Words: Gentleman's Journal
The year of 2013 kicks off with a bang with the UK release of Les Miserables. The film adaptation of the 1862 French novel by Victor Hugo opened in America on Christmas day breaking all the records for a musical film by taking over $28 million on the opening weekend… and currently grossing $116million.
Having been shot principally here in the UK at Pinewood Studios and in Oxford, Winchester and Greenwich and with the two production companies behind the film both being British (Working Titles Pictures and Cameron Mackintosh Productions), Les Mis is another primarily English film set to sweep the floor in multiple categories throughout the awards season. The British film industry has, for another year running, shown Hollywood what is meant by the saying “its not quantity, but quality”!
Les Miserable crash-landed in Leister Square earlier last month at the official premier. We saw the stellar all star cast walking the red carpet braving the bitterly cold British weather. However anyone watching will have spotted one unknown face in and amongst the ‘A Listers’… The face of Samantha Barks, who plays the role of Éponine, who played the same role in the west end show from 2010 – 2011. She is in fact the one who steals the show, especially having got the job over and above short listed actors such as Taylor Swift and Scarlet Johansson…. She learned the news of her casting from Sir Cameron Mackintosh during an Oliver! curtain call (the reaction moment shown in the picture below).
This is the first ‘musical film’ where actors were made to sing live on set rather than lip-syncing to a pre-recorded track. Director Tom Hooper decided to break the mould and introduce this new technique forcing the cast to perform their songs live, take after take. For this to work each of the cast were fed live piano accompaniment into tiny earpieces to sing along to; with the big orchestral recordings being added in post production… the big question however is will you be able to tell any difference between ‘this’ and previously used techniques? The aim was to achieve greater emotion and make the vocal delivery feel more raw and real… but was this achieved?
So only 11 more days to wait… that’s 264 hours or 15,840 minutes… but hey, whose counting?! Make sure to book a ticket and get the chance to watch this musical spectacular.
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