The Wretched (1958)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The wretched / the miserable |
| Original title | Les Misérables |
| Country of production |
France Italy GDR |
| original language | French |
| Publishing year | 1958 |
| length | 242, 217 (French versions), 207 (GDR version from 1959), 159 (Federal German version from 1960) minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Jean-Paul Le Chanois |
| script | Jean-Paul Le Chanois René Barjavel based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo |
| production |
Louis Duchesne Paul Cadéac Richard Brandt Erich Kühne |
| music | Georges van Parys |
| camera | Jacques Natteau |
| cut |
Emma Le Chanois Jacqueline Aubery Du Bouley |
| occupation | |
| |
Die Elenden (Federal German distribution title: Die Miserablen ) is a French-Italian co-production with DEFA . In the monumental literary film adaptation made in France and the GDR in 1957 and directed by Jean-Paul Le Chanois , Jean Gabin played the tormented creature Jean Valjean and Bernard Blier played his merciless adversary and persecutor, Inspector Javert. The film is based on the novel of the same name by Victor Hugo .
action
First part
France at the beginning of the 19th century. After serving 19 years in prison for a loaf of bread stolen in a fit of hunger, Jean Valjean, who had tried to escape repeatedly during this period, is released from the Toulon penitentiary. He has lost his civil rights for life, he is an outlaw. With no hope of a future, Bishop Monseigneur Myriel takes care of him. But Valjean thanks him badly by stealing from the man of God. But the latter shows kindness and mercy before justice and shames Valjean by not handing him over to the police. This Damascus experience leads to a radical change in Valjean's being. He decides to start all over and begins by giving up his tainted name and calling himself Monsieur Madeleine from then on. Valjean / Madeleine settles in the town of Montreuil and over time becomes a respected citizen there. But his long-time persecutor, the police inspector Javert, who does not believe that bad people can ever change, persecutes him with merciless severity and mercilessness and one day reveals the true identity of “Monsieur Madeleine”. Thanks to his commitment to his community, he has now risen to become its mayor.
A money theft occurs in Montreuil and Javert, who has been transferred to the small town, immediately assumes that the perpetrator must be Jean Valjean. Again he begins to pursue Valjean with great persistence in order to be able to prove the theft to him. Because in Javert's eyes it means: once a criminal, always a criminal. Shortly thereafter, Valjean saves the life of the coachman Fauchelevent by lifting a fallen coach alone. Javert now knows that the muscle man Monsieur Madeleine must be Valjean. He now believes he has no future in Montreuil. Valjean also looks after the simple worker Fantine, who gave birth to an illegitimate child with little Cosette. Cosette is housed in a boarding house run by the greedy and hard-hearted Thénardiers. When Fantine dies of tuberculosis , Valjean promises to take care of Cosette from now on. Since he no longer sees a future for himself and the girl in Montreuil, he leaves the place and returns to Paris. And again Valjean assumes a new identity, and again Javert, who is being transferred back to Paris, is on the heels of the ex-convict. In the meantime, Valjean has renamed himself Monsieur Fauchelevent after the rescued coachman. Over time, Cosette grows into a beautiful young woman.
Second part
During the riots in France of 1830 and 1832 , republican citizens and progressive students rose up against Bourbon rule and the political establishment. During these turbulent times, Cosette met Marius Pontmercy, who was ostracized by his wealthy and conservative grandfather because of his revolutionary views. Both young people fall in love. Things will soon come to a head. There is a re-encounter with the Thénardiers, who have experienced massive social decline but still have their wickedness and wickedness. Eponine Thénardier, their daughter, has to go begging. When his future father-in-law threatens to be robbed by the Thénardiers, Marius intervenes and reports Thénardier to Javert. Javert himself, as a representative of state power, runs the risk of being ground in the mills of the revolution. It is Valjean, of all people, who saves the life of his eternal nemesis, who works as a state spy in the barricade fights. Eponine is killed in the riots and Valjean now learns for the first time that serious feelings have developed between his ward and Marius.
Javert, who is at large again, deeply irritated and unsettled by Valjean's deep humanism, lets him go temporarily at the next meeting. Valjean drags Marius, seriously injured in the fighting, on his shoulders through the city and finally into the sewer system of Paris to protect him from his captors. Disgusted by the insanity of decades of merciless hatred of Valjean himself, Javert committed suicide in a moment of deep insight. Some time later, Marius and Cosette get married. Valjean confesses to his son-in-law that he was once a prison inmate and is still formally wanted. Only years later does Marius find out from the shabby Thénardier, who tries to blackmail him with Valjean's past, that he had saved his life during the barricade fighting. He and Cosette go to Valjean's house to find a final pronunciation. The old man is dying.
Production notes
Die Elenden , distributed in the Federal Republic of Germany under the idiosyncratic title Die Miserablen , was filmed from April 1 to October 25, 1957. The original three and a half hour, two-part drama premiered on March 12, 1958 in Paris. On January 16, 1959, the first part started in the GDR, the second part followed a week later. In the Federal Republic of Germany, Die Elenden (as Die Miserablen ) were released in theaters on January 29, 1960 with their own dubbing in a heavily shortened, one-piece version.
The buildings were designed by Serge Piménoff , the DEFA sets by Karl Schneider. The costumes come from the hand of Marcel Escoffier . NVA soldiers were recruited for the mass scenes created in the GDR . The GDR sequences were shot for eight weeks on the grounds of Babelsberg and in their studios.
