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The Count of Monte Cristo (Reliance). If Alexandre Dumas were alive today, he would doubtless be one of Hollywood's highest paid scenarists. Since he is not, it is surprising that more of his works have not been copied or adapted for the cinema. The Count of Monte Cristo is one of two productions on the current schedule of a two-year-old Hollywood company which plans to make feature pictures retail instead of wholesale. It is a first-rate translation of one of Dumas' most picturesque stories. In it, a handsome, blond British actor named Robert Donat appears as Dantes, the French officer who, unjustly imprisoned in a dungeon, escapes to find buried treasure on a desert island and returns to outsmart his persecutors. Elissa Landi is Mercedes who, although forced into an unwelcome marriage when her lover goes to jail, remains sufficiently faithful, after her husband dies, to marry her inamorato when he returns. Good shot: the Abbe Faria (O. P. Heggie) suddenly poking his head through a tunnel and discovering Dantes' cell.