Les Misérables

"Les Misérables" (1935), watch online on iFILM — a Hollywood adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel with Fredric March and Charles Laughton, directed by Richard Boleslawski.

Jean Valjean goes to prison for stealing a loaf of bread and serves years before walking free. He changes his name, builds a modest fortune, becomes a mayor and factory owner. He helps Fantine and takes in her daughter Cosette. None of it earns him peace — Inspector Javert never stops. Laughton plays Javert not as a brute but as a man who has replaced his conscience entirely with the penal code, which makes him far more unsettling than any ordinary villain.

Boleslawski condensed Hugo's sprawling novel into a clean two-hour duel between the two leads. The 1832 uprising fills the background, but the film lives on the March–Laughton dynamic — and it holds up. Stream Les Misérables (1935) online on iFILM.