--- title: "Les Misérables" year: 1935 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/les-miserables-1935" fi1m_score: 74 critics_reviews: 3 published: "2026-09-19T23:00:14.500661+00:00" updated: "2026-09-19T23:00:39.667500+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # Les Misérables (1935) Directed by Richard Boleslawski · 1h 48m · MPA NR · Drama, History, Romance **Fi1m score: 74** · Critics: 3 of 6 reviews so far *In a sentence:* Charles Laughton chases a loaf of bread across France for twenty years and never once sees the joke > Richard Boleslawski gets Hugo’s brick of a novel down to 108 minutes without losing the story, and Charles Laughton’s Javert is a study of a man frightened of his own mercy. The young lovers are dull and the barricades are over in a hurry. ## Synopsis France, early in the nineteenth century. Jean Valjean (Fredric March), a labourer who stole a loaf of bread, is sentenced to the galleys, where he rows in chains under a guard named Javert (Charles Laughton). Released years later, hardened and turned away from every inn, he is taken in for the night by the Bishop Bienvenue (Cedric Hardwicke), robs him of his silver, and is forgiven; the bishop presses a pair of candlesticks on him and sends him out to start again. Under a new name Valjean becomes a factory owner and the mayor of a provincial town, where Fantine (Florence Eldridge), one of his workers, is struggling to support a small daughter, Cosette, whom she has left with an innkeeper’s family. Then Javert arrives as the town’s new inspector of police. ## Review Victor Hugo’s novel is long enough to prop a door, and anyone who films it has to decide what to throw away. W.P. Lipscomb’s screenplay throws away most of it and keeps the spine: a man sent to the galleys for a loaf of bread, a bishop who forgives him, a policeman who will not. Richard Boleslawski’s film runs 108 minutes, moves quickly, and is at its best whenever Fredric March and Charles Laughton are in the same room. It is a good film with a great performance in it, and the performance is not the lead’s. The galleys come first, and Gregg Toland shoots them as a black room full of backs. Men strain at the oars under a lash; the light falls on shoulders and sweat and hardly ever on faces, so that when March’s Valjean finally lifts his head he seems to be coming up from under water. Laughton’s Javert is a guard here before he is an inspector, and the film gives him a short speech about his own parents, criminals both, that explains the rest of his life. He has decided the law is the only wall between him and them. Laughton plays it not as cruelty but as fear: a heavy, damp, exact man holding on to the rulebook with both hands. The bishop’s house is the scene everyone knows, and Cedric Hardwicke plays it as if he did not. His Bienvenue takes in the convict, is robbed, and tells the police he gave the silver away, all in the tone of a man dealing with a household matter before bed. He hands over the candlesticks and goes back upstairs. We were moved, more than we expected to be by a scene we could have recited in advance, because Hardwicke will not make a sermon of it. Those candlesticks are the one object in the film that means anything, and the film is wise enough to keep bringing them back. March is a decent Valjean and sometimes a stiff one. Under the greying make-up as the mayor he does a good deal of gazing past the camera, and there are stretches where the man’s goodness looks like tiredness. He is better early, when Valjean is still half an animal, and in the quiet scenes where he sits opposite Javert and tries not to give himself away. Florence Eldridge’s Fantine is on screen briefly and does the work of a longer part; her fall from factory worker to woman on the street is handled without much fuss and lands the harder for it. The trouble, as in most versions, is the young people. Rochelle Hudson’s grown Cosette and John Beal’s Marius meet in a garden and say the kind of things lovers say when a script needs them out of the way until the fighting starts. We waited through them, and we were aware of waiting. Frances Drake’s Eponine has more to do and does it with some spirit, but the film has no time to make her count. The student rising, when it comes, is staged well and finished fast. Barbara McLean cuts it as gunsmoke and falling bodies, and Toland’s sewers beneath the streets are wet, black and properly frightening, but the whole passage plays as a summary of a chapter rather than the chapter itself. Alfred Newman’s score is thick and nearly constant, swelling at every doorway, and the film would be stronger with half of it. Omar Kiam’s costumes do the period plainly and well: convict rags, a mayor’s sober black coat, and Javert’s uniform buttoned to the throat in every weather, which tells you most of what you need to know about him. Every adaptation of this book is really a film about Javert, whether or not it admits it, and this one admits it. The final scenes between Laughton and March, which we will not describe, carry more weight than the barricades before them, and Laughton plays them with a stillness he has been saving for an hour and a half. See it for him, for Hardwicke’s ten minutes, and for Toland’s galleys. It is a brisk, handsome, slightly bloodless telling of a story that has survived far worse, and at 108 minutes it asks less of an evening than the book asks of a month. *Fi1m score 74, published 19 September 2026.