Les Misérables

Two or three superb moments are worth seeing for fans of the novel. March gripping the candle holders and in the throws of doubt. This is the only version that shows that goodness does not always come easily to this man. He is constantly locked in a struggle with his own selfishness or desires. Montage of Valjean and Cosette eating soup and sharing other affectionate moments together as she grows up. These are vital transitional scenes that are sorely missing from the novel and go a long way towards making the girl likeable. Javert's moment of realisation that he cannot bring Valjean in after all. Laughton plays it to the hilt in typical Hollywood 1930's style, but it is the defining moment for this character. These scenes add and embellish on the novel's themes and make this version worth a trip to the video rental store. I mean this is an adaptation, people. You want to be a purist? Go read the book.

Although you would not think so from reading some of the reviews here, the 1935 film version of "Les Miserables" is excellent and one of the best film versions of the novel, especially considering its 108 minute length. It is too much to ask a film that lasts a little less than two hours to pack in all the important incidents in a book that consists of more than 1,000 pages. No film has ever been able to do that, and three-hour American films, except for a couple of D.W. Griffith features, were virtually unheard of before 1936 (the year that "The Great Ziegfeld" was released).

Fredric March gives one of his finest performances as Jean Valjean---far better than Michael Rennie's pallid one in the 1952 remake-- and his voice reminds one not of Jimmy Stewart, but of John Barrymore, an actor to whom March was often compared to in his early days. Although he seems to be on the verge of overemoting once or twice, he can also be quite subtle and sardonic (just watch him in the scenes in which he implies that Javert has no idea of how to temper justice with mercy, or his performance in the scene in which he first meets Cosette at the inn). March, now virtually forgotten by today's younger generation, was easily one of the best actors of the twentieth century, whether on stage or screen, It is a pity that he never felt inclined to act in a Shakespeare play or film, a decision he himself came to regret.

Charles Laughton is equally as good as the vicious, single-minded, and in this version at least, neurotic Inspector Javert. Laughton's small touches, far from making his performance seem hammy, vividly illustrate the personality of a man so ashamed of his own parentage that he cannot bear to talk about it without seeming to be about to break into tears. If it had not been for his brilliant Captain Bligh in "Mutiny on the Bounty", released the same year as "Les Miserables", Laughton would almost certainly have been nominated for his performance as Javert.

John Beal and Rochelle Hudson are adequate as the lovers, although Beal is hardly anyone's idea of a sexy, dashing young man. Hudson's performance is infinitely preferable to the awful one given by the beautiful Debra Paget (best remembered as Joshua's love interest in "The Ten Commandments") in the 1952 remake of "Les Miserables". Eponine in this version is not portrayed as a prostitute, probably because of the censorship restrictions of that time, and Gavroche is completely eliminated from this version. Cedric Hardwicke, in a very small role, is fine if a little too syrupy, as the bishop who aids Valjean after he is released from prison.

The legendary Gregg Toland's photography is excellent, and the scenes in which Valjean serves in the galleys are frighteningly realistic for a major Hollywood film of this era (the scene in which March is beaten and begins screaming in pain is profoundly disturbing, and it recurrs later on in a nightmare).

The 1935 "Les Miserables" easily eclipses all later versions in English, and still stands as one of the best Hollywood versions of a literary masterpiece.

Another reviewer of this version of Les Miserables said this was the Cliff's Notes version of the Victor Hugo classic. I'd be hard pressed to disagree, but bear in mind that another reviewer said the novel itself is over 1300 pages. That would be a daunting task for any film maker. Les Miserables whether done in English, French or Sanskrit lends itself to a mini-series.

Nevertheless this version that stars Fredric March and Charles Laughton is a good encapsulation of the mammoth story about a paroled prisoner trying to escape his past and the relentless police official who's made it a life's obsession to track him down.

This is the third and final film that March and Laughton co-starred in and they did all three of their films for different studios, Sign of the Cross for Paramount, The Barretts of Wimpole Street for MGM and Les Miserables for the newly formed 20th Century Fox. I'd be hard pressed to pick one that is the best because all three have something different to offer.

I think what Victor Hugo does is make a great case for situational ethics in this story. March as Jean Valjean the prisoner is jailed for 10 years on a minor charge and thereafter subject to a strict parole system. He misses a check in and he's a fugitive.

But March is shown kindness by a warm and understanding bishop played by Cedric Hardwicke and changes his life around. But he has to move several times because of the relentless Inspector Javert.

Charles Laughton in his career played many a deformed soul and none more than Inspector Javert. He's a convict's son himself and to repudiate his humble origins becomes a policeman, but one with a rigid code that shows no understanding of times and conditions for a crime and makes no attempt at all to temper his rigid code with a drop or two of mercy.

Had Javert chosen the ministry, he'd have made a great hellfire and damnation preacher, getting all the words right but missing the music of love, redemption and forgiveness. And Valjean who is of equally humble origins is a redeemed soul, a conception Javert can't understand. But he also knows that Valjean even through out the trials Javert puts him through is one at peace with himself and there's no small amount of jealousy in Laughton's portrayal.

In a great acting duo, I give the decision by a few points to March, mainly because of his dual portrayal. At one point March hears from Laughton that Jean Valjean has been arrested and is on trial. After a lot of soul searching he goes to the neighboring town and gets a half wit off who is also played by Fredric March. Because of that Les Miserables has become one of my favorite Fredric March pictures.

