Excellent but underrated film

Absolutely Brilliant!

While it is a pity that the story wasn't told with more visual finesse, this is trivial compared to our real-world problems. It takes a good movie to put that into perspective.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

A variation on Victor Hugo's classic novel by means of the story of a man whose life is affected by and somewhat duplicated by the Hugo story of the beleaguered Jean Valjean.There have been many, many film incarnations of "Les Miserables". Many before this film, and many since. Some are musicals, some are narratives, and most (including this one) tend to run on the longer side. But this film may be more unlike any of the others than any of them are with each other.The idea of adapting the story to the 20th century is clever, and is even more clever by referencing a film within a film, so it is not just a straight update. But further still, the time period seems to be around 1950, maybe earlier... so it wasn't set in the 1990s. It is still a period piece. It is, to my recollection, the only period piece to use a film-within-a-film structure.

Despite the title, this film is not a straight-up adaptation of the classic novel but a loose updating to the 20th century but with events and characters mirroring those of the book(with Henri really identifying with Jean Valjean himself). Claude Lelouch had a very ambitious and quite mammoth task to take on, and the final result is really exceptional. It may not be a straight-up adaptation, and it wasn't intended to be, but you'll be surprised and impressed by how true in spirit it is to the book. The scenery and costumes, set in WW2 20th century, are beautiful and authentic and the whole film is shot similarly beautifully. The score is sweeping, haunting and subtle depending on the mood of each scene. The story never feels rushed or stodgy even with the length instead it is ceaselessly compelling, you identify completely with every character and their increasingly intense and harrowing situation(especially with Henri's task and struggles to keep the Jewish family out of the Nazis' clutches. The ending is incredibly moving also. The dialogue is intelligent and true to period, Lelouch's direction is pitch perfect and there is no fault to be had with the acting either. In support, Annie Giradot is particularly heart-breaking but it is Jean-Paul Belmondo's outstanding lead performance that people will remember most. All in all, a really magnificent and exceptional film. 10/10 Bethany Cox

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.

The received wisdom is that the rate at which film masterpieces are made has slowed to a virtual standstill. But this film, a relatively recent work (1995) by the great French director Claude Lelouch, contradicts that. It is a brilliant reworking of Hugo's classic tale, set against the turmoil of occupied France and manages to be both epic and intimate. It is one of the most moving and powerful films of the past 50 years and yet at the same time it manages to be charming, uplifting and even funny at times. Arguably, it is also a film that only a Frenchman could have made because it is so brutally honest about the conduct of so many 'ordinary' French people under the Vichy government. The performances are heartbreakingly good, Belmondo has never been better and he is surrounded by a remarkable cast. Not least of these is the young Salome Lelouch (Claude's daughter) - effortless in her role as the 11-y-old separated from her parents as Hitler's stormtroopers sweep across France. I commend this film to everyone, it occupies vaguely similar territory to that of Schindler's List but is incomparably better - more real, curiously more human, more engaging, less artful. Breathtaking.