Douglas Fairbanks Double Feature: The Three Musketeers / The Iron Mask

Douglas Fairbanks, The King of Hollywood, stars in two action-packed spectacles featuring him in the role he was born to play: Alexandre Dumas’ D’Artagnan! In THE THREE MUSKETEERS, we are introduced to the young D’Artagnan, a naïve and ambitious farm boy whose acrobatic swordsmanship earns him the respect of King Louis XIII’s elite regiment of guards, The Musketeers. Doug reprises his role in THE IRON MASK, which finds D’Artagnan and his fellow Musketeers under threat by the sinister Cardinal Richelieu and Count De Rochefort.

For the restoration of THE THREE MUSKETEERS, a full frame 35MM fine grain positive was scanned at 4K. At the suggestion of Fairbanks scholar Jeffrey Vance, the scan was done at an historically appropriate 21 frames per second. Following this, more than 150 hours of digital clean-up was completed at 2K. THE IRON MASK was restored by Cohen Film Collection in association with Photoplay Productions. In 1999, Patrick Stanbury and Kevin Brownlow of Photoplay produced a photochemical restoration in association with the Museum of Modern Art and The Douris Corporation, using Douglas Fairbanks' personal nitrate print. Picture restoration work was done at Cinema Arts, Inc and Haghefilm, creating a new 35MM negative. The sound sequences were copied from original discs held at the Library of Congress and digitally restored at Cedar Audio (London). Further digital restoration of the analog restoration elements were carried out in 2017 on behalf of Cohen Film Collection at Roundabout Entertainment. The 35MM full aperture negative of the 1999 restoration was scanned at 4K, with more than 160 hours of digital clean-up completed at 2K.