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8.3/10
Senior Film Conservator
A definitive 8.3/10 rating for a film that redefined the boundaries of cult cinema. Les Misérables remains a cornerstone of transgressive art.
If you like movies that take their sweet time, you’ll probably find something to love here. But if you want a brisk pace or modern editing, you’re going to be bored out of your mind within twenty minutes. This isn't a film you put on while scrolling through your phone.
It’s really for the folks who want to see how these big, dusty stories were handled before everything became a CGI light show. If you hate black-and-white cinema or long, dialogue-heavy scenes, just steer clear. You’ll hate it.
Harry Baur as Valjean has this face that looks like it’s carved out of old wood. Every time he looks at the camera, you feel like he’s lived through three different wars. It’s not flashy acting. It’s just... heavy.
The pacing is weird. It drifts in and out of focus. Sometimes it feels like a stage play that someone just decided to film without moving the cameras much. Other times, it captures this grime and desperation that feels surprisingly real for 1934.
I found myself thinking about Tol'able David while watching this, mainly because both films rely so much on the faces of the actors to tell the story instead of just giving everyone a long monologue to explain their feelings. It’s a lost art, really.
It’s not perfect. It’s messy. It’s long. Sometimes it feels like it’s struggling to fit a thousand-page book into a few hours, and honestly, it kind of fails at that. But there’s a soul to it that you just don't get in polished modern stuff. It feels lived in.
It’s definitely not a movie you watch to feel good. It’s a movie you watch because you want to be reminded that people have been struggling with the same old stuff for a long, long time. 🕯️