Les Misérables (1995 film)

Infobox Film
name = Les Misérables


image_size =
caption =
director = Claude Lelouch
producer = Claude Lelouch
writer = Claude Lelouch
narrator =
starring = Jean-Paul Belmondo
Michel Boujenah
Alessandra Martines
music = Didier Barbelivien
Erik Berchot
Francis Lai
Michel Legrand
Philippe Servain
cinematography = Claude Lelouch
Philippe Pavans de Ceccatty
editing = Hélène de Luze
distributor =
released = flagicon|France 22 March 1995
flagicon|USA 20 October 1995 (limited)
flagicon|USA 3 November 1995 (wide)
flagicon|UK 2 February 1996
runtime = 175 mins
country = France
language = French
budget =
preceded_by =
followed_by =
website =
amg_id =
imdb_id = 0113828

"Les Misérables" is a 1995 movie written and directed by Claude Lelouch. Set in France during World War II, it concerns a poor and illiterate man Henri Fortin (Jean-Paul Belmondo) who is introduced to Victor Hugo's classic novel "Les Misérables" and begins to see parallels between it and his own life.

ummary

The film starts with the accusation of the father of Henri Fortin, a chauffeur, for the death of his boss who committed suicide. During the process and imprisonment, the wife finds a job in a tavern at a beach of Normandy where Henri sees a movie about Les Misérables. In an attempt to escape with another prisoner, who reads the letters Henri's father receives from his wife, both prisoners die, Henri's mother upon receiving the news, suicides. Henri grows up,an orphan, and learns boxing. Years after, during a boxing match where a young Henri Fortin is fighting, the end of the first World War is announced. The film continues with the encounter of a ballerina Elisa and André Zima a Jew young journalist who study laws after an interpretation of Les Misérables (the Zima family). In the attempt to reach the Swiss border to escape from the Nazi the Zima family with their daughter Salomé meets Henri Fortin who is owner of a moving company and starting to talk about the work of Victor Hugo. During the effort to cross the French-Swiss border the Zima family trust to Henri to their daughter and registered in a Catholic school managed by nuns and trying to cross the frontier with others the Zima was ambushed and Elisa was arrested and the Andre was lodged with a pair of farmers who find him. Henri was part of the French Resistance with old friends. Elisa was part of a group of women who was formed to entertain to Nazi and France's occupation offices and due a bad behavior against her by a Nazi officer she was send to an concentration camp where survived. During the stay in the farmer's house the husband was attend by the husband who receive the petition of travel to Switzerland to remove the saving of the Zima's account. After a bombing attack against a train which carried money of the Vichy France, Fortin and his mates travel to Normandy to visit the tavern where lived his childhood, and the next day saw the first actions of the D-Day invasion and helps to the Allied forces to capture the beach. After the war ended Henri receives the offer to manage a resort by the owner's wife explained her that her wife died and for her it is difficult alone manages the bar. Here receives a letter from the Zima's daughter Salomé where explain that him is the only person to contact. After surviving to concentration camp in Poland Elisa reached to the Fortin's resorts (who named Jean Valjean Chateau) after to receive from the mayor of the village the offer to became the new mayor after his work of the local school's reconstruction. In that moment Marius a former Normandy bar waiter who works in the resort reports to Fortin that his Old Resistance friends are persecuting by a police group lead by an officer who was a Vichy France's officer and one of them was wounded. During the encounter when Henri ask for calm to one of the former resistance friends where he dies after killed a few police's officer, Henri was arrested but the former Vichy's officer (like Inspector Javert) committed suicide accusing the police forces to his death. During the Henri's imprison Elisa promises that put in contact with André's lawyers friends to help him in the case and Henri request her for the handle of the resort. After recovered of the wounds that received in the attempt to cross the Swiss border and because the farmers don't go to the hidden place where was attend André decides to go out of there and when saw the farmer's bodies (because the wife was starting to fell in love with him and the husband which informs many false reports and news about the WWII starting to be jealous and decided to assassinate poisoning his soup but his wife shoot him and the husband killed her by suffocation) and when reading the real news about the war by a newspapers who finds in the kitchen André calls to the college where Henri registered to Salomé and went to the resort.

During the imprison Henri reads many editions of Les Misérables and with the André's legal supports he was released from the jail. The film ends with the civil marriage of Salomé and Marius presiding by Henri like mayor wearing the French mayor sash with the presence of the Zima, the mother superior of the school. In the party of the marriage Henri dancing with André says " Like Victor Hugo said: The best of our lives is to come "

External links

*imdb title|id=0113828|title=Les Misérables

###@@@KEY@@@###succession box
title=Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film
years=1996
before="Farinelli"
after="Kolya"