Interesting series of movies about Angelica
I think that the series of movies about Angelica is nice to watch. Greetings.
shareRead the books, the first 5 of them. They're fantastic.
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MovieChat Forums > Angélique, marquise des anges (1964) Discussion > Interesting series of movies about Angel...
The first one is one of the best films I ever saw. It has both aesthetics and substance. Most films have either one or the other. For example, The Godfather is all substance and Brigitte Bardot movies are all aesthetics.
shareFirst 3 movies were good enough, although they cannot capture the magic of the books. I don't like the 4th and 5th movies. In those they cut the corners was too much and add an distasteful element of exploitation towards Angelique.
shareI only saw the first three because they started to deviate dangerously away from the books. The farther they deviated, the worse the film. For example, in Angélique et le roi, the filmakers invented some kind of strange ending.
In my opinion each film was worse than the one before. I've read the first three books and the 7th (Angélique in the New World). Are you sure it's worth reading the 4th and 5th books? It seems too many negative things happen.
--Ron Cogan
New York
BEWARE THE POSSIBLE SPOILERS!
I am not sure if the 4th and 5th make enjoyable reading, I take the opportunity to synopsise them, if you do not mind.
BEWARE THE SPOILERS!
4th BOOK is the darkest of the serie.. Angelique is back to France but she has given up all hope to find Joffrey. And she is living quietly on her coutry estate at Montelloup, region of Poitou.
The Poitou is just about to become a subject of Loius XIV's oppressive Catholic campaign against protestants, and even though Angelique is Catholic too, her castle is raided by king's troops. The castle is burnt, Angelique is raped and her son with Philippe, Charles-Henri is killed. Angelique is horrified to find out that she is preagnent due to a rape and a daughter Honorie is born.
Angelique joins the protestant rebellion agains the King, but the uprise is crushed and many her oldest friends are executed. Angelique escapes and hides to a town of La Rochelle where she masks herself just as a common maid of a rich protestant merchant family of Berne.
At the end of this book, Angelique helps Berne family and other wealthy protestant families of La Rochelle to escape inprisonment and execution on King's prisons. Ironically Rescator happens to be nearby La Rochelle at the time and Angelique pleades him to give a escape for the protestants on his pirate ship. She still has no idea who the Rescator really is.
5th BOOK is about the pirate ship's long journey towards the New World. Joffrey finally reveals the true identity of Rescator but tragically they feel that there is a drift between them, too many years and too many loved ones. Joffrey is jealous about her marriage to Philippe but mostly her alleged affair with his enemy, the King (she and Louis never were lovers). He also accuses her of deserting their two sons Florimond and Cantor. Angelique is deeply offended by his accusations. Eventually they find each other again and the family, She, Joffrey, Florimond and Cantor plus Honorie is united.
So to answer your question, the 4th book is VERY dark, it is almost painful to read but does get more adventurous at the end when Angelique and protestants flee La Rochelle.
The 5th book is sort of cathartic. Not very dark but also less exciting than the four previous books, kind of world-weary and sad in style. I still enjoy this book because of it's profoundness.
Thanks.
I actually assumed that the Road to Versailles part is a separate book from the first, making Angélique and the King the 3rd book. So my question also pertained to the Mediterranean book. I suppose that one is also dark and think it probably best to end with the French court.
The authors should have sent her to the Danish court of Christian V and then to the Russian court of Peter I, instead of back to France and to North America.
Hmm, the Mediterrean book is defianetly the most adventurous of all earlier books and possibly most adventurous of the serie. Therefore it makes exciting reading and it is not particularly dark.
This book starts on Marseille, where Angelique contacts Marguise De Vivonne, cousin of Athenais De Montespan. She persuades him to take her on board of a ship he is commanding. Therefore she would never return Versailles to competete with Madame De Montespan.
If I remember correctly the ship is attacked by pirates and Angelique escapes them but is captured later by a woman-hating pirate D'Escrainville. STILL there is no such scenes as there is in the 4th movie, (that is what I meant by exploitation).
Angelique is set "for sale" on Kandia, Crete, where she is "bought" by Rescator. But different to the movies she never learns the identity of Rescator at this point. Angelique's allies tragically rescue her from Rescator (Joffrey) only to expose her to further dangers at Morocco, at Mulai Ismael's harem.
The portray of Harem is very rich and vivid, it also represents kind of understanding of different cultures and Mouslim world that was highly unusual back in 1950's and 1960's and would even be today. Anne and Serge Colon were French of course (though I think that Serge maybe was originally Russian, not sure).
Angelique escapes the Harem among group of other Christian captives, led by Colin Paturel, the King of Slaves. The chaption of their escape is long and thrilling but also stunningly beautiful/sensual. Only Angelique and Colin (who does not die in a book) make it to Ceuta, the only Christian town and stand on Africa's side of Gibraltar.
Colin and Angelique separate and she, now under a wrath and bitterness of Louis XIV, returns to Montelloup. She feels that her adventure on Mediterrean Sea and Morocco has changed her and she no longer wants to be a part of the corrupted world of Versailles.
It would have been a interesting direction to take Angelique to Russia, ecspecially because of Serge's own alleged Russian roots. But maybe at this point they wanted to make Angelique a more renegade character who is surrounded by natives, pirates and other adventurers, instead of kings and courts.
Serge was a Russian born in Turkmenistan, where his father was the tsar's viceroy. He escaped Russia during the revolution and met Anne while prospecting for gold in Zaire. He was a chemist and geologist and claimed to have known 11 languages. It seems some elements of the books and of the Comte de Peyrac are derived from his experiences.
It would have been best if she went to Romania, was bitten by a vampire, and became a half-vampire, thereby completely identical to humans except for not aging and living for 330 years. That way there could be more settings in different times, up to the present.
great great infos
shareI loved the series when I was a teen but these movies seem pretty dated. Small things like her eyes not being the "emerald" green that the book repeats over and over and Joffrey's hair being so short were glaring oversights; however, in the 60's I'm sure this was done to lack of optical technology and an attempt to look modern. It would be quite a sweeping saga if made today but I think that modern movie makers would seriously remove much of the romance and the politics and stress the sex.
shareI agree. There should be a big budget TV serie. Unfortunately I am also afraid that the makers (they would likely be Brits or Americans, not French) would miss the eseence of the story and cut far too many corners.
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