Great Version of the Story

The Fox Movie Channel showed this version today back to back with one from 1952 and it is incerdible how superior this one was. Frederic March was superb as Valjean, Charles Laughton was riveting as Javert, Rochelle Hudson was wonderful as Cosette and the child actress Marilyn Knowlden was luminous as the young Cosette. Ironically both actresses appeared in the original version of Imitation of Life only a year earlier again playing younger and older versions of the same character.

In another thread the question was posed as to why Javert keeps pursuing Valjean. It seems obvious that the film answers that question by trying to make the point that a corrupt system corrupts the lives its enforcers just as much as it does that of those that it formally punishes. This system of French justice that was prevailing was indeed a system of no justice at all. Valjean is obviously a victim due to the harsh sentence he receives for so petty a crime. Javert is also caught up in this system and its merciless structure brutalizes him as well. Indeed it seems that he may be the greater victim as Valjean winds up as the recipient of a grateful daughter's love while Javert comes to so loathe himself that he commits suicide.

This justiceless system of justice that has sent Valjean to his fate reminds me of a 'black' joke from the days of the Soviet tyranny in Russia and its particular brutality toward Jews. A recently sentenced Jewish prisoner arrives in jail and is asked by a fellow inmate what he has done to be put in prison. The man responds that he has done nothing, stating that he has been sentenced to 15 years for having done nothing at all. The other inmate answers that the man must have done something for in the Soviet Union a Jew is only setenced to 10 years in jail for doing nothing.