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Les Miserables’ movie musical – screened for cast and crew members at the Odeon Cinema in London, Leicester Square on the 4th of December 2012 – soon to be released in the cinemas.

I was lucky enough to be invited to the cast and crew screening of ‘Les Miserables’ on the 4th of December 2012 at the Odeon cinema in London, Leicester Square.

In a speech, held before the screening, award winning British film and television director, Tom Hooper, did thank all the cast and crew in the cinema making his dream come true.

Sir Cameron Mackintosh admitted that it had been their dream to make a movie musical and the fact Tom Hooper asked him on this amazing project was a really good thing as the director came up with an amazing vision of how he wanted it. Tom had in fact suggested disaggregating all the scenes for filming purposes to then put them back together in the movie. Mr Mackintosh admitted making a movie and especially a movie musical takes so much more work than putting together a theatre production. He funnily mentioned how the lack of sleep was a constant thing during the production!

The film musical had just been completed before the screening and Mr Hooper ironically wished he could have had a couple of hours more to do some extra touches.

‘Les Miserables’ movie has already had the Guildhall screening in the USA where it received a great feedback but now, the main aim is to bring the production in London.

In between the mentions in Hooper’s speech, Simon Hayes and his team for the sound department and all the post production team which did an amazing work, the costume department – which had to really work out the choice of fabrics so that the microphones would not be inhibited – Steward Hilliker took care of this. The camera team which had to film several scenes with multi-cameras; it was a real challenge. Really, a great team work. Also, Hugh Jackman’s remarkable and poignant performance of Jean Valjean cannot be left unmentioned.

The live sung movie musical is much more emotionally bounding than the old school movie musical version where actors used to mime the singing on a pre-recorded track. I found the movie as poignant as the live staged version. In the theatre it is great to be present and literally breath the performance but unless you are sitting in the very first rows, you hardly get to see the actors expressions when in the movie musical you can clearly see their eyes and facial expressions. This works amazingly to get into the actors’ deep feelings highlighted by remarkable close ups that, on the big screen together with the musical effects, make the audience unavoidably feel exactly how the characters felt whilst singing those lines live to the cameras (see video link below).

The movie respects the same sequence of events of the original Boublil – Schönberg musical theatre score. The musical and emotional tension is not released till the ‘Master of the House’ entertaining scene where we even see a featured Father Christmas!

Pablo Bubar – one of the many cast members who attended the screening – explained to me how, for the revolution scene, he had been called on set for 6 days, working 13 to 14 hours per day. Crew members worked even more than 17 hours per day.

The movie produced by Working Title Films (Sarah Radcliffe and Tim Bevan) will be released on the 25th of December 2012 in the United States and on the 11th of January 2013 in United Kingdom.

Might this movie be the landmark for more live sung movie musical productions to come celebrating really good acting and filmmaking and I bet cinemas will be full again!

http://www.imdb.com/video/imdb/vi2587403289/

Written by Paola Berta