greystudies

Amazingly this Japanese series has yet to be released to the US in any home video format (except for its heavily butchered US version Time of the Apes, which was released on VHS in 1988). It's a wonderfully complex series which depicts the apes in a technologically advanced society as in Pierre Boulle's original Planet of the Apes novel, one year before the animated aeries Return to the Planet of the Apes did. I have the full TV series on DVD from Japan. Unfortunately the DVD box set doesn't contain any subtitles, but I'm able to follow along thanks to an episode guide I found online. So many subplots are eliminated from the justifiably berated Time of the Apes that most people are unaware of how good the series really is. Planet of the Apes (1974), Saru no Gundan/Army of the Apes (1974-1975), and Return to the Planet of the Apes (1975) are such different TV watching experiences that I find them all equally good. I hope one day it can be released in its entirety in the US.

Actually, the "best" version is a matter of opinion, whether you prefer the 1922 Frank Lloyd version, the 1948 David Lean version, the 1968 Carol Reed musical version, or the 2005 Roman Polanski version. But there is little doubt that the 1922 version is the "best" in terms of being the most faithful to Dickens' original novel, virtually every major character and subplot is included with little in the way of changes, quite a feat for a 74-minute movie. I rank it alongside of the 1951 version of Scrooge with Alistair Sims and the 1948 version of Great Expectations as one of the finest adaptations of Dickens on screen.

A must for any Les Miserables fans, the adaptation spends its time primarily on the later sections, beginning with Marius at his grandfather's house. It is thereafter extraordinarily faithful to the third, fourth, and fifth parts. (The scenes concerning the Bishop, Fantine, and the child Cosette are dealt with briefly in a flashback sequence.) It is the only version I've seen yet which contains Marius' cousin Theodule as well as the scene in which Gavroche meets the two little boys on the street. As stated above, a must for any Les Miserables fan. It's just too bad it's no longer available on video, even in France. I have a version which lacks subtitles, but it's so obviously faithful to the book that any fan doesn't need them.