Les Miserables - 1952 Movie

Les Misérables—1952 Movie

Running time: 105 minutes

Valjean: Michael Rennie—Javert: Robert Newton—Fantine: Sylvia Sidney

Special Guest Stars: Debra Paget, Edmund Gwenn, Cameron Mitchell

Directed by Lewis Milestone

Produced by Fred Kohlimar

Released by 20th Century Fox

Character Checklist:

Eponine: no

Gavroche: yes

Enjolras: no

M. Gillenormand: no

Both Mlle. Baptistine and Mme. Magloire: yes, but Baptistine is called "Mlle. Courbet"

Thénardiers, after the inn: who?

Sister Simplice: no (there is a nun, but she is not named)

Azelma: no

Gavroche's brothers: no

Fauchelevant: who?

Mme. Victurnien: no

Petit Gervais: no

M. Mabeuf: no

Toussaint: sort of (Cosette has a duenna, apparently, named Marie)

Events Checklist:

Hugo's original preface used

Valjean is in prison at the beginning

Bishop Myriel remains asleep during the robbery (it is assumed so, it cuts from the robbery to the next morning

Fantine sells her teeth

Fantine becomes a prostitute (well... sort of. Could be. Kinda hard to say.)

Valjean buries his money

Fight at Fantine's Deathbed

The Ship Orion

Valjean meets Cosette at the well

First incident at Gorbeau House

Javert chases Valjean and Cosette

Through Paris

On foot

Car(riage) chase

The second incident at Gorbeau House

Valjean and Cosette see the chain gang

Lamarque's funeral is shown or mentioned

Chase through sewers

Story continues after Javert's suicide

Marius, after learning Valjean's history, treats him badly (no, he treats him badly before he learns Valjean's history!)

Details Checklist:

Hugo's original preface used

Valjean branded

Incorrect number: 1082
Works in the galleys

The factory makes glass beads (no, they make pottery...)

The doll, Catherine

The garden at Rue Plumet (where?)

Correct address?

The Luxembourg Garden (well, there IS a park...

The town's name is Montreuil-sur-mer (does not say)

The man Valjean saves in Arras is named Champmathieu

Valjean's name becomes Fauchelevant (there is no Fauchelevant)

Eponine/Gavroche as Thénardier's child (there is no Eponine. Come to think of it, there's also no Thénardier)

Production Notes:

Michael Rennie was there, the day the bread got stole,
And Robert Newton vowed he'd win in the end
Silvia Sidney was there, with all her teeth and hair
And Thenardier was the invisible man

And I saw Edmund Gwenn dismiss all the king's men
So Valjean could take the silver away
But that Debra Paget was too old for Cosette
and Cameron Mitchell failed to save the day

In this... Miserable Fifties Feature
Victor Hugo would deny this creature
See students fighting... a rebellion
Gavroche the gamin is more a hellion
At the late night, miserable picture show
(You don't want to know)
At the late night, miserable picture show...

"I would like
you would, would you?
to take you
where?
on a strange journey..."
How strange was it? It was so strange they made a movie out of it! No, not the book, the movie!

Now we see the danger inherent in reviewing a movie with Michael Rennie in it. I had this dang song stuck in my head before I even saw it, and the movie itself did not improve my disposition. In fact, this movie was so bad it didn't deserve a silhouette in front of it, it deserved a Rocky Horror style live sendup. There's talking back to a film and then there's talking back to a film, you know?

Let's just get this over with, shall we?

As for the other details of the plot:

