- The story behind the Count Of Monte Cristo, a dramatised documentary exploring the life and career of Alexandre Dumas. The grandson of a slave, he overcame all the obstacles of prejudice to create the first modern superhero.
- An epic film exploring the life and career of Alexandre Dumas. The grandson of a slave, he overcame all the obstacles of prejudice to create the first modern superhero.
For all his talent, energy and literary success, the French author Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870) is as much an interesting figure as his father General Dumas, also called Alexandre (1762-1806). The writers major role in forming the Romantic movement is today somewhat overshadowed by his prolific output of adventure novels including the Three Musketeers saga, The Count of Monte Cristo and The Man in the Iron Mask.
His father, born in Sainte-Domingue (now Haiti) of a liaison between an aristocratic French planter and a slave of mixed African and Caribbean Indian descent, was acknowledged by his father, brought to France and became a distinguished soldier in Frances revolutionary wars. A thoughtful man, the general opposed Robespierre on humanitarian grounds and later, during Napoleons Egyptian campaign, fell out with Bonaparte over the latters overweening imperialism. This ended his military career and earned him a spell in jail. The Emperor denied him the pension to which he should have been entitled. Among the property the general had inherited on his fathers death was his own mother.
Alexandre Dumas was born in Villers-Cotterêts, to which the general had retired, but owing to the quarrel with the emperor was denied a military career, to the great benefit of literature. With his friend, associate and contemporary Victor Hugo he helped originate the Romantic movement in the theatre and espoused (generally anti-authoritarian) causes. These causes made him a controversial figure, and political cartoons of the time often depict him in a gross, overtly racist manner. His own natural son, yet another Alexandre, devoted himself to theatre and opera, writing La Dame aux Camélias.
More than a decade after Alexandres death in 1870, the town of Villers-Cotterêts commemorated him with a three-metres-high bronze statue by the sculptor Carrier-Belleuse. It was removed and melted down in 1942 presumably to help with the Nazi war effort. Partly because of this and partly, perhaps, because of racist and other injustices suffered by the Dumas, the people of this small conservative town in Picardie are fiercely protective of their famous mixed-race sons. When, in 2001, President Chirac announced that the next year, Dumass bicentenary, the writers remains would be reinterred in the Panthéon in Paris, some citizens of Villers-Cotterêts favoured retaining the body. Only when Chirac promised to replace the statue with an exact replica did the townspeople agree to the transfer. The new statue was inaugurated on December 11th 2005.
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