Les Trois Mousquetaires (1921)
Henri Diamant-Berger's 1921 French serial is, by wide critical consensus, among the very closest screen adaptations of Dumas's novel ever produced. Reviewers and film historians single it out specifically for retaining "almost everything from Dumas's novel," a rare claim for any film version given the source material's length and density.
Length as an Advantage the Novel Almost Demands
Unlike the vast majority of adaptations, which must compress a nearly 700-page novel into a two-hour feature, this production had roughly four hours across fourteen episodes to work with, closer to the space a thorough adaptation of Dumas's plot requires. This extra runtime lets the film retain subplots and secondary characters that virtually every other adaptation on this site cuts for time, including a fuller treatment of the court intrigue surrounding Queen Anne and the political maneuvering between Richelieu and the crown.
A National Take, Made Before Hollywood's Version
Released the same year as Douglas Fairbanks's American version, this French production predates the American film's own release and gave French audiences a home-country telling of their own national literary classic, with a French cast working from a French novel rather than a Hollywood star vehicle. Contemporary reviewers comparing the two consistently favor this version's greater fidelity to the text, even while acknowledging the Fairbanks film's superior athletic showmanship and larger production budget.
Where It Still Compresses
Even at four hours, the film reportedly simplifies and abbreviates certain sections, specifically d'Artagnan's courtship of Kitty (Milady's maid) and Milady's manipulation of Felton, both handled with more narrative economy than Dumas's original chapters allow. Reviewers have also noted the film sometimes removes suspense by revealing plot developments more directly than the novel's own more withholding narration, and devotes real screen time to comic relief involving the servants (Planchet, Grimaud, Bazin, Mousqueton) that, while present in the novel, receives proportionally more attention here than in most later, shorter adaptations.
A Direct Sequel the Same Year
The production's popularity led to an adaptation of Twenty Years After released the following year, giving this early French version something most adaptations on this site lack: a real continuation carrying its cast into the sequel novel, mirroring the way this site's own d'Artagnan Romances trilogy continues the same characters across decades.
A Sound Remake With the Same Cast
Diamant-Berger returned to the material in 1932 (sometimes cited as 1933) with a sound remake using largely the same cast, including Aimé Simon-Girard reprising d'Artagnan; see this site's dedicated comparison page for that version.
A Landmark of Early French Serial Filmmaking
At the time of its release, this production represented a truly ambitious undertaking for the French film industry, still recovering from wartime disruption during the First World War, a fourteen-episode serial of this scale and budget signaled real confidence in cinema's ability to tackle a nation's most beloved literary property with appropriate scope, rather than settling for a compressed, lower-budget treatment.
Read the source material in full at The Three Musketeers.