For some reason, scriptwriters like to give Valjean a buddy, or a sidekick or something, a sympathetic character who knows his past and yet sticks with him anyway. In the 1998 version it was that soldier who let Valjean escape after Fantine died. In the CBS radio version, Marius's pal "Paul" helps him in the sewers. In this one, the foreman of the factory, name of Robert, helps him out through the rest of the film, taking Valjean's money to England and keeping it safe there, acting like an uncle to Cosette, becoming kind of his business partner... someone to snarl at Javert as he's about to take Valjean away at the end, "how does victory taste, Inspector?" A wholly unnecessary addition to the cast.
in the beginning, when Valjean is being sentenced, the starving woman and kids are introduced as "the children of my friend." Apparently some guy and his family took Valjean in, then the guy died, and Valjean felt like he had to support them, but they were hungry, yadda yadda yadda. Neatly sidestepping the question of "why didn't he look for the family later on?" He wasn't related to them!
There is no lifting the cart scene, but there is a runaway cart scene where Valjean leaps onto the wagon, brings it to a halt, thereby saving the life of a little boy who was on the wagon, the son of the guy who owns the pottery factory... the owner wanted to sell the factory (one of two) so he could concentrate on the other one; Valjean takes the money from the sale of the silver and buys the pottery shop... what a lucky break, huh?
Wrap your brains around this one: Javert's father was in the galleys, chained to the convict Genflue. Later on this same convict was chained next to Valjean and it was he who taught Valjean to read. Genflue then gets such wonderful lines as, when Javert is being less than nice to the convicts, "Your father would not have approved!" Oh, and on the galley ship, Javert is a lieutenant.
Again, Valjean given a blanket ten year sentence for the bread theft. Only this time, it's not enough for the camera to zoom in on the bread at the end of the scene (as in the 1935 version), as the next case is called the bailiff throws the bread away into the waste basket! So there!
This version not only has no Fauchelevant, meaning no cart scene (except the runaway cart scene mentioned above), there are NO Thenardiers! None! Valjean shows up one day with Cosette in tow. Oh, and Fantine is allowed to see her before she dies.
Marius's entrance is a little different (somewhat reminiscent of the Italian version): he is about to be arrested for public disturbance, runs from the police, jumps the convent wall, and is rescued by Valjean, who hides him in the cottage till the coast is clear. It is here that he meets Cosette unexpectedly! However, he introduces himself as Baron Marius Pontmercy, and says his father was "knighted at Austerlitz." *bzzt* nope, wrong, sorry, but thanks for playing anyway!
Again, as in the 1935 version on which this movie is so obviously based, Javert is given a first name, but this one I don't mind spoiling: Étienne. Yes, that's right, according to this movie, the most fiercesome detective known to literature is named "Steve." I don't think so!

Cast Notes:
This is very interesting... let's call it the Six Degrees of Demetrius...

Michael Rennie, B movie actor extraordinaire, is most known thanks to the Rocky Horror Picture Show lyrics as the guy in The Day The Earth Stood Still. Remember the phrase "Klaatu barata nikto?" Well, he played Klaatu, the alien. He was in over a hundred movies. The coolest credits I could come up with was that he had an uncredited bit part in Pimpernel Smith, Leslie Howard's WWII update of the famous Orczy character he portrayed earlier; but also that he was in one of the best of the Biblical epic movies of the 50's, The Robe (as the Apostle Peter) and he revived that role in one of the worst Biblical epics, the uncalled for sequel Demetrius and the Gladiators. Which leads to...
Debra Paget, who was also in Demetrius and the Gladiators as Lucia, but she scored a much better Biblical role as Lilia, the slave girl that everyone's fighting over in the epic The Ten Commandments. She also costarred with Rennie in Omar Khayyam. Debra Paget plays Cosette, which leads to...
Sylvia Sidney, playing her mother Fantine, had a quasi biblical role too. She was in Damien: Omen II. On a side slant she is probably more recognizeable as Mama Carlson, the radio station owner on WKRP in Cincinnati and as Juno, the case worker in Beetlejuice with the neck slit from which she kept smoking. Also recently she was in Mars Attacks! as Grandma Norris (alien invasions of course tying back in with Michael Rennie, but even better, it leads to...)
Cameron Mitchell, who also starred in a rash of B science-fiction and horror movies, most recently one of the best/worst films to ever appear on MST3K, Space Mutiny. Yes, that's right, our Marius is Captain Santa Claus in that movie. Scary, huh? Tying back with Demetrius and the Gladiators, he was the voice-over for Christ in The Robe and reprised in a flashback film clip in Demetrius and the Gladiators. But going back to Space Mutiny and speaking of Santa Claus...
Edmund Gwenn, the Bishop in this movie, is best known for a lot of Lassie movies. No, that too, but he's really best known as Kris Kringle in the original Miracle on 34th Street. And to top it off, in 1935 (the same year that the Frederic March/Charles Laughton version of Les Misérables came out) Gwenn starred in a movie called The Bishop Misbehaves which I'm sure Jean Valjean would not have approved of. But he was also in one of the funniest movies Alfred Hitchcock ever made, The Trouble With Harry, and the Hitchcock connection leads us to...
Robert Newton, who was in one of Hitchcock's earlier films, Jamaica Inn (playing an undercover cop, by the way), which also starred (and was co-produced by) Charles Laughton, who played Javert in the 1935 movie version of Les Misérables. He seems to have been Hooked On Classics because he played Long John Silver in three different versions, he was in Tom Brown's Schooldays in two different versions, he was Bill Sykes in the 1940 Oliver Twist and most notoriously he played yet another obsessed detective, that is to say, Detective Fix, chasing after David Niven's Phileas Fogg in Around The World In Eighty Days. Also in that movie, to link back to Les Misérables, were Cedric Hardwicke and John Carradine, who were of course in the 1935 version. To link back to the beginning of the list, Robert Newton and Michael Rennie also starred together in the movie The Squeaker, (except in that one, Michael Rennie played the cop) which would lead back to the movie Demetrius and the Gladiators, but even better than that, also in 1952 Robert Newton starred in Androcles and the Lion with Victor Mature... and Victor Mature was in Demetrius and the Gladiators playing Demetrius! Ta daaa!

