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Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress and pioneering female film producer. Danièle Delorme: 'Gigi' 1949 actress was pioneering woman producer, politically minded 'femme engagée' Danièle Delorme, who died on Oct. 17, '15, at the age of 89 in Paris, is best remembered as the first actress to incarnate Colette's teenage courtesan-to-be Gigi and for playing Jean Rochefort's about-to-be-cuckolded wife in the international box office hit Pardon Mon Affaire. Yet few are aware that Delorme was featured in nearly 60 films – three of which, including Gigi, directed by France's sole major woman filmmaker of the '40s and '50s – in addition to more than 20 stage plays and a dozen television productions in a show business career spanning seven decades. Even fewer realize that Delorme was also a pioneering woman film producer, working in that capacity for more than half a century. Or that she was what in French is called a femme engagée...

★★★★☆It's extremely fitting that after Tom Hooper's star-studded version of Les Misérables (2012) has exited stage-left that Raymond Bernard original 1934 adaptation of Victor Hugo’s timeless novel should re-appear fully restored. The film was released as three separate features in 1934 but the Pathe-restored Masters of Cinema Blu-ray enables audiences to watch all 300 minutes of the film's torturous struggle in one go. The narrative of this French classic unfolds in an effortless manner moving from Jean Valjean’s (Harry Baur) release from prison and the orphan Fantine’s (Florelle) carefree days, to Valjean’s eventual adoption of Fantine’s orphaned daughter Cosette (Josseline Gaël).