When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I will never understand why people insist on ruining a perfectly wonderful story by making it into some indecipherable and mostly unwatchable musical. Those who do such should be sentenced to 20 years hard labor. This movie is wonderful, and portrayed the story as Hugo intended, I am sure.There are many versions of Les Misérables. This is definitely one worth watching. If you have ever wondered what the entire story is, read the entire Hugo writing; second best, watch this movie. Charles Laughton is wonderful in his same pudgy sissy/bully role that he usually plays. Frederick March is, indeed, a star.

Of course, this is my opinion. Great films are not easily defined, but this has everything in it: strong characterization, great story, great acting, and great scriptwriting. This is also a successful abbreviated adaptation of a very long novel. I first saw it when I was 11 years old back in December of 1979. It stuck in my mind for five years, but I didn't know what the name of the film was or what book it was based on until I accidentally saw the 1978 remake of it on t.v. late one night in 1984. The 1978 version was a good film, but not nearly as good as the 1935 version. I then borrowed the Victor Hugo novel from the library and read it, but it was not until the spring of 1986 that I was able to tape a late night version of this excellent film. Frederic March was the best Jean Valjean. He portrayed both sides of the tortured protagonist (desperate peasant and selfless businessman) with a spirit and passion unequaled by later Valjeans. Charles Laughton was equally superb as the obsessed antagonist, Inspector Javert. One could not help but feel pity for him in the final moments of the film. The best scenes in the film, however, were the ones with Sir Cedric Hardwicke as Bishop Bienvenue. Hardwicke is so credible in his brief scenes that we actually believe he is the kind bishop rather than an actor playing a part. Hardwicke is aided by the brilliant writing of the scriptwriter, W.P. Lipscomb, whose writing here matches Hugo's himself. If there is any movie you should watch before you die, this is the one to see.

This 1935 version of "Les Miserables" is perhaps the finest film ever produced during Hollywood's golden age. Highlighted by superb acting from three of the greatest English-speaking actors ever to appear on film (March, Laughton and Hardwicke), a superb script and outstanding production values, this 20h Century Fox production has more than stood the test of time. Now released on DVD, it is available for modern audiences to view and compare to other filmed and staged versions of this classic Victor Hugo tale. Even now, 73 years after it was filmed, it never fails to move the viewer with its extraordinarily powerful narrative. A not-to-be-missed film from Hollywood's Golden Age!

To begin with, I doubt that most people realize that Victor Hugo's Les Miserables is not a two hundred to four hundred page novel. It is a thirteen hundred page novel (in English translation as well as the original French). This actually puts it into the same category as those other classic that most people never read: "The Bible" (both testaments together), "Don Quixote", "War and Peace", "Clarissa Harlowe", "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire", "The Count of Monte Cristo". Everyone knows stories or chunks of most of these books (except for Richardson's "Clarissa", which is not popular these days due to it's epistolary style). Few read them to get an idea of their full impact. It is sobering to realize that humongous novels by Dickens and Thackeray and George Eliott, like "Bleak House, "Pendennis", or "Middlemarch", are shorter (roughly 800 pages each) than these seven earlier titles that I mention. That means one is more likely to be willing to read "Middlemarch" (a thoughtful but difficult study of provincial life in 1832 England), than "The Count of Monte Cristo" (with it's fast paced and exciting tale of power, greed, and revenge in post-Napoleonic France.In it's full range, "Les Miserables" was a probing attack on the greed and social evil rampant in France from 1815 to 1832 (the beginning of the so-called "July " or Orleans Monarchy. However I warn you that if you read it you will find it annoying after awhile. You will remain sympathetic towards Valjean, protecting little Cosette who he raises as his daughter, and saving Marius (although he would as soon Cosette never saw Marius again). And you will also dislike Javert, his adversary - the perfect police official. But you will find Hugo expounding questionable views on criminals. Not all the poor are criminals, but after reading Hugo one gets the impression that if they aren't they are fools. For all the defects of Louis Phillippe's July Monarchy, it gave France prosperity and peace for nearly two decades. But to Hugo it was a criminal throwback to the barbarism of the Bourbons - France did not need monarchs, it was a republic and a democracy. For most of his life Hugo attacked "royalism" in all its guises in France, culminating in his years in exile in opposition to the Second Empire of Napoleon III (1851 - 1870 - the period that Hugo wrote "Les Misearbles" in). Oddly enough he never really attacks the first Napoleon. Read the chapters on the Battle of Waterloo in "Les Miserables" and it is almost a regrettable valentine to the little Corsican. Interestingly enough, when the Paris Commune burned much private property in 1871 (before being put down by French troops assisted by German troops), Hugo suddenly ceased being so admiring about the lowest level of the poor - after all they burned some of his property too. Trimmed of much of it's literary weight it makes a dandy little over-the-years thriller, and it has been filmed many times. The best one I remember was a French version from 1956 with Jean Gabin as Valjean (and actually he was physically closer to the poor ex convict than March was). But it was three and a half hours long, so I suspect that this one will have to do. It keeps the main threads of the story together, and performances by March, Laughton, Florence Eldritch (as Fantine), and others are excellent. Even Leonid Kinski as one of March's former convict friends gives a chilling little moment just by saying "Hello Jean" in a courtroom. So watch it, the best normal length movie version. And then put aside a month for reading the original novel (and then plan similar time schemes for those other unread classics I just listed - It will occupy you for about a year and a half or so).