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THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME
Rating: 
USA. 1939.
Director – William S. Dieterle, Screenplay – Sonia Levien, Adaptation – Bruno Frank, Based on the Novel by Victor Hugo, Producer – Pandro S. Berman, Photography (b&w) – Joseph H. August, Music – Alfred Newman, Photographic Effects – Vernon R. Walker, Makeup – Gordon Bau & Perc Westmore, Art Direction – Van Nest Polglase. Production Company – RKO.
Cast:
Charles Laughton (Quasimodo), Maureen O’Hara (Esmeralda), Sir Cedric Hardwicke (Count Frollo), Edmond O’Brien (Gringoire), Walter Hampden (Archdeacon), Harry Davenport (Louis XI), Thomas Mitchell (Clopin), Alan Marshal (Captain Phoebus)
Plot: Paris at the end of the Hundred Years War. Gypsies are forbidden to enter the city, but the beautiful Esmeralda manages to sneak in and then seeks refuge in Notre Dame cathedral when the authorities try to evict her. The puritanical Count Frollo secretly desires Esmeralda so murders her lover and then has her framed and sentenced to be executed for the murder. But instead she is snatched and taken to safety in the cathedral by the hideous bellringer, the deaf and hunchbacked Quasimodo, who saves her because she treated him with kindness. Every section of French society is mobilized to fight for and against her innocence as Frollo orders the army to break into the cathedral.
Victor Hugo’s novel Notre Dame de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1831) is a French literary classic. It has been filmed a number of times, of which the most famous have probably been the silent The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), which featured one of the classic performances from the great Lon Chaney [Sr], and this sound remake, which will probably remain the definitive version of the book, and then of course the animated Disney bastardization, The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996). (See below for the other versions). Although Hugo wrote the story as an historical/literary tale, there has been a strong tendency to read the film versions as horror, even though it is only really horror by default – the theme of deformity – and the films themselves fall more comfortably into being historical epics and romances rather than any genre-identifying horror tropes. That said the popularity of the character of Quasimodo is one that has managed to place him into the pantheon of Famous Monsters alongside Dracula, the Frankenstein monster, The Phantom of the Opera etc.
This adaptation of the book is an undeniable classic. It was mounted at the height of the so-called Golden Age of Horror and at times the story seems to be cast in the light of the brooding Gothic that informed then recent adaptations of Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). But there are times when it is a real oddity. The plot seems to move in odd staccato jumps – one is never sure what subplot each scene is going to take up when it opens and whatever else that may be happening it is going to temporarily put aside. Characters often behave quite differently depending on the dictates of the subplot of the moment. There are also times when the plot almost comes to a halt so that the historians can climb aboard the pageantry and offer social treatises of the times – one can literally see the guns moving to bring the Church, the nobility and the Age of Reason into their firing line. Everything in the story seems to be performing symbolic function – it is not enough for an Archdeacon to simply gesture out a window at the cathedral, the cathedral has to become a symbol for the ornate ungainliness of France’s Mediaeval past in the same gesture. Considering all this, it does seem quite odd when the film starts taking its Catholicism seriously and getting right into the beatitudes and with heavenly choirs opening up when Esmeralda prays to the Virgin Mary for guidance. And in light of the story’s backing of the Age of Reason, director William Dieterle’s moody Gothic treatment might seem somewhat contradictory.
But that said it works beautifully as a film. The one thing one notices about Dieterle is his handling of crowds – no directors other than Sergei Eisenstein and Fritz Lang ever really used crowds to such a group mime effect. Dieterle whips the crowds from one side of the screen to the other – they’re all naked forces of expression and the effect as giant masses collide on screen is stunning. In one sensationally beautiful shot the camera hangs near the very apex of the cathedral looking down on the crowd as Charles Laughton holds Maureen O’Hara’s unconscious body up before them – the image is so stark and vivid it hangs there like a primal scream. The design of the cathedral belltower is absolutely magnificent – even if the whole spectacle seems to be crying out for colour. In moments like the one where Laughton rests beside a gargoyle and puts his head in his hands and cries, the very cathedral itself seems to be echoing his pain.
Dieterle has the ability amid all the spectacle to draw a real humanity out of the performances – the scenes between Laughton and O’Hara are strong and touching. Maureen O’Hara is not distinctive enough a performer to be able to carry the film, but Charles Laughton, one of the great character actors of the era, certainly is. His gibbering performance is so controlled, so torturously affecting that one is aware through every moment that it is acting with a capital A. Yet one is surprised to find that it is a performance that contains unexpected touches of self-effacing humour too. The one other performer of real distinction is Cedric Hardwicke – the character is impressively written and it is joyous to watch his coldness slip.
Director William Dieterle was a German immigrant to the US. He made other genre works such as Six Hours to Live (1932), a thriller about a man resurrected from the dead; the Shakespeare adaptation A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1935); the classic The Devil and Daniel Webster/All That Money Can Buy (1941) about a lawyer arguing with The Devil for a farmer’s soul; the classic ghost romance Portrait of Jennie (1948); and the German-made spy thriller/mad scientist film Mistress of the World (1959).
Other film adaptations of the Victor Hugo novel are:– Alice Guy-Blache’s lost silent short Esmeralda (1905); Esmeralda (1922), a lost silent British adaptation with Booth Conway and Sybil Thorndike as Quasimodo and Esmeralda; the silent classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) with Lon Chaney; the French/Italian-made The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956) with Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollobrigida; a BBC tv play The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1977) with Warren Clarke and Michelle Newell; a Hallmark Hall of Fame tv movie The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982) with Anthony Hopkins and Lesley-Ann Down; the Disney animated The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996); and The Hunchback (1997), a tv movie adaptation with Mandy Patinkin and Salma Hayek. Big Man on Campus (1986) is a comic spoof.
Copyright Richard Scheib 1990
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