Very best movie i ever watch

hyped garbage

Admirable film.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

"The Man in the Iron Mask", from the pen of Alexandre Dumas is a rousing adventure featuring treachery, double crossing with swash buckling aplenty thrown in.In the mid 16th century, twin sons are born to King Louis XIII (Albert Dekker) of France. Only one can be heir to the throne. The birth of the second twin is to be kept a secret. Only the king, the mid wife, doctor and faithful servant Colbert (Walter Kingsfprd) are in on the secret. But alas Cardinal's messenger, the ambitious Fouquet (Joseph Schildkraut) overhears the secret while in hiding. The King calls for his loyal guard D'Artagnon (Warren William) and charges him with the raising of the second twin named Phillippe.Fast forward twenty years and Twin no. 1 has become King Louis XIV (Louis Hayward) who has been over taxing the people while conducting a reign of terror. Phillippe (also Hayward) has become the swash buckling adopted son of D'Artagnon and the Three Musketeers, Porthos (Alan Hale), Aramis (Miles Mander) and Athos (Bert Roach).Louis is to marry Spanish princess Maria Theresa (Joan Bennett) for political purposes. Meanwhile Louis has a mistress Mlle. de la Valliere (Marion Martin) on the side. Phillipe and the Musketeers are arrested by the King's guards (Harry Woods, Peter Cushing). They are brought before the King where Louis and Phillippe discover that they are twin brothers a fact that is verified by their mother Queen Anne (Doris Kenyon).Louis meanwhile has learned of plot to assassinate him while attending a religious ceremony at the Cathedral. Louis decides to send Phillippe in his place while the Musketeers remain imprisoned. Phillippe meets Maria Theresa and she is smitten with his kindness and attitude toward the people unaware the he is not the King. When she again meets with Louis, she is confused by his sudden return to ruthlessness. At one point she decides to return to Spain but Fouquet murders her courier and she is forced to remain.Louis sees that his brother is a threat to the throne and decides to have him executed. Colbert, convinces him that he cannot do so because of tradition and their likeness. With Foubert's help. Louis devises an iron mask to be placed on Phillippe's head with the hope that his growing beard will eventually choke him. He is then cast into the Bastille on a life sentence.Meantime, the Musketeers manage to escape from the Bastille and set about to free Phillippe. In a touch of irony they manage to exchange Louis for Phillippe with Louis being placed in the iron mask. However, Fouquet learns of this and sends his guard (under Lane Chandler), to free Louis. Princess Maria Theresa meanwhile has learned of the true identity of Phillippe and pledges him her love.In a showdown with Louis and Fouquet, Phillippe and the musketeers are forced to engage in a battle to the death with superior forces and.........................................................This film was one of many versions of the Dumas story. It had been filmed as "The Iron Mask" in 1929 as Douglas Fairbanks final silent. Louis Hayward is surprisingly adept in the dual role of the twins. Joseph Schildkraut makes a slimy hissable villain. Joan Bennett looks beautiful as the heroine but has little else to do. Warren William while no Fairbanks, acquits himself well as D'Artagnon. The other Musketeers are largely in the background.Watch for veteran silent villain Montagu Love as the Spanish Ambassador and horror veteran Dwight Frye as Fouquet's valet.

