P R O D U C T I O N   N O T E S

You know, you do enough of these, you kiss a lot of frogs, and eventually, a prince shows up. I saw a brief glimpse of this film in another film, the 1995 version by Claude Lelouche, starring Jean-Paul Belmondo (one of my favorites films, period) and I finally managed to glom onto a copy. Yes, it's old. Yes, it's B/W. And it is so freaking hard to get ahold of I can't even tell you. Let me just say that the one I have is taped off the television. Shown in Mexico. With Spanish subtitles. Imagine the amount of concentration I had to use to listen to the French language track while Spanish subtitles flashed on the screen. I have a rudimentary understanding of both languages, and the fact they are based on the same root language in no way made my job easier, let me tell you. 

Please note that I will not be penalizing the film for this; it's not its fault that this is the only way I could get to see the film at all. It is not available on video. It is not available on DVD. Both of these are a crime against humanity and should be protested in the strongest possible terms. Am I conveying in any way the fact that this is a first rate, kick ass version of Les Misérables that should be required viewing for anyone attempting to remake the thing ever again?

As for the other details of the plot:

• Again, leave it to the French to make a faithful version. Very little is left out, although in the middle third the plot gets shifted around to accomodate storytelling. For example, we have the "Paris, ten years later" version of what happens after Valjean rescues Cosette. We don't know, she's just now suddenly an adult. Also, she and Marius have already met in the meantime, they are secretly seeing one another in the Luxembourg, or, I hate to speculate but there it is, she may have gone to his room at Gorbeau House! When she arrives to visit with the "Jondrette" family, she makes a beeline right for Marius's door, and only Valjean's "no, it's over here" keeps her from going in...



• The musical score was composed by Arthur Honegger, who is probably best known for his awesome work on the even longer silent film classic, Abel Gance's Napoléon (1927).



• Details, details... Opening shot of Valjean lifting a caryatid! Cosette's bucket is half her size, she can barely carry it empty! Javert gives Marius a pair of pistols! Valjean shoots the caps off the National Guard! Gavroche stabs a horse! Oh, wait... what the heck?



• The scene with Fantine in the beginning is rarely done, showing her at Bombarda's with Felix and company. There's a great transition where we see Fantine being seduced by Felix as the cards blow away from the table, and we cut to the pieces of Valjean's torn up passport blowing away in the wind...

C A S T   N O T E S

Here's the reason I said "see below" on all those cast notes above:

• Jean Gervais, who played Marius, is more famous for his role in the classic film noir "Rififi" (1955)



• Lucien Nat, who played Montparnasse, also starred in the 1972 French miniseries as... M. Gillenormand!



• Émile Genevois, who played Gavroche, also starred in the 1958 French film as... the bus driver? You mean the driver of the omnibus that Gavroche and crew appropriate in the name of the barricade? Wow...



• Charles Vanel, who played Javert, is credited in IMDB as the actor with the longest film career ever, spanning from 1910 to 1988. Yes, that's his career, not his lifetime. Wow, again...



• Henry Krauss, who plays M. Myriel, starred in the 1913 silent version (which I do not have, hence the absence of a link) as... Jean Valjean!

There are a few other mentions, but they are significant enough to be made below. You'll see why...

T H E  B E S T  T H I N G S  A B O U T  T H I S  V E R S I O N

Many details are faithful right down to the costumes, which seem to have been designed straight from the original woodcut illustrations. Little Cosette looks like Bayard's classic picture. Javert is the archetypical Javert, no question. And Valjean looks like the round, Rumpole-of-the-Bailey image from early posters, one of which I have as a copy:

Despite the bad way they did his death (see below), there was one great thing about Javert's death... when the Prefect learns of it, he opens his register where all the police are listed and draws a big line through Javert's name. The catch? Everyone but Javert has a first name listed. That's right, Javert, like Cher or Teller, just goes by the one name. Very cool.

The scene where Petit Gervais loses his coin... and Valjean cries... is almost shot for shot the same one in the 1995 version.

I should probably update the other review for this, too, but let's put it here for now: I always wondered, when looking at the 1995 version, why the Jean Valjean character was named Henri Fortin. I got the gist of the last name (fortin=strong) but Henri? I see now that it is yet another homage to Harry (Henri-Marie) Baur, this version's Jean Valjean. Which I think is very, very cool.

