#1
Posted: 1/16/13 at 2:00pm
Maybe I'm reading too much into this, but the film's interpretation of the Thenardier character has me intrigued, especially with the heavier influence of book elements into the narrative's backstory.
First, we see a Thenardier who is a dedicated con artist and impostor, rather than the pseudo-Fagin character established in the stage show as a lower-class local sleazeball well known to be up to no good. This Thenardier (like the one in the book) assumes different characters for himself three times: "Monsieur Thenardier" the upper-class French innkeeper, the unnamed-in-the-film beggar "Jondrette," a poor beggar, and "Thenard" the nobleman at the end. Onstage, Thenardier is much less likely to bother with disguising himself at all- he is simply a shady character throughout, and even his "Thenard" is not exactly different from his Thenardier.
With this in mind, let's look at Cohen and Hooper's conception of the character. First, the French accent that "Monsieur Thenardier" assumes in public. Since he is the only character with a French accent, this rubbed some people the wrong way, yet I see clear intent in this choice. If Thenardier assumed a different British accent, it's entirely possible that non-British speakers, confronted with a film full of so many variants on the Queen's English, could have missed the dialectic cue to class distinctions. By putting on a somewhat pretentious French accent, we get the sense that Thenardier is pretending at being rather higher than he is. This is conflated with his assumption of a much lower-class "cockney" character voice as "Jondrette" during the Robbery. Onstage, Thenardier tends to speak like this the whole way through, as his game-playing is heavily diminished and he tends to be played as dim-witted. Note that when the "mask" is off, Thenardier's voice is a rather icy middle-class British dialect, neither an aristocrat nor a street rat.
Finally, the curious detail of his curly red hair, to which much attention is drawn (by the end of the film he has even attempted to dye it, somewhat poorly). Given the things we know about Thenardier- his penchant for role playing, his pathological lies, and his background as a deserter and grave robber at the battle of Waterloo, I saw his red hair and slightly Irish features as a subtle insinuation that the man we call Thenardier was at Waterloo after all... but fighting for the opposite side.
Am I reading too much into this, or does this make sense?
First, we see a Thenardier who is a dedicated con artist and impostor, rather than the pseudo-Fagin character established in the stage show as a lower-class local sleazeball well known to be up to no good. This Thenardier (like the one in the book) assumes different characters for himself three times: "Monsieur Thenardier" the upper-class French innkeeper, the unnamed-in-the-film beggar "Jondrette," a poor beggar, and "Thenard" the nobleman at the end. Onstage, Thenardier is much less likely to bother with disguising himself at all- he is simply a shady character throughout, and even his "Thenard" is not exactly different from his Thenardier.
With this in mind, let's look at Cohen and Hooper's conception of the character. First, the French accent that "Monsieur Thenardier" assumes in public. Since he is the only character with a French accent, this rubbed some people the wrong way, yet I see clear intent in this choice. If Thenardier assumed a different British accent, it's entirely possible that non-British speakers, confronted with a film full of so many variants on the Queen's English, could have missed the dialectic cue to class distinctions. By putting on a somewhat pretentious French accent, we get the sense that Thenardier is pretending at being rather higher than he is. This is conflated with his assumption of a much lower-class "cockney" character voice as "Jondrette" during the Robbery. Onstage, Thenardier tends to speak like this the whole way through, as his game-playing is heavily diminished and he tends to be played as dim-witted. Note that when the "mask" is off, Thenardier's voice is a rather icy middle-class British dialect, neither an aristocrat nor a street rat.
Finally, the curious detail of his curly red hair, to which much attention is drawn (by the end of the film he has even attempted to dye it, somewhat poorly). Given the things we know about Thenardier- his penchant for role playing, his pathological lies, and his background as a deserter and grave robber at the battle of Waterloo, I saw his red hair and slightly Irish features as a subtle insinuation that the man we call Thenardier was at Waterloo after all... but fighting for the opposite side.
Am I reading too much into this, or does this make sense?
