#toulout

[postcard-from-the-past]

French actor Jean Toulout on a vintage postcard

[ferociousconscience]

Jean Toulout as Inspector Javert experiencing the symptoms of a mental illness in part 4 of Les Misérables (1925, dir. Henri Fescourt)

[for-the-love-of-javert]

A deeply troubled Javert (Jean Toulout) returns to the police station, where he resigns from his job and tries to decide what to do next - Les Mis 1925

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - A Five-Franc Piece Falls on the Ground and Produces a Tumult, LM 2.4.5 (Les Miserables 1925)

Near Saint-Médard’s church there was a poor man who was in the habit of crouching on the brink of a public well which had been condemned, and on whom Jean Valjean was fond of bestowing charity. He never passed this man without giving him a few sous. Sometimes he spoke to him. Those who envied this mendicant said that he belonged to the police. He was an ex-beadle of seventy-five, who was constantly mumbling his prayers.

One evening, as Jean Valjean was passing by, when he had not Cosette with him, he saw the beggar in his usual place, beneath the lantern which had just been lighted. The man seemed engaged in prayer, according to his custom, and was much bent over. Jean Valjean stepped up to him and placed his customary alms in his hand. The mendicant raised his eyes suddenly, stared intently at Jean Valjean, then dropped his head quickly. This movement was like a flash of lightning. Jean Valjean was seized with a shudder. It seemed to him that he had just caught sight, by the light of the street lantern, not of the placid and beaming visage of the old beadle, but of a well-known and startling face. He experienced the same impression that one would have on finding one’s self, all of a sudden, face to face, in the dark, with a tiger. He recoiled, terrified, petrified, daring neither to breathe, to speak, to remain, nor to flee, staring at the beggar who had dropped his head, which was enveloped in a rag, and no longer appeared to know that he was there. At this strange moment, an instinct—possibly the mysterious instinct of self-preservation,—restrained Jean Valjean from uttering a word. The beggar had the same figure, the same rags, the same appearance as he had every day. “Bah!” said Jean Valjean, “I am mad! I am dreaming! Impossible!” And he returned profoundly troubled.

He hardly dared to confess, even to himself, that the face which he thought he had seen was the face of Javert.

[for-the-love-of-javert]

My second all time favourite Javert with Quastvert being No1. I just adore Jean Toulout’s portrayal of Javert. He was simply wonderful. ❤️❤️

LES MISÉRABLES | 1925

“ This was Sister Simplice, who had never told a lie in her life. Javert knew it, and held her in special veneration in consequence. ”

— Vol.I - Book.VIII - Ch.V

[perfettamentechic]

23 ottobre … ricordiamo …

23 ottobre … ricordiamo … #semprevivineiricordi #nomidaricordare #personaggiimportanti #perfettamentechic

2020: Maria Grazia Bon, attrice italiana. (n. 1943) 2019: Roberta Fiorentini, attrice italiana, nota soprattutto per il ruolo di Itala nella serie televisiva Boris.  (n. 1948) 2018: James Karen, attore statunitense.  (n. 1923) 2012: Corrado Lojacono, cantante, attore e compositore italiano. Debuttò alla radio nel 1945. (n. 1924) 1999: Luciano Soprani, stilista italiano. (n. 1946) 1994: Robert…

[breadvidence]

Please mind the #wineposting tag. Regardless: are you asking, "Should I watch this adaptation of Les Misérables?" I'll give you advice, though I suspect if you are reading this blog post you have watched all of these anyway (and quite possibly a few more, besides!).

'25 (Fescourt): Probably! If you are a Brick fan none of the adaptation choices will startle you, but having visuals to go with key scenes is a treat. This is a loyal piece. Toulout as Javert, Gabrio as Valjean, Milovanoff as Fantine, and Nivette as Éponine all give excellent performances. Be prepared for a lukewarm Cosette. You might struggle with silent film conventions, length, and French intertitles.

'34 (Bernard): Probably! This is a fairly loyal adaptation of the Brick that makes internally consistent choices where it deviates from its source (sometimes it has goofy continuity errors—politely ignore). Baur as Valjean and Gaël as Cosette give fabulous performances. Moments of silliness do not detract from the quality. Another long haul.

'35 (Boleslawski): Probably not. As an adaptation of Les Misérables this film is bad. That being said, Charles Laughton is a lauded actor, and you can't say he didn't put his whole laughussy into his performance. Because it is accessible and prominent, a lot of LM fans will have seen this film, and you might benefit from shared context if you're in fandom. Speaking personally, I'm glad I saw it, but I'm not sure you will be.

