"A Study Guide for ""The Man in the Iron Mask"" (lit-to-film)"

By Gale and Cengage

"A Study Guide for ""The Man in the Iron Mask"" (lit-to-film), excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Dec 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780028665924

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A Study Guide for The Man in the Iron Mask (lit-to-film)

1998

Introduction

The Man in the Iron Mask (filmed by Randall Wallace in 1998) is a classic adventure story by Alexandre Dumas (serialized 1847 to 1850) and is a sequel to The Three Musketeers, part of one of the most popular and beloved series in French literature. Wallace retells the story of court intrigue not with reference to history or, indeed, to Dumas's novel except in the broadest strokes, but through a reinterpretation of classic film tropes, evoking the history of Hollywood rather than the history of France. The film was not well received critically or commercially. The swashbuckling plot of the novel concerns a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask. He is revealed as Philippe, the identical twin of King Louis XIV, unjustly imprisoned for his whole life (a popular conspiracy theory of the eighteenth century), and the Musketeers become involved in a plot to replace Louis with his brother.

Plot Summary

The Man in the Iron Mask is the final volume of a three-part novel Dumas serialized in 1847–1850 called The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. This, in turn, was the third book in a series. Dumas introduced its main characters in The Three Musketeers (1844) and followed this with a sequel, Twenty Years After (1845). The dates in the titles refer to the internal chronology of the series, the whole set spanning thirty years.

The translation used here is the standard English version, published anonymously in 1857.

The film begins with an intertitle:

Record discovered in the Bastille at the time of the Revolution

Prisoner number 64389000—the Man in the Iron Mask.

This dissolves to a tracking shot through a prison, showing the wretched condition of the prisoners and briefly showing the man in the iron mask. The film continues with small-scale rioting over food in the streets of Paris. D'Artagnan rides through the scene and is stoned by the peasants.

Porthos, with several prostitutes, visits Aramis, who has become a priest. The conflict between Aramis's holiness and Porthos's baseness breaks out into a fistfight, but it is quickly diffused by the arrival of d'Artagnan, who is still a Musketeer. He is summoning Aramis to a royal audience. D'Artagnan and Porthos exchange, somewhat cynically, their old catchphrase, All for one and one for all, which is repeated frequently throughout the film. The next scene establishes Athos and his son, Raoul, who plans to propose marriage later that day to his fiancée, Christine. Athos gives him his mother's wedding ring to use as the engagement ring.

At Fontainebleau, Aramis arrives