Les Miserables

1935 movie

Rating: 15/20

Plot: France's most notorious bread thief ends a prison sentence, fails to meet with his parole officer, fails a drug test or two, is caught with a hooker, and feels the scene of a rickshaw accident. He's relentlessly chased down by Inspector Javert as he attempts to start a new life and falls in love with a little girl.

Ten years for a loaf of bread? Wow, the French are serious with their crime and punishment. They're not wusses when it comes to prison either, and the prison scenes in this are grimy and realistic. There's a lot in this that is typical 1930's melodrama, but both the leads--a versatile Fredric March as the bread thief and the imposing presence that is Charles Laughton--manage to rise above all that and give memorable performances. They don't always have the best lines to read. Asking your host who knows you just got out of prison "How do you know I won't murder you in the night" seems like pressing one's luck. But they transcend a screenplay that isn't always very good and deliver the goods. Cory recommended this and has a thing for Charles Laughton. He's also enjoys movies with bad child actors, and this one's got a fairly offensive one, Marilyn Knowlden as young Cosette. She almost completely ruins a horse chase scene that is really pretty thrilling for the mid-30's, neatly edited with some flamboyant camera angles. And it looks dangerous enough with a horse running right into a box and falling down and everything, so maybe that's why Cosette is screaming like that. There's another chase through the sewers, a scene obviously pinched from The Third Man, that I really liked. And I believe there was music in exactly two scenes during this movie which I liked. 1930's movies are definitely better without music. Whistling, yes. Music, no. This feels to me like a color-by-numbers literary classic adaptation. It's a little choppy, almost a Cliff Notes or abridged version of Victor Hugo's story. Of course, I'm not planning on reading that 1,300 tome anytime soon to see what's missing or anything. I also don't think I've seen any of the other numerous versions of this although I did know the story. I avoided any versions of this because my high school band's little marching show had something to do with the songs from the Les Miserables musical, and those people annoyed me. It all led to a recurring dream--variations of the same dream anyway--where I made a trip to 19th Century France in a Delorean and shoved various musical instruments into the rectum of Victor Hugo. But despite my past hang-ups and the choppy way the story is told in this particular version, I was moved by the story and the denouements of both the protagonist and antagonist.