Les misérables

So far, I have not read the book, and have only listened to a few bits from the musical, and I am usually not too fond of foreign films. I saw that this was on TCM not too long ago and I decided to give a watch. It took me two days, because I was doing other things, and here is my overall impression: One of the Best Films Ever! The story is about convict, Jean Valjean(played by Harry Baur, who gives an incredible performance), has a changed experience because of a bishop who took him in(Henry Krauss), and saved him from going into forced labor for life. Valjean uses silver the bishop gives him, so he could have a new start in life. Along the way, Inspector Javert(Charles Vanel) tracks him down throughout the years, and while Valjean escapes and changes his identity. The story's main themes in my opinion, are redemption, humanity, and the revaluation of good and evil. Valjean is an escaped convict, but he shows love and compassion for his fellow man, and even takes in a dying woman's child as his own. He even offers Javert to arrest him after he has found Cosette(the dying woman, Fantine's child). While Javert, a police inspector, is at the wrong side of ethics, as he lacks the compassion Valjean has. The film runs over four hours, the longest film I have ever seen, and its worth it. You need the running time to be long so you can discover the full depth of the story. The film also contains themes of revolution which are present, but it does not begin until much later on in the film. Overall, one of my 10 favorite films, and is one you should get your hands on.

"Les Miserables" (1933): This film on DVD comes in three parts, totaling 279 minutes. Audiences were appreciative of long, complex stories. They didn't need everything stated and resolved in 22 minutes. They had an attention span. This is THE definitive interpretation of Victor Hugo's novel. The photography is flawlessly inventive and artistic. The scoring is everything from subtle to emotional and sweeping. The story is, of course, HUGE. Like other authors of that time, the use of irony was a major, and wonderful, device (no, it is not an invention of 1990s films). DO expect IT to expect YOU to keep up. The acting is all over the map, from superb and aware, to stiff and overstated (from the only-then-dying silent film era). The set room sets and costumes are great, the landscapes & "cityscapes sometimes contrived as flat sets. This film, like All Quiet on the Western Front, are must-see examples of what powerful, early film making can be.

I got my first glimpse of the 1934 version while watching the 1995 adaptation with Jean-Paul Belmondo. The clips to which we are treated there intrigued me and after considerable rooting around the internet I managed to obtain a copy on video (to the best of my knowledge it has never been released in Britain). I was not disappointed. This is quite the fullest and most satisfying cinematic version of Hugo's extraordinary tale yet produced. Some may find the running time of around four and a half hours quite daunting, but I found that I hardly noticed the time pass. The reasons for its success are manifold. Firstly the detail and therefore the strength of the original are largely retained. Characters are properly fleshed out, and just as in the original we feel we share the characters' lives and get to know and care about them. The depth and number of characters are not sacrificed to considerations of time and commerce. Although some of the photography appears dated by modern standards, Raymond Bernard's literate script and direction are stimulating and advance the narrative at a steady pace (despite the impression created by the running time). He is masterful in the creation of atmosphere in both intimate and crowd scenes. For example the film is quite spectacular in its depiction of the 1832 uprising, yet it is deeply moving in the scenes involving Valjean and the Bishop. The music (by Arthur Honegger) has great dignity and is entirely apt to the tenor of the film and the themes it embraces. However, if the real strength of the piece is in the depth and conviction of its characters, their cinematic success is due in no short measure to the quality of the acting. Fantine (Josseline Gael) is perhaps a little melodramatic for modern tastes, and Javert (Charles Vanel) lacks a truly tragic quality, but all told the performances are faithful to the original and convincing, and none more so than Harry Baur as Valjean. His immense physical presence and slow, controlled delivery, combined with his ability to express his inner feelings with little more than a look or a moment's hesitation command our respect and sympathy, making him the perfect incarnation of the tormented but determined Valjean. It wreaks sincerity and a genuine desire to transfer not just the story, but the spirit of the original onto the big screen.

This version of "Les Miserables" is very much the best I've ever seen.

I've read the book, and the author Victor Hugo has a certain kind of great, rolling oceanic rhythm, where he starts to set up a scene, appears to wander around adding elements, then slowly brings people and events to a staggering, shuddering climax two- or three hundred pages later. And he manages it several times in the one book. It's a remarkable technique, and no other film version of Les Mis that I've seen manages to capture that feeling of majestic, gigantic tension and release the way this one does.