March never got another shot at a thespian duel so to speak with another screen icon until Inherit the Wind with Spencer Tracy. His three films with Charles Laughton are deserved classics all. This is as good a version as you'll ever get of Les Miserables for a single motion picture.

So stealing a loaf of bread gets you years in a squalid prison, rowing a galley with a thousand other poor souls that never goes anywhere. Some justice. And if you miss a parole appearance, you get a monomaniacal cop named Javert who has no life other than chasing you down. So, if you're like Val Jean, wouldn't you get mean and anti-social too. And when invited out of a storm by a priest, no less, it's only natural that Val Jean looks to steal what he can. But then, a funny thing happens. When the cops bring him back with the stolen goods, the priest gets him off the hook by saying the stolen candlesticks were a gift. It's an act of mercy, something the law has never shown him. Now Val Jean sees that life might be lived in a kinder, gentler way. And when he leaves and comes to the literal and figurative fork-in-the-road, he remembers the words of humane wisdom given him by the priest. Traveling in a new direction, he becomes the good man he has always been, waiting to be brought out. Now, if only he could get that merciless cop off his trail, life would be good.

Fine dramatization of Hugo's great plea for social reform in 19th century France. I wonder what our own Depression era audiences saw in the story, given the oppressive conditions of the 1930's. March is compelling as the reborn Val Jean, while Laughton makes for an unforgettably quirky Javert. But I wonder too, what would change if the aristocratically handsome March played Javert, with the very unphotogenic Laughton as Val Jean. That would challenge our comfortable stereotypes and make for a more interesting and humane message. Then too it's unfortunate that someone in production felt the audience wouldn't get the spiritual message without being hit over the head with heavenly choirs and light beams from above. I guess that was done for box-office returns. But too often Hollywood has reduced the profound to the hokey, thereby corrupting the message and turning spirituality into a mere matter of stage craft. Nonetheless, the moral remains a telling one, as relevant now as it was 70 or even 170 years ago. Law exists only on paper, while justice—as they say—dwells in the human heart. It is not a truth Javert, the slavish servant of the state, can live with. Hugo was not only a great writer, but a very good man, as well.

To begin with, I doubt that most people realize that Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is not a two hundred to four hundred page novel. It is a thirteen hundred page novel (in English translation as well as the original French). This actually puts it into the same category as those other classic that most people never read: "The Bible" (both testaments together), "Don Quixote", "War and Peace", "Clarissa Harlowe", "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", "The Count of Monte Cristo". Everyone knows stories or chunks of most of these books (except for Richardson's "Clarissa", which is not popular these days due to it's epistolary style). Few read them to get an idea of their full impact. It is sobering to realize that humongous novels by Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliott, like "Bleak House, "Pendennis", or "Middlemarch", are shorter (roughly 800 pages each) than these seven earlier titles that I mention. That means one is more likely to be willing to read "Middlemarch" (a thoughtful but difficult study of provincial life in 1832 England), than "The Count of Monte Cristo" (with it's fast paced and exciting tale of power, greed, and revenge in post-Napoleonic France.

In it's full range, "Les Miserables" was a probing attack on the greed and social evil rampant in France from 1815 to 1832 (the beginning of the so-called "July " or Orleans Monarchy. However I warn you that if you read it you will find it annoying after awhile. You will remain sympathetic towards Valjean, protecting little Cosette who he raises as his daughter, and saving Marius (although he would as soon Cosette never saw Marius again). And you will also dislike Javert, his adversary - the perfect police official. But you will find Hugo expounding questionable views on criminals. Not all the poor are criminals, but after reading Hugo one gets the impression that if they aren't they are fools. For all the defects of Louis Phillippe's July Monarchy, it gave France prosperity and peace for nearly two decades. But to Hugo it was a criminal throwback to the barbarism of the Bourbons - France did not need monarchs, it was a republic and a democracy. For most of his life Hugo attacked "royalism" in all its guises in France, culminating in his years in exile in opposition to the Second Empire of Napoleon III (1851 - 1870 - the period that Hugo wrote "Les Misearbles" in). Oddly enough he never really attacks the first Napoleon. Read the chapters on the Battle of Waterloo in "Les Miserables" and it is almost a regrettable valentine to the little Corsican. Interestingly enough, when the Paris Commune burned much private property in 1871 (before being put down by French troops assisted by German troops), Hugo suddenly ceased being so admiring about the lowest level of the poor - after all they burned some of his property too.

Trimmed of much of it's literary weight it makes a dandy little over-the-years thriller, and it has been filmed many times. The best one I remember was a French version from 1956 with Jean Gabin as Valjean (and actually he was physically closer to the poor ex convict than March was). But it was three and a half hours long, so I suspect that this one will have to do. It keeps the main threads of the story together, and performances by March, Laughton, Florence Eldritch (as Fantine), and others are excellent. Even Leonid Kinski as one of March's former convict friends gives a chilling little moment just by saying "Hello Jean" in a courtroom. So watch it, the best normal length movie version. And then put aside a month for reading the original novel (and then plan similar time schemes for those other unread classics I just listed - It will occupy you for about a year and a half or so).