Four go mad in France

Everyone knows The Three Musketeers from dozens of movies in all kinds of languages. But how many of us have actually read the novel?

I have to admit I hadn't until recently. It always looked too big for me to take on. But now, nearly 700 pages later, I can see why so many people have wanted to film it. Because although Dumas was dead before the film industry began, he was a gift to cinema.

His dialogue may creak, he may have a habit of telling us stuff we already know and, like Blackadder, coincidence may rule everything, but there's no faulting his sense of character, narrative drive or 'cinematic' construction.

Thus, when we see d'Artagnan applying to join the King's Musketeers, we recognise the scene immediately as that of a nervous boy on his first day at senior school, as all around him older men jostle, joke and talk dirty.

And what better way to introduce the three musketeers who will become his friends than have him fight duels with all of them on the same day?

This, in its comical rumbustiousness, is the economy of film narration at the highest level.

Dumas is also good at summing up quickly the feel of the period during which the book is set, the early 17th century, when Cardinal Richelieu - through intrigue, religious wars, secret police and fear - was forging France into a unified country.

Best of all, however, are Dumas's characters: d'Artagnan in the novel is a petulant teenager, while the three muskeeters have the insouciant funny violence that we now associate with guys like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Judged by today's standards d'Artagnan is a total love rat, like all the musketeers, whose advice to him on joining their company is to get himself a good meal, a servant and a mistress.

The mistress he decides upon is the young wife of his landlord, but he also finds time to casually seduce a besotted servant called Kitty in order that he might get into the bed of the mysterious Milady de Winter.

Unlike his English contemporaries, Dumas was not afraid of portraying sex. But then, that's the French. Some things never change.

But above everything, The Three Musketeers is a swashbuckling, romantic, boys' caper and still a classic.