User Reviews

The second installment in Italian director Riccardo Freda's adaptation of the epic Victor Hugo novel mostly sustains the superb mise en scene as described in my user review of the first part.

A couple of questionable decisions though are made in the script, which typical of Italian cinema was collaborated on by a number of writers: the young firebrand revolutionary Marius is no longer the abandoned scion of a reactionary Royalist but is now the missing son of the Paris chief of police. And the subplot in which Marius's ancestor had his life saved at the Battle of Waterloo (which made up a whole chapter in the original) by the sleazy money grabbing inkeeper Thenardier is eliminated, thus depriving us of the more complicated response Marius has to helping the elderly Valjean when he is surrounded by Thenardier's fellow thugs.

Look closely or you may miss several shots of a young Marcello Mastroianni as one of the student radicals, arrested after their failure at the barricades, and shot by a firing squad. This particular part of the story compared to the first film may have involved some writing by the politically oriented Mario Monicelli.

14 Years have passed since the first installment ;Marius and Gavroche simutaneously appear in the first scene ;the mammoth novel has undergone some changes like the first part: for instance the battle of Waterloo is passed over in silence;Marius being at odds with his father (instead of his grandfather in the book) is a fait accompli .And the death of Valjean is given a more spectacular treatment , Marius embraces his father-in-law without a moment's hesitation ,etc...

But it does not matter, for Riccardo Freda was a first-rate craftsman whose metier was the popular cinema in the noblest sense of the term ; the getaway in Thenardier's den is given a true film noir treatment ; like in the first part,one sees Javert's shadow before the untouchable cop appears ; Valjean carrying Marius on his shoulders through the sewers of Paris , is ,par excellence , a tailor-made scene for Freda's fancy for doom and gloom .

All the characters 'lines converge on the 5-6 June 1932 riot ; it was general Lamarque's funeral ;as he had been a hero of the Revolution wars, for the Republicans ,it was cause for demonstrating and eventually overthrowing Louis-Philippe (the last king in France till 1848) ; those bloody fights claimed 6,000 deaths and casualties .

Freda's directing movements in the crowd and of the barricades rises to the occasion and does not flag in parts :One does not hear Gavroche sing his famous ditty ,but the urchin does not lack chops ;spot young Marcello Mastroianni as one of Marius's companions on the barricades ; Valentina Cortese ,who played Fantine in the first part was also cast as her grown up daughter ,Cosette ,Marius ' love interest .

Outstanding cast ,with Gino Cervi ,who takes redemption to new limits ,as the hero ,and Giovanni Hinrich as policeman Javert who would not ,could not, fall in his duty , the stand-outs.