The Count of Monte Cristo is a 1934 American adventure film directed by Rowland V. Lee and starring Robert Donat and Elissa Landi.

Based on the 1844 novel The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas, the story concerns a man who is unjustly imprisoned for 20 years for innocently delivering a letter entrusted to him.

However, the city magistrate, Raymond de Villefort, Jr., is tipped off by an informer, the second officer, Danglars, and has Dantès arrested after the exchange.

De Villefort consigns Dantès without trial to a prison, the Château d'If, on the false testimony of Danglars.

When Napoleon returns to France, giving Dantès' friends hope for his release, de Villefort signs a false statement that he was killed trying to escape, which Mondego shows to Mercedes.

Before dying, he bequeaths a hidden treasure to his protégé (Faria's enemies had tortured and imprisoned him in an unsuccessful attempt to extract its location).

Dantès "rescues" the younger man in order to gain entry into Paris society, using his purchased title of Count of Monte Cristo.

While being the French ambassador to Albania, Mondego gained renown for his bravery in an unsuccessful defense of Ali Pasha.

[5] Eventually Robert Donat was cast under an international star loan agreement negotiated by Joseph Schenck of United Artists.

Totheroh had to go to New York so Edward Small hired Philip Dunne, then an emerging screenwriter, to compose the dialogue.

Mercedes was the daughter of a fisherman, not from a wealthy family as suggested in the film, and there was no indication that her mother was opposed to the Dantes marriage.

It was Villefort rather than Danglars who went insane - Danglars, although he loses almost all of his ill-gotten gains, since Monte Cristo by the time he has set upon him is beginning to wonder whether excessive revenge (which is destroying much more than he meant) is quite the expedient, is the only person left with his life and sanity, although he was the worst of Dantes' betrayers originally.

The film was very popular — Philip Dunne said it "provided Eddie Small with a fortune almost as great as the Treasure of Spada".

[7] Voted one of the ten best pictures of 1934 by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures[9] and Film Daily's poll of critics,[10] it was nominated on two of the American Film Institute's annual lists: AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills in 2001,[11] and AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes & Villains in 2003.

In the 2005 dystopian political thriller V for Vendetta, the titular anarchist refers to The Count of Monte Cristo as his favorite film.