'52 (Milestone): No. Most likely based on '35 rather than on the book, this film is also a bad adaptation of Les Misérables. There are no notable performances. Because it is accessible, this is another adaptation many fans are familiar with, but understanding jokes about Valjean's boyfriend Robert and Javert's sentient hat probably don't justify sitting through the movie.

'58 (Le Chanois): No. Not the English dub, at least. "Bland" is the word of the day. Contemporary French audiences wildly disagree with me per Wikipedia.

'72 (Bluwal): Strong maybe. If you are an intense fan of the Brick, yes. Its use of a narrator to draw from the novel directly and its focus on the Amis makes this adaptation unique on this list. You might not end up liking it but you will have had an experience. If you have zero investment in Les Misérables but are still reading this post for some reason: no, do not watch this.

'78 (Jordan): At some point I will talk about this film and not make a gay joke but today is not that day. If you are not queer, get off my blog, you cis straight, begone. Everyone else: yes, watch this movie, c'mon. Perkins. That performance. At some point I need to make a serious post about queerness and '78 but right now all I've got is Javert's literal on-screen boner. Jesus Christ. Not a great adaptation of the novel but a virtuoso example of unintentional homoeroticism.

'82 (Hossein): No. This is an odd little adaptation without the charisma of a '35 or '78, somehow not as bad as either of those but not as good either. The GIF of the Amis walking in heavy wind is the best this film has to offer.

'98 (August): No—but I stared into my wine glass for a long, long time before typing those two letters. If we are judging adaptations by how they handle the source material, this is a disaster. As a film? I'm sure entertained. I call it bitchslap Les Mis. I should note here I am also a huge fan of Uma Thurman. Possibly I should recuse myself. I don't know, pal. IDK.

2012 (Hooper): I dwell bitterly on the fact that this is our film version of the musical. Brick fans are restless, musical fans are restless. People who first encountered Les Mis via this version are making feral noises. I'm afraid. I'm moving on.

2018 (Davies): It's really unfortunate that I am at my most drunk while commenting on this adaptation. Sure, watch it, it's one of those BBC series that has watchability sheerly because of production value and proximity to contemporary narrative/film expectations/standards. Personally I hate it. My partner is so tired of the tone in which I utter the syllables "Oyelowo".

The Musical: yes c'mon. Bootleg that good bitch.

[psalm22-6]

Comoedia, 5 February 1934 (note the picture of Harry Baur by the masthead!) So I learned that the 1934 Les Mis film premiered two nights before a far-right anti-government riot! And you can feel that there was a crisis about to happen in this account of the movie's premiere:

A rough start to the night: there’s the taxi driver’s strike and there’s the parliamentary crisis. The latest information passed from mouth to mouth and most journalists arrived late, bearing the most recent news. “So Emile Fabre is jumping ship?” [Fabre was the director of the Comédie-Française and was apparently being pressured to leave.] “It’s a scandal!” “It’s disgraceful!” “What folly!” “And who is replacing him?” “George Thomé.” [Thomé was a musician as well as the former director the Sûreté.] “Seriously?! They’re going to be cuffing the Comedie-Francaise.” Emile Fabre makes his entrance, followed by his charming daughter. He is just as soon surrounded and interrogated. “I don’t understand! I don’t understand!” “No one understands.” “There is too much to understand.” Our editor-in-chief, who has not always been fond of Emile Fabre, is spotted by his side; he shakes his hand cordially and I note that Pierre Lazareff [editor-in-chief of Paris-Soir] notes this effusive sympathy. A political star enters!...M. [François] Piétri [briefly the Minister of Finance]…thoughtfully and hurriedly, he passes by on swift feet which recently exercised a wise retreat that was, if I dare say, a step ahead of wisdom. He joins Mme. Piétri….It’s impossible to get him to open up!... Caught up in the commotion of the crowd, I hear this brief dialog between a political columnist and a deputy: “And how are your ‘misérables’ doing?” “They are waiting for their Monseigneur Myriel!” The huge Marignan theater is too cramped for this crowd of guests. Luckily Jean-José Frappa and his second in command, Mme. Audibert, thought of everything, took care of everything… And everyone is able to get to the coat check and find his place easily. Because the taxi strike and political events delayed hundreds of people, who then arrived all at once and with haste, this was not an easy task. Who was there? Tout-Paris...I randomly noted with my pencil: Messueirs Paul Abram, Achard, De Adler, Berneuil, Archimbaud, André Aron, Arnaud, Louis Aubert, Aubin, Kujay, Kertée, Azaïs, Bacré, Barthe, Baschet, Baudelocque, Harry-Baur, Bavelier, Robert de Beauplan, Antonin Bédier, Pierre Benoit, Mme Spinelly, Charles Delac and Marcel Vandal, Léon Benoit-Deutsch, André Lang, René Lehmann, Bellanger, Mag Bernard, Tristan Bernard, Jean-Jacques Bernard, Louis Bernard, Dr. Etiënne Bernard (all the Bernards!)...Bernheim, Bernier, Guilaume Besnard, Bétove, Bizet, Blumsteien, Mme Rocher, Boesflug, Pierre de la Boissière, Bollaert, Bouan, Boucher, Robert Bos, Pierre Bost, Paul Brach, Henry Roussell, Charles Burguet, Pierre Brisson, Simone Cerdan, Henry Clerc, Albert Clemenceau, Pière Colombier, Germaine Dulac,Henri Diamant-Berger, Julien Duvivier,Jean Epstein, Fernand Gregh, Mary Glory, René Heribel, Tania Fédor, Alice Field, Jacqueline Francell, Mary Marquet, Florelle, Marguerite Moreno, Françoise Rosay, Becq de Fouquière, Jean Servais, Vidalin, Maria Vaisamaki, Orane Demazis, Rachel Deviry, Rosine Deréan, Jacques Deval, Christiane Delyne, Renée Devillers, Jean Chataigner, Germaine Dermoz, Léon Voltera, Robert Trébor, our director, Jean Laffray, Lucie Derain, Paul Gordeaux, Jean Narguet, Parlay, Suzet Maïs, Antoine Rasimi, Renée de Saint-Cyr, Jean Toulout, Mady Berry, Yolande Laffont, Jean Max, Parysis, Charles Gallo, Léo Poldès, Jean Fayard, Edmonde Guy, Mario Roustan, Paul Strauss, Cavillon, Emile Vuillermoz, Josselyne Gaël, Charles Vanel, S. E. Si Kaddour ben Gabhrit, the duke and duchess of Mortemart, Madame Henry Paté, Marcel Prévost, Louise Weiss, Alfred Savoir, Henri Duvernois, Paul Gémon, magistrate Maurice Garçon, magistrate Campinchi, Sylvette Fillâcier, Jean Heuzé, Pierre, Heuzé, Mona Goya, Simon-Cerf, W.E. Hœndeler, Georges Midlarsky, Michel, Nadine Picard….and others I must be forgetting…pardon me!....Silence!....

