Les Miserables (1995)

If you search IMDb for "Les Miserables," you'll get 19 films under the IMDb "Titles (Exact Matches)." The dates of these cover 101 years, from 1909 to 2010! But the original title of this remarkable 1995 version is "Les Misérables du vingtième siècle"(the miserable ones of the twentieth century.) The film title credits read "Les Miserables of Victor Hugo" but then adds "freely adapted" by Claude Lelouch." Lelouch was also the director and producer.I saw the film on television in the 4:3 format. I would have preferred letterbox so I could have enlarged it to fit in my wide screen plasma TV, but the film is in French and the subtitles in letterbox format would have been hard for people viewing it on older sets to read. (I found the subtitles to be very easy to read.) But I don't think much was lost by trimming the edges of the original film. The main characters in the film are Henri Fortin (Jean-Paul Belmondo), the father and his son by the same name, who earns the nickname of Jean Valjean (Victor Hugo's protagonist) because of events in his life that correspond to those of Hugo's Valjean. When the novel is read to Henri Fortin to help him understand why the nickname, the story telling dissolves into an enactment of the novel. In those sequences we see Fortin playing the part of Valjean.I had a little difficulty following the start of the movie, which opens with a wretchedly sad Henri Fortin as Jean Valjean regretting something he did and calling after "the little chimney sweep." (I am not familiar with that part of Hugo's novel. We learn later on what Valjean regretted.) It then switches to a major ball being held in France to celebrate New Year's Day at the onset of the 20th century. This leads up to Henri Fortin the father being falsely accused of murder. This section of the film deals with Henri senior's life as a convict, his wife's and young son's lives during that time, and his escape attempt.Things advance from there to his son, now grown and a prize fighter, at the end of World War I. The film then moves forward about 20 years and an older Henri junior is now a retired French champion driving a moving van as German rule begins to sweep Europe near the start of World War II (a couple of years before Pearl Harbor caused the US to enter that war.) I think that the more you know of the Victor Hugo book the more you will like this film, but I think that even without any knowledge of the original you will still get a lot out of watching it.From then on there is no dull moment as the protagonists move through lives of anguish and deceptions.Although the film is full of tragedy, it leaves you filling good at the end.

This is a truly beautiful film, remarkable for it's simple elegance in unraveling the story of it's principal characters which belies the many complex layers that lie underneath, as Hugo's original characters make their increasing presence felt as the story progresses. It would be highly advantageous to have a good grasp of the characters and plot/line of Hugo's "Les Miserables" in advance of watching the film in order to fully appreciate the universality and agelessness of the human situations which are re-encountered in this particular World War II setting. Both Hugo's novel and the film fully empathize with our universal human experience, and what are still the central concerns of our lives: pleasure & pain, the love and hate present in our relationships, and at the most fundamental level, simple survival. It can leave the viewer personally identifying one moment with Jean-Valjean, and yet in the next with Fantine or Cosette, and inevitably (disturbingly), with Javert. This is an exquisite exploration and contrast of our human capacities both to bring about almost unlimited destruction, and to build life and inextinguishable hope. Very special.

In one of the comments here I read that the movie had few references to the novel--I completely disagree! This movie was, in every way, based around Victor Hugo's novel. I'm in the middle of reading the book (unabridged version) and saw the movie a little while ago. As I read I come across little things that make me think, "Wow, that movie was true to the book!" Perhaps not directly, but if one has the ability to read between the lines you will notice that this movie IS Les Miserables. Each character in this movie is symbolic of a character from the book and each occurrence in the movie has some relevance or mention in the novel. For example, there is a scene where the two men are trying to escape prison by swimming out and they try to see how long they can hold their breath. In the novel, Jean Valjean (the prisoner) jumps off a boat and swims to his freedom, but he must (obviously) hold his breath long enough to swim away without being noticed/having to go to the surface for air.This movie is excellent, dramatic, moving, and intriguing--never a boring moment. And don't let anyone tell you it has nothing to do with the book, because that's as far from the truth as you could possibly get.

Okay, it COULD happen! A savage lion COULD put its killer instincts on hold and sit still as a wimp removes a thorn from its foot and a few years later, in the arena, that same lion COULD recognize the wimp who helped him and refuse to eat him. Call me vulnerable but I buy this. Same thing with this movie. Four people - mother, father, daughter, plus lorry driver who-is-helping-this-Jewish-family-escape-to-Switzerland-in-WW11 COULD get separated and survive ENDLESS hardships and meet up again after the war, and the Father COULD be the lawyer who defends the lorry-driver and saves him from the guillotine, and the lorry driver COULD be an illiterate who gets it into his head that he is the human incarnation of a fictional character (Jean Valjean)and that his life will follow the same pattern and he COULD become mayor of the town. Why not, it's a free country. Lelouch, of course, does chocolate-box and does it in spades, so this is always going to be easy on the eye. He also directs actors well and chooses actors who can deliver - any movie that boasts Micheline Presle AND Annie Girardot can't be all bad - and so he does here. The only way to watch this is to surrender rather than suspend your disbelief and then you will be rewarded.