Les Misérables

Victor Hugo at feature length, before the feature was an established French form. Albert Capellani, artistic director of Pathé's literary unit SCAGL, shot Les Misérables in 1912 and released it in four weekly epochs beginning 3 January 1913 — Jean Valjean, Fantine, Cosette, Cosette et Marius — some 3,445 meters, nearly three hours. Henry Krauss's Valjean is massive and restrained; Henri Étiévant is Javert; Mistinguett, already a music-hall star, plays Éponine. Capellani took the camera into the streets and suburbs of Paris, reserving Henri Ménessier's studio sets at Vincennes for the reconstructions that needed them, and filled the barricade with more than ninety extras. The bread-theft sequence in the first episode is a lesson in how cinema, unlike filmed theatre, can cut across real space. This is the adaptation that proved a French feature could carry a novel.