Now, I've only seen the three-hour version of the Depardieu/Dayan version, not the original six-hour, which I've never been able to track down in a version with English subtitles.

But I've seen just about every other version, and they all have a disjointed sense of pace and continuity that comes from jamming a huge novel into a Cuisinart and filming the pages that survive.

For overall achievement, this one takes the prize. Individual scenes have been done more effectively in other versions, but for capturing the feeling of actually having read the book, this movie is the best.

Other versions have gone deeper into the dirt and filth of Old Paris; much of this film was shot on backlot streets where even the dirt is clean, like a Sam Goldwyn picture. Director Raymond Bernard is also a little too fond of tilting the camera for dramatic effect, but you get used to it quickly, and some of the German Expressionist lighting is very effective.

This is the only version I've seen that shows the actual revolution Hugo describes with sympathy and patience, and the character of Marius gains terrifically from it. By contrast, the attitude towards revolution is nervous and dismissive in the 1935 March/Boleslawski version, as Hollywood was run by Republicans in those days, and Marius inevitably comes off like a twerp. Not here.

Also, the class distinctions among the characters are etched far more clearly than in other adaptations. Today's egalitarian impulses usually tend to bland out such niceties, but our contemporary demands for comfort with these interactions are ignored in this movie from 1933.

Harry Baur as Valjean is a dramatic giant, a stocky, massive bunch of nerve endings. He is from the same school as Emil Jannings, but fortunately never plumbs the depths of Jannings' abysmal, moist self-pity. It should also be noted that Baur is better here than in Abel Gance's film about Beethoven. Some of the actors surrounding him in Les Mis are a bit obvious, but OTOH this has the best Gavroche, period.

Charles Vanel is the only Inspector Javert you are likely to see who was not affected by Charles Laughton's remarkable portrayal of the character, as that was not to be filmed until two years afterward. Laughton's Javert was so intense that it unbalanced that picture, so that the film wound up being about his agony, not Jean Valjean's, which is wrong.

Charles Vanel's Javert appears to be offhand, methodical, restrained, banal; unlike Laughton, he has no speech about why he does what he does, and he gets very few closeups. There is next to no exploration of his interior life, if any, and his death is handled very differently from what we have come to expect.

Past the initial surprise, I think that is one point of the film, that Javert is not a flamboyant, obsessive madman. Vanel's Javert is not a twitchy rogue cop like Anthony Perkins or a reptilian boogeyman like John Malkovich; this film is not a Homeric one-on-one duel to the death like "The Fugitive." Here, Javert symbolizes a government of anonymous and casual brutality. He is a willing cog in a machine that metes out rigid punishment and has no mechanism for tempering justice with mercy. This approach will definitely provoke you to thought, which you can't say about most movies.

Anyway, forget the star-studded comic book adaptations that are the norm for this title, and curl up with a good book. This one is on two DVDs, takes around five hours to watch, and you'll never regret it.

I came across this by accident, broadcast over 3 nights on TV - I recorded it, and watched the whole thing without being able to leave the sofa. It is the best movie I've ever seen.

4½ hours long, subtitled black-and-white Victor Hugo epic doesn't sound appealing, or only to 'art house' fans, but not so ... if you ever get a chance to see it, do!

The acting is tremendous, as is the cinematography. Certain visual moments are forever imprinted on my mind, such as the moment when a helping hand comes out of nowhere to help the collapsed Cosette, or the moment when a nun, sworn to always tell the truth, lies to protect the protagonist, Jean Valjean.

It is a superb retelling, and remains the best version of this classic novel. What makes it even more poignant is how themes in the movie were reflected in the real lives of the actors. Harry Baur, who plays the lead - a man falsely imprisoned and whom is relentless pursued through the film - lost his life a few years later at the hand of the Gestapo for being suspected of aiding the resistance, and Gaby Triquet (the young Cosette) was shamed and blacklisted for having an affair with a German soldier and never worked again.

I've seen a few 1930s features, and while enjoying them, would not expect others to sit through them. Not this! It is everything a good movie is about - superbly crafted, mesmerising to watch, and leaves you seeing the world slightly differently afterwards. I've never seen better.