This film is one of four co-productions by the French and GDR film industries in the short-lived phase of the political thaw beyond the Iron Curtain as a result of the beginning of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union on the XX. CPSU party convention in February 1956. In the following three years, DEFA preferred France as a strategic film partner from among the Western democracies: during this time (1956–1959) both countries presented the films The Adventures of Till Ulenspiegel (1956), The Witches von Salem (1956), Trübe Wasser (1959) and Die Elenden , both of which are their most ambitious projects. At the beginning of the 1960s, however, this cooperation came to a complete standstill. The reason: the GDR found itself too little represented ideologically in the results of this cooperation and criticized concessions to bourgeois definitions of taste.
synchronization
GDR synchronization (1958)
Below are the German voices of the DEFA dubbing produced by Johannes Knittel :
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Jean Valjean | Jean Gabin | Johannes Arpe |
| Inspector Javert | Bernard Blier | Werner Peters |
| Fantine | Danièle Delorme | Evamaria Bath |
| Thénardier | Bourvil | Willi Narloch |
| Enjolras | Serge Reggiani | Hans-Peter Minetti |
| Marius Pontmercy | Giani Esposito | Werner Röwekamp |
| Colonel Pontmercy | Jean Murat | Adolf P. Hoffmann |
| Cosette | Béatrice Altariba | Gisela Fritsch |
| Monseigneur Myriel | Fernand Ledoux | Hermann Dieckhoff |
| cardinal | René Fleur | Siegfried Schürenberg |
| Gillenormand | Lucien Baroux | Kurt Steingraf |
| Eponine | Silvia Monfort | Gisela Reissmann |
| Gavroche | Jimmy Urbain | Ulrich Gürtler |
| Madame Magloire | Julienne Paroli | Margarete Wellhoener |
| Sister Simplice | Madeleine Barbulée | Marga Legal |
Otto Mellies acted as spokesman .
German synchronization (1959)
The film was only shown in a censored, abridged version in Germany. The following are the German voices of the dubbing made by Hans F. Wilhelm in Remagen:
| role | actor | Voice actor |
|---|---|---|
| Jean Valjean | Jean Gabin | Klaus W. Krause |
| Inspector Javert | Bernard Blier | Wolfgang Eichberger |
| Thénardier | Bourvil | Arnold Marquis |
| Marius Pontmercy | Giani Esposito | Rainer Brandt |
| Colonel Pontmercy | Jean Murat | Alwin Joachim Meyer |
| Monseigneur Myriel | Fernand Ledoux | Werner Lieven |
| cardinal | René Fleur | Helmuth Grube |
| Éponine | Silvia Monfort | Gisela Reissmann |
| Prouvaire | Pierre Tabard | Manfred Andrae |
| Prefect of Montreuil | Jean Ozenne | Alf Marholm |
Paul Klinger acted as spokesman .
Reviews
“The scriptwriters René Barjavel and Jean-Paul Le Chanois (also director) were unable to create a cinematic version of the wretched according to our time and its advanced views. (...) You did not interpret Hugo in the way that our current knowledge and investigations allow and require. They lag behind their original. "
“Victor Hugo's one-time bestseller would provide material for a number of films. However, director Jean-Paul Le Chanois has squeezed the vehemently moral melodrama into a single one, which, however, swelled to twice its normal length. In the taste of the paintings of that time - the action takes place at the beginning of the 19th century - he alternates threateningly romantic 'Wirtshaus im Spessart' scenarios with sequences of images in which armies of extras move onto the field of honor or climb barricades. In the role of the galley convict, who rises to mayor under a false name through his own good-heartedness and ends his days as a persecuted but undaunted benevolent old man, Jean Gabin personifies the monumental morality that is appropriate to Hugo. "
“Jean-Paul Le Chanois creates an image of man against the background of time. Atmospheric landscapes and faithfully recreated cityscapes add up to a picture book that entertains moviegoers for a good three hours. "
“In the present fragmentary version, with the exception of a long barricade sequence framed by red flags, the revolutionary élan is almost eliminated; the private story, charged with plenty of sentiment, spreads leisurely on the super-wide Technorama screen in rich colors. Despite the epic detail, a couple of intense images were achieved. "
“'Die Elenden' is the GDR title of the tenth - and most impressive - film adaptation of this work. (…) In addition to the historical care with which this French epic was staged, Jean Gabin and Bernard Blier are particularly impressive as merciless opponents. (...) Conclusion: A moving classic of French cinema. "
"A large-scale melodramatic painting of time in two parts, human touching through the depiction of Jean Gabin."
"The director reached his artistic climax in 1957 with his version of Victor Hugo's 'Les Misérables', with which he formulated an (this time monumental) charge of inhumanity for the last time."
Web links
- When the poor in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The wretched, part 1 at the DEFA Foundation
- The wretched, part 2 at the DEFA Foundation
Individual evidence
- ↑ Jean-Claude Sabria: Cinéma français. Les années 50. Paris 1987, no.592
- ↑ The wretched. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed February 21, 2016 .
- ↑ FB Habel: The large lexicon of DEFA feature films. Berlin 2001. p. 139
- ↑ Dagmar Schittly: Between Direction and Regime. The film policy of the SED in the mirror of DEFA productions, p. 92 on google.de/books
- ↑ cf. also Habel, p. 139
- ↑ Die Elenden on cinema.de
- ↑ The wretched. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 11, 2015 .