In the glow of the half-light from the screen….there are applause! Not since les Croix de bois has a movie been so highly anticipated and now it is time for the verdict….Raymond Bernard can be sure that the audience is rooting for him. Our eyes are full with light and pretty colors. This Paris night is practically magical…and departing from that magic, we are plunged into the great river of les Misérables, into the furious waters of this social storm. Luckily André Lang and Raymond Bernard have made the trip for us. What contrast!  From the spectacle of an elegant and distinguished gathering, we move to the misfortunes of Jean Valjean.

The audience picks up on everything that could be an allusion to the present times. But of all these allusions, one stands out. It’s the lament of two gossips, at the moment when the barricades are rising. “What sad times!” “We’ve barely made it through the cholera…and here is the Republic!” Thunderous applause and mad laughter. When, on the barricades, the Republic calls on us to act, the spectators think of other promised actions which haven’t happened and they forget to applaud. But the whole audience is prodigiously virtuous; whenever a good deed is shown on the screen, when some sentence about the heart graces the white canvas, it is punctuated by applause. After the first film, stop!... Time to eat! There’s a mad dash to the punchbowl. In the haste of this day of crisis and running late, many in the audience did not have time for dinner….the buffet, in the blink of an eye, is emptied and the dry drinks make vindictive and impassioned discussions flow. High and low, here and there, everyone was speaking of the Parliment's chances and the intermission bell sounds in an atmosphere charged with electricity. The two other parts of the film, cut by another intermission, each end with a double ovation for Harry Baur, both in the lobby and in the theater. The little Gaby Triquet is passed from person to person towards a chocolate eclair, which she leaves a trace of on the cheeks of Harry Baur. And then as usual everyone rushes to the coat check.  Then we go to the fifth floor of the Marignan building. There, in an unoccupied apartment, dinner waits for us. There are more than a thousand of us around little eight-person tables. Ten thousand meters of film, that will make you hungry! Three orchestras pour out waltzes, tangos, and other tunes, while the masters of the hotel fill up our cups. And that continued to six thirty in the morning, in an atmosphere of charming cordiality as each person attested to the pleasure of seeing French cinema accomplish such a feat. Bernard Natan and Raymond Bernard were too surrounded for me to speak to them. Besides, what could I say to them that they haven’t already heard ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times that evening, which was the apotheosis of cinema and of Les Misérables. -Jean-Pierre Liausu

[breadvidence]

#has any adaptation delved into this parallel between eponine and javert? #genuine question#cause it's such an interesting thing to explore #javert #eponine

It's not just you, now I'm here too.

