Les Mis%C3%A9rables (1958 film)

Les Misrables is a 1958 FrenchEast GermanItalian film adaptation of the Victor Hugo novel released in France onMarch 1958. Written by Michel Audiard and Ren Barjavel, the film was directed by JeanPaul Le Chanois. It stars Jean Gabin as Jean Valjean.

Called the most memorable film version, it was filmed in East Germany and was overtly political. Of the many film adaptations of the novel, this has been called the one most popular with audiences in postwar France. One noteworthy plot change was made to accommodate the fact that the actors playing the roles of Valjean and Javert were far apart in age, rather than near contemporaries as in the novel. Instead of Javert recognizing Valjean as a convict he had often guarded years earlier, he remembers how, when he was just a boy, his prison guard father had pointed out this man as the worst kind of prisoner, who tried to escape four times.The New York Times described it as one of the first French blockbusters that appeared in response to such lengthy feature films as Around the World in 80 Days and The Ten Commandments. It said it was a ponderous fourhour retelling of Victor Hugos oftfilmed epic.... Not a page is skipped... Too literary, it has the saving grace of Jean Gabins truly heroic depiction of Jean Valjean plus some stirring scenes on the barricades. It was a quintessential Gabin role ... that of a loner, an outsider, usually a member of the lower orders who may flirt with love and happiness but knows they are not for him. ........

Source: Wikipedia