Lord, but I have way too much time on my hands...

The Best Things About This Version:

There is a lovely recurring motif with roses. The Bishop has roses in his garden, and when Valjean kneels to receive the candlesticks from him he kneels on a dropped rose and afterwards takes it with him. When he goes to sell the silver, the counterman walks away, Valjean is about to pocket something when he takes the rose out instead, decides not to steal (in other words, it's the rose and not the candlesticks that keep him in line, but he decides not to sell the candlesticks). Later, the pottery they produce bears a rose pattern. He is shown with rose bushes in the convent garden. And at the end, the final frame is an image in the reflective mirror of Cosette and Marius, looked over by Valjean (oh yeah, and Robert) and there's a candlestick to either side of the mirror and a spray of roses on the hearth.

The Bishop is in the garden gathering flowers in a basked. Mme Magloire comes out complaining that "that man" stole the chicken they had left over for dinner. Then she sees the basket. "That's the silver basket... where's the silver? Oh no..." and meanwhile the Bishop is all very noncommittal about it

It's hard to think of a third good thing about this film. Maybe the fact that it's in black and white? I think a Technicolor treatment of this version would make me violently ill... the colors on the posters and the lobby cards are garish enough...

The Worst Things About This Version:

This movie is basically a remake of the 1935 movie. It's amazing how many scenes, how many lines of dialogue, are lifted directly from it: the opening trial scene and the zooming in on the bread at the end; the blanket ten year sentence, the "he must leave the collar on" scene in the galleys, the "it's not me, it's the law" scene right before Javert lets Valjean go, the "here ends the first part of Jean Valjean's life" slides separating out the sections, and the "take what you will" line of Valjean's right before he notices Javert's slipped away to off himself... However, I will say that as Javert is about to jump, Valjean makes a good attempt to reach him in time, to prevent it... but stops after he jumps and heads back home. Oh well.
There's a very odd scene in the galleys as Valjean is released; he is given his pay, only 33 francs for his ten years. He complains when he's told it's short because of Sundays and holidays. And then, strangely, Javert tells the burser to give Valjean the rest of his money! What the heck is that all about?
Cosette is played by the same actress as a child and as an adult. Yes, that's right, she's a 20 year old woman playing a 14 year old (they gloss this over by having Fantine forget that her child has been away for so long)... but for a little girl she sure has a tight bodice! We never see the inn, or the Thenardiers, and we never see Cosette in anything but nice clothes. One would think that whoever took care of her had done a great job, and one wonders why Fantine would pull her child from such an arrangement...
Actually, the whole Cosette thing in this movie gives me the creeps. She recites Shakespeare (!) in the garden with Valjean supposedly for her studies, but he's watching her quote from Romeo and Juliet and the look on his face is just plain icky. Later on he makes a point of telling Marius that he's not in love with Cosette "that way," that she is all women to him... and you know, I do not want to go there, I don't want a map to there, and I don't want the atlas to there available at the nearest bookstore. This just reminds me of a movie that came out the same time, a Ronald Reagan/Shirly Temple movie called "That Hagen Girl," where the gossip in town is that she's his illegitimate daughter, but when they find out it's not true, they get married! Yaaaaaggh!!
