It's surely a good question for the specialist film round in quizzes of the future - what do Jean Gabin, Fredric March, Jean-Paul Belmondo and Liam Neeson have in common? The answer is that they've all played the towering, haunted figure of Jean Valjean in movie adaptations of Les Miserables. They're not alone, though - there have been at least 11 filmed versions of Victor Hugo's classic melodrama of love, revenge, strife and forgiveness, not to mention a smash hit musical, and the latest interpretation, with an international cast headed by Neeson, Uma Thurman, Geoffrey Rush and Claire Danes, has just opened.
Danish director Bille August, on a flying visit to Dublin earlier this week, claims never to have seen any of these previous versions. "And I never saw the musical either, so I suppose I came to it in a pure way. I had read parts of the novel when I was young, too young to appreciate it, I think. But when I was sent this script, I really fell in love with it, because I thought it told me something about the power of love and the need for forgiveness in a very simple, powerful way. I also thought that, if you look at the world now, the gulf between rich and poor is getting deeper and deeper, and the need for reconciliation and forgiveness more necessary, and that is the central theme of Hugo's story. Love comes out of this story as a winner, which is what I like about it."
Hugo's vast, sprawling novel, running over several decades with a vast gallery of characters, required some severe pruning to find the shape of a feature film within, concedes August. "In all storytelling, you have to decide what that story was about, and if you're adapting a book, what can you exclude to distil it down. So we narrowed it down to this chase story between Javert and Valjean."
He believed from the start that there was only one possible casting choice for Valjean, the fugitive convict-turned-philanthropist who dominates the story. "In my very first meeting with the producers, we started to talk about Valjean. In the script he's described as a very big man, with great masculinity without being macho, a very emotional man, although he doesn't quite understand his emotions. For me, the only name was Liam Neeson, and he responded as soon as we sent the script to him. He was wonderful to work with. I love when actors are actors and there's none of this star crap. The problem is always when the ego gets bigger than the actor. When you see them surrounded by all these highly-paid people, who are just there to confirm them in their status, you can see how they can lose their grasp on reality completely."
For Javert, Valjean's cold, legalistic nemesis, who spends years hunting down his prey, August found inspiration in current events. "When the whole thing with Clinton started, it seemed to me that Kenneth Starr was a kind of Javert. He's a politician who is driven to hunt this man down. But I wanted to make him more than a one-dimensional character, so I needed an actor who could bring depth and subtlety to the role, rather than a typical bad guy. I saw Geoffrey Rush in Shine, and was convinced that he could do a beautiful, profound interpretation.
Les Miserables is a big, handsome production, set in France, shot in the Czech Republic, with an international cast speaking in English. In some ways it might seem like the very model of a "Europudding", the derisive term for big-budget European co-productions which lose all sense of place or authenticity because of deals and compromises. Actually, it's not at all as bad as that, but the fear might be understandable, given that August's last two movies, The House of Spirits and Smilla's Feeling for Snow were classic Europuddings. This, after he had won international acclaim for two fine films in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Pelle the Conqueror and the Ingmar Bergmanscripted The Best Intentions, each of which won the prestigious Palme d'Or at Cannes.
To many, he might seem like the classic example of the compromised European auteur, but, while acknowledging the flaws in his last two films, he certainly doesn't accept the point.
"The only way we can finance a film like this is by making it in English," he says. "It's true for all European directors who want to work in the international or the Hollywood system. But it takes two or three films before they can do it well, because it is so very different. When you make a film in Europe, you have a crew of 20 or 30, and you're working within your own environment and your own culture, which allows you to be more flexible. Suddenly you make a big international movie with a crew of 200 or 300, and you're dealing with international movie stars, so it takes a while before you know how to deal with all these people.
"On House of the Spirits I had six movie stars, and all my colleagues said: don't do it, you're crazy. It was an incredible experience, but I felt that somewhere along the way I forgot to tell the story, because I was so busy dealing with all that machinery. Now I think I know how to do it."
He insists that the substance of the story is what is most important. "If it's a good story and I'm emotionally involved, then it doesn't matter if it takes place in Ireland or Japan or South Africa." It must have been strange for him, though, I suggest, as a Danish director, making Smilla's Feeling for Snow in his native country, but with an international, English-speaking cast.
"It was not so much a cultural thing, as trying to make something real. My main problem with that film was that I discovered during the scriptwriting and shooting that Smilla was not a real character. She is a literary condition, and the whole story is a literary condition. If you begin to analyse it, it doesn't make any sense, but it worked fantastically in Peter Hoeg's book, because the writing was so good. But in film, you have to make things concrete, and that was a big problem."
After Smilla, he says, he swore that he would never touch a book adaptation again. "Then of course I couldn't resist this adaptation of Les Miserables, but I won't do another book for a very long time. I feel that I've done that."
Although he has been working in the Hollywood system, he hasn't yet made a film in the US. "It has to be something I believe in, and I have a strong moral feeling about what I choose. There are a lot of movies, especially in America, that I couldn't do for those reasons, or if they're only about pyrotechnics, which I just find boring. But I think that the kind of movies I'm interested in are becoming more popular with audiences, films like The Truman Show or Saving Private Ryan, or the kind of films that Neil Jordan makes, entertaining movie-making that can also be profound. Hollywood doesn't know about anything but money, so if these kinds of movies make money, then they'll be interested.
Les Miserables is on general release