The Question
Full spoilers ahead for the whole novel, ending included. If you want to read it fresh, pause here and come back.
You searched for the Count of Monte Cristo movie, so here is my plan. We have not watched the French film, and I will not pretend we have. What we did was read the book, all one hundred and seventeen chapters, so I can tell you exactly what happens on the page. Then I will give you only the film facts that two outlets agree on, labelled reported. The book ends with two lovers on an island shore and two words: wait and hope.
The Film
First the film, as of October twenty twenty-six. It is called Le Comte de Monte-Cristo. Alexandre de La Patelliere and Matthieu Delaporte directed it and wrote the screenplay, and Pierre Niney plays Edmond Dantes. Anais Demoustier is reported as Mercedes, Anamaria Vartolomei as Haydee, Julien de Saint Jean as Andrea, and Pierfrancesco Favino is in the cast.
It premiered at Cannes on May twenty-second, twenty twenty-four, and Pathe released it in France on June twenty-eighth. Listings give a running time near three hours, one hundred and seventy-three or one hundred and seventy-eight minutes depending on the site. The United States release is reported as December twentieth, twenty twenty-four.
Is it faithful? Two outlets say not line by line. A Screen International critic is reported as calling it true to the spirit but not entirely true to the story, and Eye for Film says it trims the novel’s many intrigues. Which scenes changed, we do not know, so I will not guess. The rest of this video is the book side, which you can use as a checklist.
Marseilles, Eighteen Fifteen
The book opens on the twenty-fourth of February, eighteen fifteen, with a ship coming home to Marseilles. Edmond Dantes is nineteen, the acting captain of the Pharaon, about to be made captain and about to marry Mercedes.
Three men want that stopped. Danglars, the ship’s accountant, wants the captaincy. Fernand loves Mercedes. Caderousse, a neighbour, is too drunk to say no. In chapter four Danglars writes a denunciation with his left hand so nobody recognises the writing. Years later Caderousse says Fernand posted it, in chapter twenty-seven.
Dantes is arrested at his own wedding feast. The deputy prosecutor, Villefort, thinks he is innocent until he sees a letter from Elba addressed to Villefort’s own father, a Bonapartist. In chapter seven he burns it in front of Dantes. In chapter eight, Dantes is sent to the Chateau d’If. Meanwhile his old father starves, as Caderousse tells it in chapter twenty-seven, and nobody comes to help.
Fourteen Years
In the cell next door lives the Abbe Faria, who has been digging toward freedom. He spends years teaching Dantes, works out who betrayed him, and tells him about Cardinal Spada’s treasure on the island of Monte Cristo. The text puts it at two million Roman crowns, nearly thirteen million francs.
Faria dies. Dantes takes the dead man’s place in the burial sack and is thrown into the sea. The text says it is fourteen years to the day since his arrest, the twenty-eighth of February, eighteen twenty-nine. He was nineteen when he went in and thirty-three when he escaped.
Here is my first count. The prison chapters, eight to twenty-one, are fourteen chapters, one for each year. By my word count they are about eleven percent of the book. The long revenge is still ahead of him, and he has no idea yet how big his fortune will be.
The Count Arrives
Dantes finds the treasure in chapters twenty-three and twenty-four. Then he comes back in disguises: the Abbe Busoni, Lord Wilmore, Sinbad the Sailor, and in the end, the Count of Monte Cristo. First he pays a debt of kindness. The shipowner Morrel, who tried to save him, is about to be ruined, and in chapter thirty a purse arrives with a receipted bill and a diamond, labelled as a dowry for his daughter Julie.
Then the text jumps to the year eighteen thirty-eight. In Rome, a young Parisian named Albert de Morcerf is kidnapped by bandits, and the Count frees him. Albert invites him to Paris, and chapter forty is the breakfast where Paris meets him.
My count says thirty-six percent of the words come before that breakfast. And Albert is Fernand’s son. The Count has just walked into his enemy’s house, as a guest.
Caderousse and Fernand
Now the fates, in the order they fall. Caderousse is first. He took a diamond from the Count in disguise, and greed sent him to the galleys for life, in Bertuccio’s story. He escapes, and in chapter eighty-two he tries to rob the Count’s house. A young man the Count has been grooming, who calls himself Andrea, stabs him as he leaves. In chapter eighty-three the dying Caderousse learns who the Count really is. The Count says one, as if ticking off a list.
