Les Misérables is not War and Peace, and as a novelist, Victor Hugo was not Tolstoy. There is a lot of filler in the novel. Bernard does a good jog of focusing on only the important scenes and simply ignoring the rest - he made this movie for an audience who knew the novel and did not have to be filled in on a lot of the exposition. Those scenes that he does choose to film, especially the revolution on the barricades, are often very well done.
By the last third of the movie, however, he becomes too self-indulgent, and spends too much time on scenes that, given the length of the movie, would have been better passed over far more quickly.
The star, without any question, in this movie is Henry Bauer as Jean Valjean. He's not a handsome man, but he's a big and powerful one as Valjean was big and powerful. And an actor capable of conveying great emotion just with his face.
This is not always easy to sit through. If you don't know the story well, you may feel lost at times. But at its best, this movie gives a remarkable account of Hugo's novel, less the story of les misérables - the poor - than of one man who was asked to bear more sorrow than any man should have to bear, yet who never complained and just kept forging ahead.
By the last third of the movie, however, he becomes too self-indulgent, and spends too much time on scenes that, given the length of the movie, would have been better passed over far more quickly.
The star, without any question, in this movie is Henry Bauer as Jean Valjean. He's not a handsome man, but he's a big and powerful one as Valjean was big and powerful. And an actor capable of conveying great emotion just with his face.
This is not always easy to sit through. If you don't know the story well, you may feel lost at times. But at its best, this movie gives a remarkable account of Hugo's novel, less the story of les misérables - the poor - than of one man who was asked to bear more sorrow than any man should have to bear, yet who never complained and just kept forging ahead.