There are only two or three human stories, and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they had never happened before.
. . . . Willa Cather: O Pioneers!


There may only be two or three stories but Claude Lelouch manages to wrap three or four versions of this one into a triumphant epic drama, also known by the title Les Misérables du vingtième siècle.

Historical Background: Claude Lelouch was born on October 30th, 1937, in Paris. His father was a Jewish confectioner and his ancestors had lived for three generations in Algeria after being driven out of Palestine. Lelouch took a keen interest in film very early in life and actually directed his first short when he was just thirteen. It won a prize at the Cannes Amateur Film Festival. He was still only nineteen when he turned professional, making shorts and commercials for television. He gained further experience with filmmaking while in the military, in the late fifties. His first successful feature film was an international blockbuster, A Man and a Woman (1966), starring Anouk Aimée and Jean-Louis Trintignant. It won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film and shared the Grand Prize at Cannes. The stars of this film later reprised their roles for Lelouch in A Man and a Woman: 20 Years Later (1986).

Lelouch acts as his own producer and writes all of his own scripts. His mastery of technical aspects of filmmaking is indisputable. His films are notable for their spontaneity and free-flowing camera work. His style is lush, romantic, and glossy, which is not to the taste of all viewers or critics. Relatively few of his films have been screened in America in recent decades. Les Misérables is among the most successful of his recent films. It is also highly ambitious in seeking to integrate a piece of classic literature with a modern tale.

The Story: The film opens at the turn of the century, on New Year's Eve, 1900. In the exquisitely ornate ballroom of an aristocratic mansion, the French nobility have gathered together to celebrate in style. One of those in attendance, the Count of Villeneuve, receives warning that the police are looking for him, from his loyal chauffeur, Henri Fortin (Jean-Paul Belmondo). As the Count makes his escape through the countryside, he decides to commit suicide and the luckless chauffeur is later convicted of murdering the man.

Fortin is sentenced to twenty years hard labor (like Valjean in Les Misérables). His loyal wife, Catherine (Clémentine Célarié), takes their son, who she renames "Henri" after his father, to the coast, where she finds work at a tavern owned by the Guillaimes. She turns to prostitution in order to try to save enough money to hire a lawyer for an appeal of her husband's sentence. Meanwhile, Henri twice attempts escape. After the first such attempt, he is confined in a small cage outside in the winter snow. When the second attempt is about to end in his recapture and return to the cage, he commits suicide instead. Upon learning the news, Catherine slashes her wrists.

The younger Henri Fortin is now perilously on his own. He continues to work for a pittance at the tavern until World War I, when he joins the French army. There he becomes a boxer (played briefly by Paul Belmondo, son of Jean-Paul) and one of his bouts is underway virtually at the moment when the World War I armistice is declared. He goes on to become a champion, until he reaches the end of his career in 1931. He then finds contentment as a furniture mover (now played by Jean-Paul Belmondo). One day, he single-handedly lifts a piano under which one of the workers is trapped and is told that he is "a real Jean Valjean" by the amazed on-lookers. Though unable to read, he becomes obsessed with learning about Valjean and purchases a copy of Les Misérables from a bookseller.

Meanwhile, we meet a young Jewish law student, André Ziman (Michel Boujenah), who moonlights as a ballet critic to help defray his expenses at law school. Ziman makes the acquaintance of one of the star ballerinas, Elise (Alessandra Martines), and soon the two are married. Ziman matures into a top Parisian defense attorney, with numerous acquittals to his credit, as Elise achieves fame in her professional as well. They have a lovely daughter named Salomé (Salomé Lelouch). When the Nazis occupy France, the Zimans find themselves desperately needing to escape to Switzerland, and hire Henri Fortin for the move. Since it is no longer safe for them to travel by train, as they had planned, they ask Fortin to let them travel with him in his truck. Fortin agrees on one condition – that Ziman read Les Misérables to him as they travel. Lelouch stages various scenes from the Hugo novel, from the vantage point of Fortin's vivid imigination, as they are read. Fortin identifies with both Valjean (also played by Belmondo) and Colette and sees his mother as Fantine (also played by Clémentine Célarié). The parallels between the novel and the real time story are obvious to viewers as well. When the four travelers approach a checkpoint, the story is interrupted so that the Zimans can disembark, detour through the woods, and rendezvous with Fortin on the other side of the checkpoint.