Fernand is next, and his weapon is Haydee, who is the daughter of Ali Pasha of Yanina. A French officer sold the pasha’s family to a slave merchant, and the officer was Fernand. Her testimony in the Chamber of Peers, chapter eighty-six, brings a unanimous guilty verdict, for felony, treason and conduct unbecoming a member of the House.
Albert challenges the Count to a duel. Mercedes begs for her son’s life, and the Count agrees to die himself. Albert apologises on the field. Then Fernand confronts the Count, hears the name Edmond Dantes, and in chapter ninety-two a shot rings out as Mercedes and Albert leave.
Villefort and Danglars
Villefort is destroyed from inside his own house. Poison keeps appearing there, and his wife is the poisoner. Then Andrea turns out to be Villefort’s son, the baby he thought he buried alive. In chapter one hundred and ten, at the trial, Andrea names his father in open court, and Villefort resigns.
Chapter one hundred and eleven is the cruellest. His wife has poisoned herself and their little boy, and Villefort goes mad, digging in the garden. The Count, shaken, decides he has gone beyond vengeance.
Danglars is hurt where he is proudest, his bank. The Count shows up in chapter forty-six with letters of credit worth six million francs a year, and Danglars grants him unlimited credit. then bleeds him with a false telegraph message about Spain, chapters sixty and sixty-one, and bad bets, and in chapter one hundred and four draws five million francs of hospital money. Danglars flees to Rome, and bandits keep him hungry. A fowl costs one hundred thousand francs. In chapter one hundred and sixteen the Count says he forgives him, and Danglars walks free with fifty thousand francs and white hair.
How the Book Ends
Valentine, Villefort’s daughter, loves Maximilian Morrel. The Count helps her fake her own death with a drug, and Maximilian thinks she is gone. The Count tells him in chapter one hundred and five who he really is, and asks him to wait one month.
Albert gives up his father’s name and fortune and joins the army, and the Count watches his ship sail for Algiers. The Count leaves Paris after less than six months. He visits Mercedes at Marseilles, and they say farewell, with her pointing toward heaven. He sails away with Haydee. On the fifth of October, Maximilian arrives on the island of Monte Cristo, and Valentine appears alive.
The Count’s letter gives them the treasure. It ends with the words wait and hope, which the final chapter repeats. The last thing we see is a white sail on the horizon. That is the ending to watch for in the film.
A Watch List
So here is a watch list from the book, five checks for the film. One, the prison. The book gives fourteen years, and the reports I found do not agree on the film’s figure, so check it.
Two, the letter. In the book Villefort burns a letter addressed to his own father. Three, Andrea. In the book he is Villefort’s son, and he says so in public. Four, Haydee. In the book she is the proof that destroys Fernand.
Five, the last scene. The book ends with the Count gone, a white sail, and wait and hope. If the film changes any of those, then you have found a real difference, and you can tell me in the comments.
What I Counted
Now my numbers. I counted names across chapters one to one hundred and seventeen, case insensitive, headings included. Villefort appears about one thousand and ninety times. Danglars appears about nine hundred and twenty, Caderousse about four hundred and twenty, and Morcerf about three hundred and ninety.
Dantes appears about seven hundred and thirty times, and Monte Cristo about one thousand and sixty, island included. The name he chose outweighs the name he was born with. The words vengeance and revenge appear thirty-eight and thirty-seven times. Poison appears ninety-seven times, in eighteen chapters. The whole book is about four hundred and sixty-eight thousand words, roughly thirty-one hours of reading at two hundred and fifty words a minute. Volume two is the longest, at about one hundred and eleven thousand words. Volume five is the shortest, at about seventy-three thousand, so the revenge speeds up as the book ends. A film of about three hours can only hold a slice of that.
So my view, which is an opinion draft: if you want the story in three hours, the film is the way in, and if you want every plot, the book is. I will say which after we watch it.
Your Turn
Which enemy got the fate they deserved? I think Caderousse, Danglars and Fernand were each punished fairly, but Villefort’s chapter still bothers me. Tell me yours in the comments.
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