Maurice Mons Movies

Not a strict adaptation of the oft-filmed Victor Hugo classic, director Claude Lelouch's ambitious epic instead focuses on the story of two men, a father and a son, whose life stories bear striking similarities to Hugo's character Jean Valjean. The father is Henri Fortin (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a chauffeur (in 1900) wrongly accused of his employer's murder. Like Valjean, he is subjected to a harsh and unfair prison sentence. While Henri vainly attempts to escape his unjust fate, his family suffers, with his wife forced to raise their young son alone. The film jumps ahead several decades to show the adult life of this son (also Belmondo), a former boxer turned furniture mover who agrees to help smuggle a Jewish lawyer (Michel Boujenah) out of France during the Nazi occupation. Along the way, the lawyer reads to the younger Fortin from Les Misérables, and Fortin begins to imagine himself in the role of Jean Valjean, on the run from the obsessive Inspector Javert. ~ Judd Blaise, All Movie Guide

Life is a Long Quiet River is the satirically philosophical title for this French domestic comedy. Borrowing a page from The Corsican Brothers, the film begins with a castoff mistress spitefully switching a pair of newborn babies at the maternity ward managed by her doctor lover. As a result, the daughter (Valerie Lalande) of a family of tramps and thieves is raised in a comfy bourgeois household, while the lowlife family ends up with the middle-class family's offspring (Benoit Magimel). Twelve years after the fact, the discarded mistress confesses to her misdeed. The mistress' ex-lover, doctor Daniel Gelin, tries to set things right, with hilariously disastrous consequences. Director Etie Chatiliez had received his training in French TV commercials, so it's not surprising that Life is a Long Quiet River is a string of anecdotes and punchlines. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide