Les Misérables
(1934)
Faithful to the source? Sorry, don't know: never read it. But I can say it is a magnificent film in every way--artfully (but not artsily) directed by Raymond Bernard, sensitively acted by Harry Baur as Jean Valjean, Charles Vanel as Javert (portrayed as pursued by his own demons as much as pursuing), Florelle as Fantine, and Josseline Gaël as Cosette, beautifully shot by Jules Kruger, and affectingly scored by Maurice Jaubert (including the second-best rendition of La Marseillaise in the movies that I know of).
It's presented as a trilogy (oh, and by the way, don't believe Netflix when it says it's 140 minutes; the two-disc Eclipse edition [that's Criterion's no-frills series] runs a little more than twice that--and still nearly half an hour less than the 305-minute release version), and for me the highest of the many highpoints comes in the first 50 minutes or so of the final film, almost all of which is spent at the barricades in the streets of Paris during the Revolution of 1832. (In contrast, the lowpoint is that the revolution just drops off the radar screen after that sequence, so that we can wrap up the loose ends of Javert's pursuit and Cosette's romance. But that's a quibble.)
Just some kickass filmmaking. (Oh, and to those I had told I thought it was silent, no: just French.)
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