The Three Musketeers (1942 film)

Plot

Cantinflas and three friends return a stolen necklace to an actress who invites them to be extras at Clasa studios. While on the set, he falls asleep and dreams that he is d'Artagnan, fighting on behalf of Queen Anne.

Cast

Production

Posa films hired the European designer Manolo Fontanals to create a replica of the court of King Louis XIII and imported costumes from Hollywood.

Critical reception

The use of foreign storylines was an attempt to appeal to audiences outside of Mexico and the rest of Latin America, but the largely improvised humor depended not on parodying the work in question, but on physical humor and improvisations based on speech patterns local to Mexico. Critic Emilio García Riera opined, "One could frankly say that the comic had not read The Three Musketeers, and that, without a clear idea of what he should be parodying, resorted to [jokes] of sure effect."

The conservative newspaper La Nación thought Los tres mosqueteros was Moreno's finest work, elevating the impoverished pelado to the rank of nobility through his service to the royal family.

The film was screened at the 1946 Cannes Film Festival, where it disappointed critics. The French people themselves were not as hostile, seeing in Moreno a Mexican version of their own Fernandel.

Luis Garrido, a contemporary journalist, saw Moreno's failure to earn the approval of the French film elite as the result of the diversion of his energies into union struggles and politics.