Cardinal Richelieu - Film Portrayals

Film Portrayals

The International Movie Data Base currently (November 2010) lists ninety-one films and television programs in which Cardinal Richelieu is a character. Richelieu is one of the clergymen most frequently portrayed in film, notably in the many versions of Alexandre Dumas's The Three Musketeers. He is usually portrayed as a sinister character, but the 1950 Cyrano de Bergerac showed him (in a scene not from Rostand's original verse drama), as compassionate to Cyrano's financial plight, and playfully having enjoyed the duel at the theatre.

Cardinal Richelieu, a semi-fictional treatment of incidents in his career was made in 1935 with George Arliss in the role. It was based on the play, "Richelieu", by Edward Bulwer-Lytton, which had Richelieu utter the famous line, "The pen is mightier than the sword."

Raymond Massey played Richelieu in Under the Red Robe (1937), based on Stanley J. Weyman's swashbuckling novel of the same title.

Poet Christopher Logue portrayed Richelieu in the Ken Russell film, The Devils (1971), based on Aldous Huxley's The Devils of Loudun. He is depicted as cruel and scheming, the true power behind the throne, and also as wheelchair-bound, although at the time of the events depicted, Richelieu was not bed-ridden, as he later became.

Christoph Waltz played Richelieu in the 2011 film The Three Musketeers.

Other portrayals include:

  • Nigel de Brulier in the silent films The Three Musketeers (1921) and The Iron Mask (1929), and talkie remakes The Three Musketeers (1935) and The Man in the Iron Mask (1939).
  • Vincent Price in the film The Three Musketeers (1948), albeit stripped of the title and rainments of Cardinal.
  • Edgar Barrier in the 1950 film Cyrano de Bergerac. As noted above, the role was especially created for this film version.
  • Richard Pasco in the British television series "The Three Musketeers" (1966)
  • Charlton Heston in the films The Three Musketeers (1973) and The Four Musketeers (1974), with a portrait of him appearing in The Return of the Musketeers (1989)
  • Aleksander Trofimov in D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers (1978)
  • Richelieu is a major figure in the cartoon Dogtanian and the Three Muskehounds. He was voiced by Rafael de Penagos (in the original Spanish version) and Kerry Mahan (in the English-language version).
  • Richelieu is one of the key protaginists in Albert the Fifth Musketeer, also known as Albert le Cinquième Mousquetaire, an animated series. He is voiced by Bernard Dhéran in the original French version.
  • The Cardinal is also a recurring character in the anime adaptation of Dumas' novels. He was voiced by Nobuo Tanaka.
  • Umberto Eco's novel The Island of the Day Before (1995) (L'isola del giorno prima, 1994), a story about a 17th-century nobleman marooned across the international date line
  • Tim Curry in the film The Three Musketeers (1993) This film, in a major departure from both history and Alexandre Dumas' work, depicts Richelieu as trying to overthrow and assassinate Louis XIII.
  • Michael Praed in the television series The Secret Adventures of Jules Verne (2000)
  • Stephen Rea in the film The Musketeer (2001)
  • Christoph Waltz in the film The Three Musketeers (2011)
  • In the first series of Monty Python's Flying Circus, a surrealist-comic courtroom scene featured Michael Palin playing Cardinal Richelieu as a character witness for the defendant; the character was subsequently shown to be a Cardinal Richelieu impersonator. In a later episode, the cardinal again played Michael Palin, is shortly seen doing an impersonation of Petula Clark singing "Don't Sleep in the Subway". The opening of the first series also featured the painting "Portrait of Cardinal Richelieu" by Philippe de Champaigne, with the Cardinal Richelieu cut-out riding a unicycle chasing a woman.
  • The children's PBS series "Wishbone" adapted Dumas's novel as "Muttketeer!", featuring the series' titular dog hero as D'Artagnan, with Kevin Page as the Cardinal.
  • Michael Shallard in the Doctor Who audio drama The Church and the Crown.
  • Appears in the Dinosaur King anime second season for a few episodes as an antagonist.

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