This is one of the greatest of early sound film musical scores. Either as a five-movement suite extracted by the composer or in a complete edition, the music is impressive and moving, though the latter requires sensitive interpretation to overcome a tendency to remain in the same bleak mood throughout.

Arthur Honegger (1892 - 1955) was a Swiss who made most of his career in Paris and had one of the most distinguished careers of modern classical composers. His contribution to film music, including at least 40 scores, was largely overlooked for a time. It includes the silent films La Roue (1922) and Napoléon (1926), both directed by Abel Gance—the latter one of the classics of silent cinema.

Les Misérables, Victor Hugo's classic novel of relentless pursuit which takes its antagonists through various layers of French society, including the most disadvantaged, has been the subject of numerous musical, stage, and cinematic adaptations. The 1934 film, directed by Raymond Bernard and starring Harry Bauer as Jean Valjean, generally receives plaudits as one of the best. It is in the form of three 90-minute segments.

Honegger composed about an hour of music for the film. His pupil Miklós Rózsa (who went on to become one of Hollywood's most illustrious film composers), told Honegger that the Les Misérables music was "as good as anything he had written and was worthy to stand on its own, and so much in his individual style that you would have known who the composer was even without seeing his name in the titles." He urged Honegger to make a concert suite from the music, which the composer eventually did, comprising five movements from the score.

The actual film had 23 cues, but three of these were dance music by someone else. For a "complete" recording made in 1989 the Swiss conductor Adriano assembled an edition dropping one "source" cue, a very brief introduction, and a vocal movement, combining a few shorter cues into longer symphonic movements, rescuing one cue for which the written music was missing (by transcribing it by ear from the soundtrack), and doing some reorchestration.

Honegger used three main themes symbolically: a descending treading theme that is related to convicts, a contrasting upward moving theme representing Valjean's love and humanity which turns into a love theme, and a folk-like theme. There are other themes, as well. Honegger did his own orchestration, which is unusual for omitting the orchestral double basses. A number of movements in the score are for chamber groupings from the main orchestra, often providing pathetic or tender moments, and there is a bitterly satirical movement, "La foire à Montfermeil," that uses accordion to produce an effect of tawdriness. The music is primarily lyrical, with dramatic moments, and is quite dark in mood throughout. It is in a harmonic style similar to the Hollywood sound in the 1930s, but the orchestration foregoes the sweeping, lush Romantic sound of American film music.

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