A Modern Monte Cristo

Newly engaged Vincent Serrano is a young surgeon who tells his friends that he has been offered five thousand pounds if a rich old lady does not survive her operation. When she does not, he is arrested for murder. A year later, having escaped by faking his suicide, he reads that his old friend, Thomas A. Curran has married his ex-fiancee, and all is clear. He vows his vengeance. Ten years go by; Curran is a widower with Helen Badgley his daughter. He owns rotting hulks of merchant ships, overinsures them and sends them out to be destroyed. Serrano is a deckhand. Miss Badgley falls into a hold, whence she is rescued and tended by Serrano. A storm wrecks the ship, but the two of them make it to an island, where Serrano finds many valuable pearls. When they are rescued, Miss Badgley is returned to her father, while Serrano becomes.... well, guess from the title.

It's a well-produced melodrama from Thanhouser's last year of existence, with their typically fine production values and fixed camera. The print I saw is nicely and variously tinted. Lloyd Lonergan, Edward Thanhouser's brother-in-law and house writer has a fine time converting Dumas' sprawling novel into 56 minutes -- although there are a couple of obvious plot holes: how did Serrano fake his suicide while in custody? How did he get off that island?

The big problem with this movie is Serrano. The man was a seasoned actor, in his early 50s when he made this movie. He had made it to Broadway in 1900, and would continue to act there until 1928. He made eight other features from 1915 through 1920, albeit usually in supporting roles. Yet he doesn't act in this movie, from the beginning, when he is a man about to be married, relaxing with his friends, to the end, when his stony heart melts.

Was Serrano a poor actor? Did director Eugene Moore tell him the camera picks up every emotion, so he needed to hold it down, and he overdid it? Was he a "real" actor who only did movies because they offered huge sums of money for tripe? Well, at least Helen Badgley is good.

That this take on the novel "The Count of Monte Cristo" by Alexandre Dumas updates the tale is a mixed blessing. Although the Thanhouser company that produced it had a reputation for literary adaptations, it was a minor studio that lacked the resources to make the sort of spectacle usually expected of the popular story or to translate the complex and hefty text cinematically. Plus, the last two times it had been adapted to screen, it was the subject of a lawsuit between studios that probably hurt both of their bottom lines (see the history of the 1913 "The Count of Monte Cristo" and, by extension, that of the 1912 production). On the other hand, Thanhouser's modern retelling is very bad, with plot holes abounding, action sequences at sea without the budget apparently to produce them, and a creepy relationship between a girl and her "doctor-man." On the surviving print, even the title is partly misspelled in a partly Anglicized fashion as "A Modern Monte Christo" (surviving promotional material and newspaper accounts spell "Cristo" correctly, though).

Yet, its failure cannot be entirely blamed on studio finances, as Thanhouser did a fine job of modernizing Oscar Wilde's novel, "The Picture of Dorian Gray" (1915). Their prior short "The Evidence of the Film" (1913) is fully deserving of its inclusion on the National Film Registry. The best thing about "A Modern Monte Cristo," however, may be that it's so poorly written and constructed that it's kind of amusing. Jennifer L. Jenkins ("The Spectacle of Monte Cristo," printed in "French Literature on Screen") calls it, "A fast-paced gallimaufry of The Adventures of Dolly, The Tempest, and Robinson Crusoe, with a pearl-rich oysterbed and a Wright Brothers-era airplane." While I rather agree with that summary, it does flatter the sloppy mess that's all over the place within its under-an-hour runtime.

In this one, the Count is replaced by a Dr. Emerson, who assumed the identity of a General Fonsca of Brazil after he's betrayed by his friend and romantic competition, William Deane, who plays a combination of the parts of Fernand and Danglers, as well as some of Villefort, from the book. The doctor is arrested for a crime he didn't commit. The next scene reveals via a newspaper that--somehow--the doctor faked his suicide sometime after the arrest and that, a year later, his fiancée has married his rival, Deane. We never see the woman these men have fought over, though, as we're informed she died at some point. Just as suddenly, it appears that Deane is a single father with a child of obviously more than one year of age.

While dad somehow makes money from sinking ships, the little girl wanders off in "Adventures of Dolly" routine--eventually knocking herself unconscious aboard one of those doomed sea vessels. Through another inexplicable case of poor storytelling, the doctor is now a sailor on his enemy's ship and so ends up saving the girl's life. But, wait, a storm lands the girl and her "doctor-man" on a deserted island. He discovers the pearls, which I guess must've been worth a lot more back then, because their extraction supposedly will make him the richest man in Brazil. After a biplane discovers the two on the island, he sends the test pilots off with her and a note to her father, Deane, that he will exact his revenge through her. How does he plan to exact this revenge exactly? How does he even get off the island when rescuers who come back for him can't find him? Who knows.

The first part of the doctor-turned-general's plans, it seems, involve waiting for the girl to grow up, get into a meet-cute with a guy whose dog steals their clothes while her and her friend are skinny dipping, and then to have that guy kidnapped and trapped upon one of Deane's sinking ships so that the girl ends up marrying her "doctor-man." Yeah, I don't get it, either, but it seems disturbingly elaborate. To be fair, so did the Count of Monte Cristo's plans. Difference is, though, that Dumas had the care to follow through on his intricate plot. These filmmakers, on the other hand, skip over integral parts of the story--and with too many iris openings and closings as transitions--and, yet, still include a flashback to that skinny-dipping scene in the very scene that follows it. That's just a careless lack of craft.

In selecting a plot of Dumas' to modernize, Floyd Lonergan, the author of "A Modern Monte Cristo," made sure that his model was of the best. The five-reel Thanhouser-Pathé Gold Rooster play in which Vincent Serrano is the central figure is by no means the peer of its celebrated prototype; but, nevertheless, it has distinct merits of its own. The spirit of revenge which animates the actions of Edmund Dantes is also the cause of this later day Monte Cristo's activities during the progress of the Lonergan play. Made an outcast and deprived of the woman he loves by his rival, a young doctor of exceptional promise devotes his life to squaring accounts with the man who worked his downfall. Chance places the young daughter of his rival in Dr. Emerson's hands after she has been injured, and he saves her life. When the child reaches womanhood, Emerson, now a man of great wealth, is bent upon causing her father's financial ruin and taking a terrible revenge upon the girl. Her trust in him defeats his purpose and wrings his better nature to the fore. The variety of incident and scene that is such a potent factor in the scenes of the French romance is utilized in "A Modern Monte Cristo." The ship used in the picture is not very impressive, but the struggle in the water of Emerson and the child after the shipwreck contains a real thrill. Vincent Serrano gives a good account of himself in the character of Dr. Emerson and plays with the requisite melodramatic touch. Helen Badgley is a courageous youngster and exhibits an uncommon spirit of daring; she is also a clever little actress. Thomas Curran, Gladys Dorr and Boyd Marshall help to sustain the picture at an excellent acting level. E. Eugene Moore directed the production. – The Moving Picture World, February 3, 1917