2. To answer the question in the tags: off the top of my head, no adaptation I've seen (and this is not something I've seen drawn out in the many-headed adaptation that is fanfic, either; someone should fix that. someone who is deeply invested in the Javert & Éponine parallels and writes excellent Brick-centric fic. hmm). I would say '72 Éponine would be most primed for this—simply because she's present and fucked-up and her own person in a way that most adaptations don't bother with (weirdly '58 has a well fleshed-out Éponine, but she's—girlish? in a way that is not commensurate with dog-child-of-a-wolf; no parallel there); unfortunately '72 has a very un-fleshy Javert and I don't think there's a connection. From my own notes Nivette in '25 impressed me, when I inevitably rewatch I'll try to take note and see if simply by its attempt to be loyal to the Brick it draws out some of that energy (though Toulout, despite in so many ways being a very book-loyal Javert, is a little too much a gentleman—IMO—and a lot of the parallel with Éponine happens in the space where he's failing to meet his own aspirations, or is in a history that doesn't get delved into).

I am most of a bottle down and might be talking nonsense, but if you were to play Hermine Karagheuz against Terrence Mann I feel like you'd have an Éponine and Javert who would vibe.

Speaking of the Javert-Eponine parallels—- another thing I’m bitter about in the 2012 film is the way they completely missed all the potential of “On My Own.”

Eponine is singing about the Seine, about the lights that are “misty in the river,” in a song that is meant to echo her book monologues about longing to drown herself. The 2012 film spends all its time on closeups of Samantha Barks being sad on one street, but! Like! We could have had shots of the river; of the lights and the reflections in the water of the Seine; we could have part of it take place on the bridge where Javert will later kill himself. It could have been the perfect opportunity to bring the weird Javert-Eponine parallels from the book into the musical’s universe, if only through visuals—- but they squandered it.

I mentioned before that one of the core parts of the Javert-Eponine thing is that they “trade deaths”— book!Eponine repeatedly talks about wanting to drown herself in the Seine but is eventually shot at the barricades, while Javert plans to be shot at the barricades but eventually drowns himself in the Seine.

In On My Own, Eponine is watching the lights in the river, and singing despairingly and suicidally about a world she can never belong to.

Her song ends

Without me, his world will go on turning/A world that’s full of happiness that I have never known

And Javert’s song ends

I’ll escape now from that world/from the world of Jean Valjean

And anyway! I just think that’s neat. I think we should’ve used Eponine’s song to set up the drowning motif and bring in that weird ambiguous character foil relationship she has with Javert in the book. But that’s just me

[kaaaaaaaaaearl]

some pics of my unhinged and favourite Javert :)

[dagonet]

Adieu les cons (Albert Dupontel, 2020)

[mu-mumie]

[ID: a pastel drawing of a man from the waist up. The man is wearing a top hat and a black uniform with a black cloak around his shoulders. The man has also thick whiskers on his round face. The man is looking at the viewer from above with a sneer, his bushy eyebrows raised in disapproval. The shadows on his face are purple. The imposing shadow behind him is also purple. ...The man is holding a gun. End ID.]

A bit theatrical Inspector Javert for @acemisweek inspired by Jean Toulout and N. Plotnikov's Javert cosumes :'3

[ferociousconscience]

Two Toulout!Javert gifs I've made recently.

[for-the-love-of-javert]

Javert, makes his way to the Pont de Change Bridge on The River Seine. After spending some time thinking, and unable to make sense of anything anymore, or even know who he is, whether he is good or evil. He climbs onto the parapet of the bridge and throws himself into the river.

R.I.P. Dear Inspector

[pureanonofficial]

LES MIS LETTERS IN ADAPTATION - Vague Flashes on the Horizon, LM 1.5.5 (Les Miserables 1925)

One single man in the town, in the arrondissement, absolutely escaped this contagion, and, whatever Father Madeleine did, remained his opponent as though a sort of incorruptible and imperturbable instinct kept him on the alert and uneasy. It seems, in fact, as though there existed in certain men a veritable bestial instinct, though pure and upright, like all instincts, which creates antipathies and sympathies, which fatally separates one nature from another nature, which does not hesitate, which feels no disquiet, which does not hold its peace, and which never belies itself, clear in its obscurity, infallible, imperious, intractable, stubborn to all counsels of the intelligence and to all the dissolvents of reason, and which, in whatever manner destinies are arranged, secretly warns the man-dog of the presence of the man-cat, and the man-fox of the presence of the man-lion.

[ueinra]

If the 1925 adaptation wasn't in your top 5, you're wrong. If Jean Toulout as Javert from 1925 isn't in your top 5, you're DEAD.