The Count of Monte Cristo (French: Le comte de Monte Cristo, US: The Story of the Count of Monte Cristo) is a 1961 French adventure film version of Alexandre Dumas' 1844 novel directed by Claude Autant-Lara and starring Louis Jourdan, Yvonne Furneaux, Pierre Mondy and Franco Silva.
Edmund Dantes is falsely accused by those jealous of his good fortune, and is sentenced to spend the rest of his life in the notorious island prison, Chateau d'if. There, a prisoner tells Edmund of a fantastic treasure hidden away on a tiny island.
The film was the seventh most popular film at the French box office in 1961. The sixth most popular was a version of The Three Musketeers.
The film was made with some finance from Seven Arts Productions and was released by Warner Bros.
Variety wrote that the producers "have spared little expense in mounting a pictorially rich and dramatically expansive reproduction of the story...But one vital miscalculation strips their effort of sufficient appeal for the bulk of the modern audience. In adhering rigidly to the plodding, stilted and weighty melodramatic style reasonably fashionable in less sophisticated bygone times, the creators of this version have failed to sense, or refused to reckon with, the realistic requirements of modern screen."