As the trip becomes increasingly dangerous, Ziman decides to place Salomé in a Catholic boarding school and convent, under the supervision of an angelic Mother Superior (Micheline Presle), who not only looks out for Salomé and teaches her enough Christian prayers to enable her to fool the Nazis, but also respects her Jewish heritage. André and Elise continue their journey to Switzerland, meeting up with a contact, who is supposed to help them cross the border. Instead, they and their fellow travelers are betrayed and most of the group is mowed down at the border by Nazi machine guns. Elise is taken captive, imprisoned with other women, and later made over into a call girl for Nazi officers. When she refuses to prostitute herself for them, she is packed off to a prison camp in Poland.

André, though badly wounded, manages to crawl far enough into the woods to be overlooked by the Nazis, who are finishing off the rest of the wounded men. Later, André is discovered by a sympathetic French farmer, who takes him home and gets him medical attention. The farmer, François Thénardier (Philippe Léotard), and his wife, Thénardière (Annie Girardot), hide the Jew in the cellar of their barn, feeding him and caring for him. André arranges to repay them for their efforts through his Swiss bank account. Unfortunately, the initially generous farm couple becomes increasingly avaricious and decides not to tell their "boarder" when the Allies invade and the war ends. Trouble also brews between the couple when the wife tries to seduce André, fanning her husband's jealousy.

Meanwhile, a French policeman (and erstwhile Nazi collaborator), played by Philippe Khorsand who also plays Javert in the excerpts from the Hugo novel, arrests Fortin and tortures him, trying to extract the location of the Jews. Fortin heroically resists revealing any information and ends up in prison. There he meets three fellow Frenchmen turned hoodlums (Ticky Holdago, Antoine Duléry, and Jacques Bonnot). Their Nazi captors have agreed to let them escape so that they can rob the homes of wealthy French families and split the proceeds with the Germans. Fortin decides to join this group, it being his only way out of prison. They gradually break away from sharing the loot with the Nazis and begin working for the resistance against the Vichy regime, robbing a Vichy payroll train.

Fortin and his gang pay a visit to the Guillaumes' inn where Fortin intends to confront the old couple who had tormented him and his mother, but both have died and the inn is now operated by the son and grandson, whose name is Marius (Michael Cohen). While at the tavern, Fortin and his friends witness the landing at Normandy. Their cheers give way to crisis when the shelling hits the tavern. Fortin, with the help of Marius, takes out one of the German bunkers with a hand grenade, saving the lives of countless Allied soldiers. Fortin takes Marius under his wing when the latter's father is killed in the action.

After the liberation, Fortin breaks from his hoodlum friends and purchases a resort, twenty mile outside of Paris. He devotes himself to emulating his hero Valjean, helping people throughout his community. When he receives a letter from Salomé, who has not heard from her parents for a while, he retrieves her from the convent and takes her in as well.

Will either Elise or André make it back alive? Does the modern day Javert reappear to spoil Fortin's newfound success and prestige? Will Fortin's old criminal associates reappear? Does Salomé, like her counterpart Colette in the novel, marry Marius? This and more is what you'll need to discover from watching the film.

Themes: There are two main, fully interrelated themes to this film. The first is the notion contained in the quote from Willa Cather cited at the top of this review: there are really only two or three basic stories that repeat themselves continuously throughout history. By illustrating the parallels between the misery and injustice of the nineteenth century, chronicled by Hugo, and the terrible crimes and injustices that took place during the war years in France, Lelouch gives the idea of endless repetition new meaning. Lelouch also ably illustrates that what makes a story like Les Misérables great literature is that readers recognize in the characters something of themselves and others they know, despite the years and miles that separate the respective settings. Fortin had been told by acquaintances for years that he was "a real Jean Valjean" and becomes fascinated with discovering himself through the novel, despite being illiterate. The comparisons between Les Misérables and the twentieth century story are drawn not once, but over and over again throughout the three plus hour film. Les Misérables becomes the moral reference point for examining the Nazi atrocities and French collaboration during World War II. Moreover, Lelouch reveals intergenerational repetitions within his modern story. Coincidence and fate are themes that Lelouch returns to time and time again in his films, but here he extends the idea across centuries.

