Il Boia di Lilla

This Dumas adaptation, subtitled La Vita Avventurosa di Milady, foregrounds Milady DeWinter, leading heavy in the Musketeer yarns and depicted here as a ruthless pragmatist slicing her way through a world of romantics. Beginning with her suavely managed exit from a dreary convent and ending with her rendezvous on a misty riverbank with the titular headsman of Lille, the picture rattles through acres of plot at such a pace that, especially in the final musketeer-related passages, it seems like its own trailer. Not easy to buy Cottafavi's reputation as a stylist on the basis of his workmanlike but unremarkable staging here, though clearly he had casting problems. In particular the artless enthusiasm of Lebon hardly matches the firepower of variant Miladies like Lana Turner and Faye Dunaway.