to pass and in doing so restore peace.
Sabine has a further connection to the conflict between Rome and the people who bear her name: a figure called Tarpeia. During the conflict, Tarpeia—the daughter of a Roman commander—opened the door to her father’s citadel to allow the Sabines entry by night; it is said she was in love with the Sabine king, Titus Tatius. The Tarpeian Rock on the Capitoline Hill in Rome was later named for her; traitors and murderers were flung to death from that precipice. Milady de Winter is similarly engaged in an effort to win a war by hidden means, and yet ultimately her betrayal has come about because of a love she can not recover.
She acts as she does initially because her lover spurned her. When confronted by Athos as she attempts to flee the trap laid for her by the musketeers, he demands she reveal the means by which the Cardinal will attempt to betray the King. Like some cowled medusa, her gaze is stone, and she simply declares, “no.” When he threatens to kill her with his musket, she retorts “be kind; aim for my heart.” Later, when imprisoned, she is visited by Athos and asks him bitterly, “what has this world ever done for me?” as her eyes swell with rage and resentment, and fill with tears. And yet, when finally brought to the cliff where she is due to be executed, at the very last moment Athos runs to her and begs forgiveness; she immediately does so, and reveals to him the Cardinal’s plot. Her facade shifts, one last time, to resigned exhaustion.
As if from the Tarpeian Rock itself, she then turns and flings herself from the cliff into the surf far below. The wronged brother states something like “god’s will be done”, but it is ironic: even in the face of death, it is her will enacted and she takes her fate into her own hands. Milady de Winter, Sabine, remains dignified even in disgrace, to her very end.