T H E  W O R S T  T H I N G S  A B O U T  T H I S  V E R S I O N

On the other hand, there are a few little things that could have been either improved or removed altogether. For example, most of the film could easily have been labeled "shot on location!" for all its authentic feel and appearance. But there's one little cut scene between when Valjean goes into the sewer with Marius and when he emerges the next morning, it's a really obvious, terrible matte shot of the towers of Notre-Dame as the sun is rising. It was so amateurish and tacky it pulled me out of the movie, very jarring. But, well, on the other hand it was the 30's. It can't all be great. And yeah, if that's the worst I can think of, you're already getting the idea that maybe this is a pretty good version.

Actually, that wasn't the worst. Javert's suicide, itself, is not shown at all. One point you see him walking off muttering to himself, "why didn't you arrest him?", and the next thing you see a brief five second shot of some fairly tame water, and then you see the prefect of police talking about Javert's suicide... Way to transition, there, people!

T H E  S I L V E R  C A N D L E S T I C K  A W A R D S  
( " STICKIES® " )

And the awards go to....

• The Enjolras Award For Real Time Heroism is awarded, posthumously, to Harry Baur, aka Henri-Marie Baur, who plays Jean Valjean in this version. When the Nazis rolled into Paris six years after this film was made, Baur (whose wife was Jewish) joined the French Resistance and assisted them in making it a bit less welcome for the Germans. He was ratted out, captured, imprisoned, and tortured. Yes, tortured by Nazis, folks. He was forced to make a German propaganda film, too, his last film, unfortunately, because shortly after his release, he died under mysterious circumstances, some say from his injuries, but most likely he met with an "accident" at their hands. Which leads, conversely and perversely enough, into:



• The Mme Victurnien Worst Excuse For A Human Being Award is awarded, posthumously, to Josseline Gaël, who plays the adult Cosette (!). During the selfsame WWII, while Harry Baur was getting the worst of what the Nazis could offer, Gaël was a collaborator. Yep, she ran off with a French Gestapo officer who belonged to the worst of the worst, the "Red Gang" who ratted out their fellow Frenchmen and lived the life of Reilly until of course the Allies kicked their asses and they were arrested. Sentenced to death, only the intervention of her estranged husband spared her life, but she was condemned with an interesting French sentence called "National Degradation", meaning that while she was not imprisoned, she was stripped of all her civil rights as a French citizen for the rest of her life) and fined well into her next life. She never appeared on film again. Watching her in this one, it gives you chills down the spine that someone this seemingly guileless and innocent could be capable of this kind of betrayal. Either that or she was the best fucking actress on the planet. Which I doubt. (Special thanks to IMDB for the above information. What did I ever do before them, and what would I do without them?)



• Because after that we need a little bit of humor, the Tom Serveaux Award For Gratuitous Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Reference goes to the director, Raymond Bernard, who unfortunately is not the same Raymond Bernard who later changed his name to Raymond "Crash" Corrigan and starred in such wonderfully awful serials such as "Undersea Kingdom." But he could have been, you know?



• The "...Who Needs The National Guard?" Award goes to Grantaire. When his name is mentioned in the Café Musain scene, and he says he's ready to rumble, one of the other guys (none of them get much screen time and it's hard enough keeping track of them when they DO) leans over and whispers to another one, "With revolutionaries like that..." For the humor impaired, the award name finishes the joke.



• The "Don't Make Me Use A Hammer" Award goes to the scene where Valjean is contemplating whether to save Cosette or save Champmathieu... he looks at the map and the distance to Montreuil, and the word "Arras" pops off the map and dances around, mocking Valjean. Very neat effect for the 30's. Finally he pins the rascally little word down with a small wooden box, which when opened is found to contain... the coin he stole from Petit Gervais!



• And, finally, the "My God, It's Full Of 'Stars!'" Award go to the nameless cadre that comprise all the other policemen under Javert... who all have long black coats, big sticks, big hats, and the big sideburns. Billions and billions of 'em, I swear!

W H E R E  T O  F I N D  T H I S  V E R S I O N

Heh. Ha ha. Hee hee hee hee *snerk* bwa ha ha ha ha ha ha... (wiping tears out of eyes) Good luck, amigo...