Word: fortin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...divide Valjean in two, a father and son (both played by a wonderfully battered Jean-Paul Belmondo, whose son Paul plays the character in a transitional passage). Then he provides him with adventures that analogize, rather than slavishly imitate, those of his literary model. This figure, called Henri Fortin, is throughout aware of his resemblance to Hugo's original. He sees movie versions of the story, and people keep telling him that his physical strength, moral fortitude and frequent bad luck remind them of Valjean. He wouldn't know. He's illiterate, a retired boxing champion who drives a moving...
...Jews who hire him to help them escape the Nazi occupation--promising, in return, to read Les Miserables to him on the way to the Swiss border. Much of the film focuses on the fracturing of this family and their terrible struggle to survive. In the meantime, of course, Fortin is obsessively pursued by his version of Inspector Javert, here a nameless policeman collaborating with the Nazis and a man seemingly as outraged by Fortin's lack of complexity as he is by his untutored goodness...