* ## What the critics say With only 3 reviews in so far, the picture leans favourable but is not settled. Two of the three find the adaptation a success: the long novel is trimmed without losing its shape, Boleslawski’s direction and Toland’s photography are singled out, and Fredric March as Valjean and Charles Laughton as Javert are judged strong and believable, with the action passages handled with confidence. The New Yorker parts company sharply, calling the film overlong and timid for its scale, finding the galley and sewer sequences flat, March’s performance too dependent on make-up, Laughton’s Javert reduced to a twitch and the Marius and Cosette romance routine. ### Reviews we read (3) - **The New York Times** (90/100, inferred): The film is a memorable and thrilling experience in cinema, with perfect collaboration of talents making it one of the notable contributions to the 1935 screen. It praises the direction by Richard Boleslawski, photography by Gregg Toland, screenplay adaptation, and performances by Fredric March and Charles Laughton. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1935/04/22/archives/the-rivoli-presents-a-memorable-motion-picture-of-les-miserables.html) - **Variety** (90/100, inferred): The adaptation satisfies exacting Victor Hugo followers while pleasing general audiences; the lengthy novel is boiled down with no loss of flavor by the screenwriter. Performances by March as the persecuted Valjean and Laughton as Javert are powerful and believable, with brilliantly managed action passages. [Read](https://variety.com/1934/film/reviews/les-miserables-5-1200411036/) - **The New Yorker** (30/100, inferred): The film feels overly long and namby-pamby despite its massive scale; the big violent scenes like the galleys and sewers lack inspiration and impact. Acting is uninspired, with March's Valjean relying on makeup and Laughton's Javert reduced to a nervous twitch, while the Marius-Cosette romance is routine. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1935/04/27/saints-and-sewers) ## Details - **Director:** Richard Boleslawski - **Director:** Richard Boleslawski - **Writer:** W.P. Lipscomb - **Novel:** Victor Hugo - **Cinematography:** Gregg Toland - **Editor:** Barbara McLean - **Music:** Alfred Newman - **Costume design:** Omar Kiam - **Producer:** Darryl F. Zanuck - **Cast:** Fredric March as Jean Valjean / Champmathieu; Charles Laughton as Inspector Emile Javert; Cedric Hardwicke as Bishop Bienvenue (as Sir Cedric Hardwicke); Rochelle Hudson as Cosette; Florence Eldridge as Fantine; Frances Drake as Eponine; John Beal as Marius; Jessie Ralph as Madame Magloire - **Runtime:** 1h 48m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 20 April 1935 - **Genres:** Drama, History, Romance ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. Also available in: AU, FI, IE. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1936: Best Cinematography (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Picture (nominated) ## If you liked this - *Les Misérables* (1934): Raymond Bernard’s French version keeps the sprawl; for anyone who wants the whole book - *I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang* (1932), Fi1m 85: An American Valjean in a Georgia prison camp, angrier and far less forgiving — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/i-am-a-fugitive-from-a-chain-gang.md) - *The Grapes of Wrath* (1940), Fi1m 86: Toland again, shooting the poor in the dark with the same hard tenderness — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-grapes-of-wrath.md) - *Bicycle Thieves* (1948), Fi1m 92: Poverty, a small theft and a father’s shame, without a single costume — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/bicycle-thieves.md) - *Witness for the Prosecution* (1957), Fi1m 87: Laughton on the other side of the law, enjoying himself enormously — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/witness-for-the-prosecution.md) --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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