I don't think I've ever even attempted to read the Victor Hugo novel on which the 1935 film version of Les Miserables is based. I saw the musical in the early 1990s on Broadway; the tickets were a birthday gift to Partner At The Time, and we both had a great time at the theater that night. The musical was pretty lengthy, and the book has a reputation for being quite the time-killer as well. (Of course, I’ve also seen the film version of the musical, but that will be discussed elsewhere in more detail.) This version, though, is pretty brisk, coming in at just under two hours long. I can't vouch for the accuracy of the adaptation, but this is an enjoyable film with two strong lead performances by Fredric March and Charles Laughton.
March is Jean Valjean, a man sentenced to prison in France during the early 1800s after stealing food to keep his family from starving. During the courtroom scene when he is being sentenced, the film keeps emphasizing Jesus on the cross in the background, making an obvious (heavy-handed?) visual link to the persecution that Valjean is facing. While serving time in the galleys during this ten-year sentence—in scenes reminiscent of ones in Ben-Hur—Valjean comes to the attention of Javert (Laughton), a man whose father died in jail and who was himself born while his mother was in prison. Javert is a strictly by-the-book disciplinarian. Much like the judges who sentenced Valjean, Javert does not believe that the law has any room for empathy or consideration of mitigating circumstances.
After Valjean serves his sentence and is released, he finds that no one will provide him with lodging or food save for a bishop. He says that his “real punishment” begins after he is allegedly a free man. He is forced to carry a so-called "yellow passport" that identifies him as a former prisoner who tried to escape, and only the bishop sees a fellow human being in need. Valjean, though, is desperate for money and steals silver plates and candlesticks from the bishop. He is captured and returned, but the bishop refuses to press charges. He gives the silver to Valjean, who apparently has a kind of spiritual epiphany on the journey that follows. Those two candlesticks, by the way, are enormous, and it must be difficult to carry them around France in a sack for so long, but they are clearly designed to be symbolic, so carry them Valjean must. Perhaps it’s a part of his penance for trying to escape from his unjust imprisonment or his attempt to escape.
We next see him years later when, using the name of Madeleine, he is asked to consider being the mayor and magistrate (an unexpected combination, certainly, for a former prisoner) of the town where he has built a factory that employs many workers. On that same day, one of his managers fires a woman named Fantine, who has a child at a boarding house whom she is trying to support. Valjean learns of the woman's plight and takes her under his care. He also takes over the guardianship of her daughter, Cosette, who has been put to work in the boarding house doing chores like washing dishes despite her young age. Upon Fantine's death, Valjean assumes the role of parent of the child. The film rather rapidly glosses over the somewhat obvious fact that Fantine has worked as a prostitute, but it was 1935 after the implementation of the Production Code, so we’re supposed to understand that no one is showing Fantine any mercy because, you know, she was a “bad person” even if we can’t be more specific than that. Older movies certainly had to work their way around some complicated subjects in the funniest of ways. You had to be a smart viewer sometimes to catch on.
Of course, Valjean is still on the run from his past, and it isn't long before he's recognized by Javert, who seems to have no other occupation than to find Valjean wherever he might go. Valjean helps to lift a wagon that has been stuck, and it's oddly reminiscent of how he used his back in prison once to save a fellow prisoner. Javert, now a police inspector in the city, makes it his mission to capture Valjean and make him admit to his identity as a former prisoner. You see, there's another fellow who has been charged as Jean Valjean, a drunk who's willing to admit to almost any crime and Javert can only accept the “real” criminal being prosecuted and persecuted. Javert begins investigating the mayor over the objections of everyone else. The real Valjean admits who he is in open court, but when Javert shows up to arrest Valjean, the mayor and his "child" escape and assume new identities. He now becomes a gardener at a convent where his daughter is schooled, and they seem to be happy for a time. Prisoner to factory owner to mayor to gardener is quite the story arc, isn’t it? Whenever he relocates to another place, an intertitle informs us that “Thus ended the X phase of Valjean’s life,” a helpful reminder that we’re about to be somewhere completely different.
I know I'm making this plot sound horribly convoluted and perhaps even rather ridiculous at times, and I'd be willing to wager that the book itself requires you to keep a list of all of the characters, but really, it isn't all that tough to follow. I suspect the story has been remarkably streamlined in order to fit within a two-hour time frame, but the intrigue is still strong. The key, of course, is trying to discern if Laughton's Javert will truly find March's Valjean and arrest him and send him to jail despite all of the good deeds that the reformed prisoner has done. I suppose the lesson is about how difficult it is to escape your past even if you experienced prejudice and mistreatment. Can you start over? Not if you have someone like Javert doggedly pursuing you for decades simply because you’ve not checked in with the local police.
March is very good here, playing Valjean and his various aliases each with a somewhat different style. Yet he remains the same man of integrity throughout the film, and his affection for Cosette is one of the film's strongest points. March always had an intensity to his acting, displayed perhaps best in his two Academy Award winning roles in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and The Best Years of Our Lives. He ages a lot throughout this film, and a beard often hides his face, making it more likely that someone like Javert would not be able to recognize him immediately.
The real star, though, is Laughton. He is younger and leaner here than I remember him from other movies of the era, and there's a hunger to him, an energy to prove himself that seems to drive his actions. Laughton’s Javert doesn’t seem to age at all as the movie progresses, which makes him an interesting contrast to how March’s Valjean is portrayed. Laughton was an actor who always had a haughty look to his face and an unrepentant smirk, and they’re used to good advantage here. His single-minded desire to arrest Valjean leads him to a harrowing trek through the sewers of Paris, but he refuses to give up. Laughton had already won an Oscar the previous year for playing the title role in The Private Life of Henry VIII, and he would co-star this same year in the original Mutiny on the Bounty, which defeated Les Miserables for Best Picture of 1935. That was quite a string of great roles he had during the decade.
There's more to the story, of course, but why bother rehashing all of it? There are revolutionaries and rioting and all sorts of discussions of right and wrong. We are also treated to quite an exhilarating escape through the sewers of Paris and some great battle sequences later in the film that serve as a climactic moment for both lead characters. The year 1935 had a lot of high-brow literary adaptations, among them fellow nominees David Copperfield and Alice Adams and A Midsummer Night's Dream. This version of Les Miserables certainly belongs in that august company.
As a side note, I’d like to mention that this film was one of the Oscar nominees for Best Assistant Director (for Eric Stacey). The award lasted for only five years, and Stacey was nominated for it on three occasions during that short period of time. How did Academy voters know what the contributions of the assistant director were? Under the studio system, they must have had greater insight into the contributions of people like the assistant director.
Oscar Nominations: Outstanding Production, Best Assistant Director (Eric Stacey), Best Cinematography, and Best Film Editing
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