The reason I put that (!) in the text above after Shakespeare is that the first comprehensive translation of the Bard into French was made several decades after the action in Les Misérables takes place... and it was made by Victor Hugo's sons! Anachronism par excellance!
And then there's the text of Marius's farewell letter to Cosette: "Cosette, I beg of you not to sacrifice your life to this man's (he means Valjean) selfishness. He holds you only by your own exaggerated sense of gratitude. I cannot deny my heart—I love you and if I live I will follow wherever he takes you- Marius." So, 90% of his farewell letter/declaration of love letter is about Valjean, not about her. What a romantic!
To cap off the ickiness of this movie, note the movie poster at the top of this review. The image on the bottom is Valjean picking up Fantine after she has fainted at the police station—the angle of the picture is the same as that in the film, staring straight down her cleavage! What the hell was wrong with the people on this production, anyway??

The Silver Candlestick Awards ("Stickies®")

And the awards go to....

The I-Never-Knew-Javert-Was-The-Woo-Woo-Type Award: Javert is present in the courtroom when Valjean denounces himself. As Valjean speaks, Javert has a smug smirk on his face as if he had been waiting for Valjean to do this, as if he had never been fooled by Champmathieu—and when the mayor declares "I am Jean Valejan" Javert clenches his fist and mouths "YES!"

Possibly The Most Unintentionally Ridiculous Scene Ever Filmed: Yes, even worse than the scene of Valjean posing as a blind man in the Italian version, we have the following: outside the hospital, Valjean tells Cosette that her mother is going to die, but that she's lived a rough life and she'll be happier elsewhere (in other words, dead). Valjean then tells Cosette not to tell Fantine of her impending doom. And then, he breaks out in a smile and says, "Come on, no more talk of dying." And they go off, la la la la... I am NOT making this up!

Strangest Attempt To Get Over The Problem Of Showing A Yellow Passport In A B&W Film: the passport itself is all written in French. However, stamped across the paper, diagonally, in huge letters, is the word YELLOW. In English.

The Why-Jean-Valjean-Never-Took-Up-Medicine Award: He had brought Marius back to the house after slogging through the Paris sewers for miles, infecting every wound with God only knows what, and when Cosette runs to Marius's side Valjean says, "I've sent for the doctor, don't touch him." Oh, heavens no, don't get the filthy clothes off him or anything, don't wipe the gunk away from his bullet wounds, just let him fester in muck till the doctor shows up...

Lines Of Dialog Hugo Wishes He'd Thought Of:

Most Underutilized Gavroche: Basically his function is to deliver love letters to and from Cosette, and to break streetlamps. And he doesn't die either, at least not that I saw. Dammit. *snap*

Unlikeliest Place For Jean Valjean To Conduct Official Business Award: Early on, after Valjean buys the factory, he and Robert go out drinking in the bar, right before Fantine's arrest. And when Javert comes to tell the mayor he denounced him to Paris, he finds Valjean in a little outdoor cafe. Javert does not resign at this time, by the way, or any other time. But frankly, the sight of both of them seated at a little white metal table out on a patio with demitasse cups in front of them is very disconcerning...

Where to find this Version

Well, you can't. It's not commercially available. However, a very nice person with a 16mm print and videotape transferring equipment aided me in the making of this review, and I thank him for it anonymously so he doesn't get into any trouble...

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Review ©2000 Arlene C. Harris. May be distributed, with this copyright notice intact. Jacket art ©the owner of the work, who is not me; it is provided as a visual aid for those trying to tell the difference between one video and another, so don't sue me. I'm trying to help.