Although it bears the title "Les Misérables" and the characters' names are the same, this film has very few other resemblances to the original story.

While some changes must be made in adapting a book, it seems almost as if the writers and director were trying to see just how poorly they could represent the novel on film. The changes they made detract from the story instead of clarifying or augmenting its themes. The beginning sequences are fairly true (excluding that the baker shoots Valjean as he makes off with the loaf of bread, leaving the audience to wonder that he's still alive in the next scene), but the rest of the story wanders farther and farther afield, and the characters—especially Jean Valjean—only vaguely resemble their literary counterparts.

The most accurately portrayed characters are the Bishop of Digne who exudes calm assurance and kindness, if in a somewhat disinterested way, and Javert, played by John Hinrich, who is stern, relentless, and confident, although he tends toward woodenness and has some pretty bad dialogue to deliver. However, Gino Cervi as Valjean, is a travesty. Admittedly, the script doesn't help him either. While he makes a fine surly convict (even if he does look a little like a cross between William Shatner and Liberace), he never progresses beyond that. Throughout the film, he threatens people—Cosette included—shouts, and tries to strong-arm his way out of situations he doesn't like. He pulls a gun on Thénardier and warns him not to come any closer or he'll "settle his account for good." Valjean's noble nature, the stoic, self-sacrificing, gentle man, is nowhere in evidence. Instead of showing affection for her, he slaps Cosette and spitefully tells her, when he learns of her love for Marius, then in that case, they're leaving for England sooner than he had planned. This, and so much else, is simply too wrong for words.

Without the Valjean of the novel, the story is meaningless and his actions have no significance. Yes, in the novel he must struggle to make the right choices, but instead of showing that conflict, director Riccardo Freda only wanted to portray a glowering, threatening, selfish Valjean. In the face of such a man, Javert seems justified in pursuing him, and Javert's final revelation about Valjean's goodness has no justification.

There are so many flaws in the plot, it's impossible to list them all, but I feel a brief summary is in order to convey the dismantling the novel underwent in the making of this movie. We first meet Valjean while he's laboring in a prison quarry, and he attempts several escapes in needlessly silly sequences. After being saved by the Bishop, Valjean starts an iron works (an anachronism, as the Industrial Revolution hadn't progressed that far by that time).

Fantine does have a very brief scene in which she seems to be soliciting customers as a prostitute, but her first "customer" puts snow down her dress, precipitating her arrest. There is no Fauchelevent or cart episode, and Arras is totally left out. Instead Valjean confesses via letter! After getting advice from Fantine's nurse! Afterward, Valjean escapes arrest when a random sympathetic iron worker starts a fire in the factory and the police cannot follow him through the flames.

After the rescue of Cosette, things get really bad. Perhaps it's a bad omen that when Valjean meets her, the trees still have all their leaves...despite the fact that Cosette tells him that it's Christmas Eve. There is no convent, although Valjean escapes over a wall with Cosette. Time passes, via a cheesy voice-over, and Cosette has grown into...her mother! No, really, the actress who played Fantine (Valentina Cortesa) also plays Cosette. As an actress, she's effective as Fantine, but too old to believably play Cosette. So, Cosette meets Marius when he hides in her house after a police raid on the revolutionaries' printing operation (reminiscent of the March / Laughton movie), and he leaves his address for her. Valjean then becomes the object of Thénardier's revenge when he goes to Gorbeau Street (not Gorbeau House) to warn Marius to keep away from his daughter. But eventually, only after Cosette begs, he goes to the barricade, rescues Marius, and runs into Javert. Now, Javert was never at the barricade, never captured, and Valjean never saved him—but (get this), Marius is the son of the prefect of police, and as such he is immune.

Javert has orders to bring Marius home if he's found, and he loyally carries those orders out before releasing Valjean, writing a letter of resignation, and drowning himself in the Seine. Although why he didn't expose the prefect's corruption, or resign over that rather than over the surly Valjean, is a mystery. In fact, nothing in Valjean's behavior makes him justifies Javert even dabbling a toe in the Seine, let alone lethal full-body imersion.

So, Valjean would seem to be happily set with Marius, Cosette, and Marius's father, but he finds out that Thénardier has visited. He goes back to Thénardier's lodgings and confronts him, whereupon Thénardier pulls a gun on him, shoots Valjean (yes, really), trips through some sort of trapdoor and falls to his death. Valjean sees this, clutches his wounded chest with a pained look on his face, and the frame freezes and the words "The End" are displayed. Now, if that's not a slaughter of a classic, I don't know what is.

Despite all the questionable changes, the most puzzling thing is the point of making this film. It almost seems as though, from the film's portrayal of Valjean and its concluding scene, that the moral is Valjean got what he deserved. He saved Cosette, but wasn't worthy to live any longer. I'm left wondering if anyone making this movie actually read (and liked!) the book.

Viewers, for their part, are likely to be left unmoved, with no sympathy for Valjean, no sense of the tragic aspect of Javert's death, and not much happiness for the union of Cosette and Marius, their romance having taken almost no screen time. Unless you plan to make fun of it, the film is hard to watch, particularly for those who know the real story. Of course, if you're making fun of it, at two hours, there's plenty of material....