Unfortunately, one of those two or three basic stories that recurs throughout history is a tale of horrendous violence and injustice, which provides this film with its second major theme. Hugo's novel, set in Napoleonic times, chronicled terrible suffering and injustice of a nearly universal scale, but Lelouch shows that our times are, in many respects, the most miserable of all. Though Lelouch unflinchingly depicts the Nazis with all of their sadistic anti-Semitic tendencies, he saves his most bitter denunciations for the French collaborators who helped send their Jewish neighbors to their deaths. We also observe how unevenly collaborators were treated during the postwar years, some being humiliated or incarcerated while the crimes of some others were conveniently overlooked. Lelouch's Les Misérables is a vivid tapestry imbued with moral urgency. Though the apparent inevitability of human selfishness and venality can be overwhelming, Lelouch leaves us with an up-beat feeling that there is still hope, through love and redemption.

Production Values: The screenplay for this epic drama is masterful in drawing parallels between Hugo's classic Les Misérables and a modern tale that transpires during the Nazi occupation of France. Lelouch skillfully moves between past and present and between the various threads of the central story to establish the commonality of human experience from one generation to another. This film is neither a period adaptation of the Hugo novel nor a transposition of it to modern times. Instead, it freely explores the role that literature plays in revealing perennial truths from which we either learn or don't, at our collective peril. Yet, this film is no dry examination of abstract theoretical constructs. Lelouch fleshes out his film with a rich assortment of action vignettes, including a train robbery, prison escapes, lavish ballroom scenes, shootouts, a massacre, and car chases. All of the crosscutting layers are interwoven seamlessly. The end result is one of the finest film scripts ever written and one that is both timeless and original.

Lelouch's Les Misérables is a beautifully shot costume piece, with the special challenge of encompassing four different eras: Napoleonic France, turn-of-the-century France, Vichy France, and the France of 1990. The prison scene was filmed at a former prison, Fort Joux. There are some especially well shot scenes, such as prisoners marching through a snowstorm and the landing of the Allies along the Normandy coastline. The period detail is spectacular, as can generally be expected from French epics. The soundtrack features some magnificent piano music to accompany a pianist character performing at a Nazi party. There are shades of Max Ophüls (The Earrings of Madame de . . .) in two dance scenes, featuring gracefully spinning couples.

Belmondo's performances in this film, as three different characters, are a genuine tour-de-force. It has to rank as one of the all-time best performances by an actor. His weather-beaten face has the look of a gnome carved in rawhide. There's an extended opening close-up of Belmondo's visage that is quite astounding. Belmondo is best known to American audiences for his early work, when he was something of a heartthrob, in films such as A Bout de Souffle (1959), A Woman is a Woman (1960), Two Women (1960), That Man from Rio (1964), Pierrot le Fou (1965), Is Paris Burning? (1966), Mississippi Mermaid (1969), and Stavisky (1974). He has continued to have a successful career in the decades since, though few of his films have made it to America, where tastes are driven by youthful star appeal. Nevertheless, Belmondo still has plenty of masculine charisma.

There are also excellent performances turned in by Michel Boujenah and Alessandra Martines as the Ziman parents. Martines is best known as a dancer rather than an actress, but acquits herself nicely. Boujenah appeared in Three Men and a Cradle (1958). Salomé Ziman was played by the director's daughter, Salomé Lelouch, but before you scream nepotism, you need to see the superlative performance she provides, reminiscent of the job turned in by director Mikhalkov's daughter in Burnt By the Sun (1994). Then, there's a pair of outstanding character performances delivered by by Annie Girardot and Philippe Léotard, as the farm couple. Girardot also performed in Rocco and His Brothers (1960) and Léotard in Two English Girls (1971), Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me (1973), and The French Connection II (1975).

Bottom-Line: I've touched, in this review, on only the most obvious layers of the film. There are also some clips from an old black-and-white adaptation of the Hugo novel, featuring Jean Marais as the Monsignor Myriel, who redirects Valjean's life by his act of faith and kindness toward the ex-con. The young Henri had apparently seen the film as a child. Then, as the son of a Parisian Jew, director Lelouch had his own personal family history to draw on in the telling of the modern part of the story. At a length of 175 minutes, this film will tax the patience of some viewers, but, for others, it will be one of those rarefied viewing experiences that will rank among your favorites. I especially recommend this film for those with an interest in or appreciation for literature. It's not just that this film draws its inspiration from one of the greatest French novel. It also explores the very nature of the stories that we tell. Les Misérables is in French with English subtitles.

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: Good for a Rainy Day
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age