Les Misérables 1958 makes a few changes to the scene of JvJ and Cosette visitingthe Jondrette apartment in the Gorbeau tenament, one of them being that Valjean actually recognizes Thénardier, which you know what, i actually appreciate it!
But Cosette still doesn't.
This part of the book always seemed weird to me; Cosette lived a large part her mostly traumatizing childhood with this family, and i can believe blocking out any memory after finding a much better and far more loving parental figure in Valjean, but she still had nightmares about the Thénardiers, so why finding herself face-to-face with them again would not cause any of her bad memories to resurface?
At least in the book, i can excuse it as the Thénardiers getting so old and decreipt that Cosette genuinely can't tell it's them, but in the 1958 film, the Thénardiers look more or less the same; Monsieur Thénardier looks older and has grown beard plus is wearing different clothes without his hat, but other than that he is still recognizable, same as Madame Thénardier who looks exactly the same barring different clothes.
I can understand not recognizing Èponine (who Cosette is actually girlfriends with in this movie) because obviously her memory of her and her sister would be as well-dressed pampered little girls, a far cry from the poor and malnourished teenagers in rags that they are now, but the Thénardier couple themselves?
Even Shoujo Cosette understood that if the Thénardiers looked exactly the same as before with just different clothing it wouldn't make sense for Cosette to not recognize them and in fact she does!
But what is your opinion on it? Should Cosette recognize the Thénardiers, or does it make more sense for her not to?