Fast-paced version of A. Dumas' complicated tale of intrigue, power, love, kinship and whatnot in the court of Louis XIV in the mid 1700s. When I say complicated, I mean complicated.Louis XIII (Albert Dekker in a tiny role) is King of France and needs an heir to the throne. To his dismay, his feckless wife gives birth to twins. Well, you can't have TWO heirs to the throne, so the younger of the two babies, Philippe (who grows up to be Louis Hayward), is sent packing to be adopted and raised by D'Artingnan, one of the original four musketeers, now living in the boondocks. No one must know of his true identity, says Dekker -- besides himself, his wife, his trusted adviser Colbert (Walter Kingsford), and D'Artagnan himself. There is a slight problem because the Queen was attended by a doctor and midwife. "Too bad there is no D'Artagnon for the doctor and the midwife," remarks Kingsford a little sadly, before having them dispatched, and the audience is permitted to shake its head in sympathy.The good King passes on, pari passu, where one hopes he's lucky enough to run into the souls of the departed doctor and midwife.Then it REALLY gets anfractuous. There's a lot of whispering, plenty of secrets, men tip-toeing behind screens to eavesdrop, a face listening on the other side of the door, one of those keys that is worn around the neck and must be stolen while its owner sleeps, secret passages under the palace, the gallop of pursuing horses behind the desperately fleeing stagecoach, the fencing mêlée, the impostor mistaken for the real thing, the confused mail-order Spanish bride out of "The Prisoner of Zenda." The Louis Hayward who has become King of France is a real mean son of gun. His staring eyes pop. His mouth is shaped into a half-mad grin. When someone challenges his authority he leaps to his feet and shouts "L'Etat, C'est moi!" in English. I wonder if he really said that. I thought the conviction was limited to American presidents. Come to think of it, Joseph Schildkraut plays the oily Fouqet, toady to the venomous King, and he says, "In this case, we must all hang together, or we will most assuredly hang separately." I never read Dumas' novel, only flipped through it when I was a child, looking for risqué parts. But I don't believe Dumas wrote that. I think it was an American who said it, maybe Benjamin Franklin or Abe Lincoln. Do I have to Google it? Well -- if you insist. (Franklin.) Joseph Schildkraut probably gives the best performance. He's outrageous but it's in keeping with the nature of the plot and the tempo of its presentation. There are many other familiar names in the cast -- Schildkraut was perhaps better known in the theater than on the screen, though he was quite good as Anne Frank's father -- but the roles are rather small.Enough digression. Let me wind up that abstract of the plot. The bad Louis Hayward winds up drowning while wearing the iron mask he'd fashioned for his brother. (That mask is a pretty hideous artifact too.) The good Louis Hayward assumes the other's identity, marries the beautiful Spanish princess, repeals all taxes, cleanses the money-grubbing banks of their miscreant scum, outlaws smoking of tobacco in any form but permits marijuana, decrees that all citizens over 40 are now UNDER 40 so no Social Security or Medicare payments will be necessary, takes a vow of poverty even at the expense of his marriage, and goes about washing the naked feet of beggars in Paris.James Whale, the bisexual Englishman, directed it all with an entertaining dash you might not have expected from the man who brought us "Frankenstein."

James Whale's version of the Dumas story is a very good swashbuckler.Lois Hayward plays the twin brothers, one the insane king of France and the other a boy raised by D'Artagnan of three musketeers fame. Hayward is excellent in the roles though his King is probably on the short list of 25 most evil screen portraits. The story was most recently remade with Leonardo DiCaprio to mixed results. The movie is a great deal of fun thanks in part to Whale's sense of the absurd such as when D'Artagnan (The always wonderful Warren William) pretends to be a servant to throw off some pursuers. Definitely worth a bucket of popcorn.

There have been many versions over the years of the fanciful story, "The Man in the Iron Mask," the most recent one being the 1998 film starring Leonardo di Caprio. Back in the late 1970s, Richard Chamberlain took a stab at it, with highly entertaining results.This particular version was directed to great effect by the talented James Whale, who gives us a fast, energetic, and athletic telling of the story of twins separated at birth, one who will be King of France and one who does not know that he is royalty. The twins are played by Louis Hayward, Joan Bennett is Maria Theresa, Josef Schildkraut is Fouquet, and Warren William leads the Musketeers as D'Artagnan. As one post on this board mentions, the Musketeers are getting up there in age here; Alan Hale, Miles Mander, and Bert Roach are the heroic swordsmen and friends.It's important always that a good actor plays twins so that they have different personalities. This often is not the case. One may be mean and one may be good, but they talk the same, look the same, act the same etc. Louis Hayward does a fantastic job in his dual roles. As the arrogant King, he is foppish, cruel, dismissive and lustful. As Philip of Gascony, he is gentle and unassuming with a very different demeanor and even a different vocal timber. Hayward was a very smooth actor. It's not exactly clear what happened to his career and why he ended up in the '60s doing spaghetti westerns. Apparently this film set him up for a resume of playing twins, which he gamely did, finally becoming a very successful producer.Although she was no match in acting for Vivien Leigh, anyone who has seen the "Gone With the Wind" screen tests knows what a beautiful Scarlett Joan Bennett would have made. She's stunning here as the confused Maria Theresa in glorious costumes, with her serene smile, porcelain skin and beautiful bone structure. Warren William, an early leading man who was the movie Perry Mason, is very likable and does well with the athletic sword fighting as D'Artagnan. Having been a leading man when talkies began, by this time he was moving into character roles. With his pencil-thin mustache, he was a familiar presence in films until his death in 1948 at the age of 54.This is a wonderful movie, a nice remembrance of the good old Hollywood period pieces, when they really knew how to do them. Look for a young Peter Cushing as a King's messenger.