The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Web Exclusive)
Reviewed by David Sterritt


Produced by Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg; directed by Wallace Worsley; scenario by Edward T. Lowe, Jr., based on the novel by Victor Hugo; adaptation by Perley Poore Sheehan; cinematography by Robert Newhard; art direction by E. E. Sheeley and Sydney Ullman; edited by Sydney Singerman, Maurice Pivar, and Edward Curtis; starring Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Kate Lester, Winifred Bryson, Nigel De Brulier, Brandon Hurst, Ernest Torrence, Tully Marshall, and Harry von Meter. Blu-ray, 100 min., 1923. A Kino Lorber release.

Victor Hugo’s massive 1831 novel Notre-Dame de Paris, named after the celebrated French cathedral, was retitled The Hunchback of Notre Dame by a British writer who translated it in 1833, and the faintly exotic, brusquely rude overtones of the word “hunchback” suggest that whiffs of sensationalism have been part of the book’s popular appeal from early in its history. The term “ableism” didn’t exist until the second half of the twentieth century, though, and Hugo depicts his protagonist with unfailing sympathy, reserving his scorn for the unthinking Parisians who never think of respecting the ungainly, unsightly man who lives in a tower of the church and earns his keep by ringing the sonorous bells that have deafened him over the years. More to the point, the chronically downtrodden Quasimodo is the opposite of disabled in every way except looks; he doesn’t just pull the ropes of his bells, he leaps on them and rides them as if they were gracefully bucking broncos, and when mortal dangers attack, he defends himself and his domain with a strength and agility that Spider-Man could salute. Other characters with the condition properly called kyphosis have made their marks in drama, literature, and film—one thinks of Richard III in William Shakespeare’s play, Rigoletto in Giuseppe Verdi’s opera, and Riff Raff in Jim Sharman’s The Rocky Horror Picture Show—but none has enjoyed more lasting celebrity than the living gargoyle scampering around the Gothic edifice in Hugo’s grand historical tale.

Not surprisingly, the novel and its hero have been popular with filmmakers. The earliest screen versions appear to have been La Esméralda, a French one-reeler directed by Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset and the legendary Alice Guy in 1905, now lost, and a French three-reeler directed by Albert Capellani, released in 1911 and reasonably faithful to Hugo within the limits of its modest length. The first major adaptation is the 1923 spectacular directed by Wallace Worsley at Universal Pictures, which gave the “super-jewel” production a budget of $1,250,000 and billed it as “the most expensive picture ever made” in the official program book, reproduced in Kino Lorber’s new Blu-ray edition of the film. Not everything in Universal’s publicity can be trusted—star Lon Chaney didn’t do all of his own stunts, for instance—but even allowing for exaggeration, the studio’s claims are impressive: the roster of four thousand-plus workers included ten camera operators, 105 electricians, and twenty sculptors; more than five thousand costumes were designed and fabricated; the Grand Ball sequence was rehearsed by two thousand people for forty-eight hours; and the cathedral on the Universal lot is an “exact replica” of the real thing as it looked in 1488. That last item is especially important, since Hugo’s novel is as much an architectural treatise as a melodramatic yarn, setting forth the grandiosity and the minutiae of the cathedral in meticulous detail. Universal emphasizes the melodrama, of course, but its sumptuous design and atmospheric sets—sometimes photographed from a camera tower one hundred feet tall—are worthy of their source, providing a marvelously elaborate context for Chaney’s multifaceted performance.

Patsy Ruth Miller as Esmerelda with Lon Chaney as Quasimodo.

Jehan (Brandon Hurst) and Esmerelda.

The movie follows the novel’s narrative outline while varying many particulars. In both, Quasimodo was a foundling raised in the cathedral, but in the book his foster father is a corrupt priest, whereas the film—typically faint-hearted where religion is concerned—makes the priest a saintly paragon and turns his no-good brother, Jehan (Brandon Hurst), into Quasimodo’s master and the nastiest villain of the piece. Succumbing to the sin of lechery, Jehan gets a crush on Esmeralda (Patsy Ruth Miller), a Romani or “Gypsy” dancer who was stolen from her mother as a baby and raised by Clopin (Ernest Torrence), the beggar king of the so-called Court of Miracles where thieves and scoundrels congregate, along with occasional outsiders like Gringoire (Raymond Hatton), a raffish poet and playwright. Quasimodo abducts Esmeralda on Jehan’s orders, but she is rescued by the jaunty Phoebus (Norman Kerry), an officer in the king’s guard whom Jehan later stabs in a fit of insane jealousy. Testifying under torture that she stabbed the guardsman, Esmeralda is sentenced to death but whisked from the gallows by Quasimodo, who claims sanctuary for her in the cathedral. The climax arrives when Clopin’s rabble and Phoebus’s forces clash in the cathedral square as Quasimodo defends the citadel from a perch high on the battlements. The novel’s most potently dramatic scenes are similarly effective in the film. In one, Quasimodo is flogged and ridiculed in the public square, where only Esmeralda is bold or compassionate enough to comfort him. In another, Esmeralda succumbs to the torturer’s foot-crushing “boot” and falsely confesses to a capital crime. In a third, Quasimodo defends Esmeralda against the violent mob bent on snatching her from safety in the cathedral. 

The siege of Notre Dame is a sensational episode on both page and screen, as rioters pummel the entryway with a battering ram and Quasimodo hurls blocks of stone and pours vats of molten lead onto the attackers. The film’s ending is tragic for Quasimodo but less uncompromisingly bleak than the conclusion of Hugo’s novel, which is softened to a greater or lesser extent in all of the major adaptations. It’s also interesting that Universal’s version, unlike most of the others, retains a credulity-straining subplot about Esmeralda’s mother, a crone who went mad when her baby was abducted but recognizes her at an opportune moment from a token the youngster has carried all her life.

Nigel De Brulier as Don Claudio with Quasimodo.

Quasimodo was a character made to order for Chaney, who had been working his way up the Hollywood ladder for a decade without quite achieving star status. He knew Hugo’s novel would be an excellent showcase for his makeup artistry and acrobatic prowess, but on a personal level his fascination with Quasimodo was enhanced by the fact that both of his parents were deaf. According to the informative Blu-ray commentary by critic Farran Smith Nehme, the very young Chaney cared for his mother when she was bedridden, communicating with her via early versions of the signing and pantomiming that later became his hugely impressive trademark as an actor; as Nehme also notes, Quasimodo hardly talks in the film, which devotes only two intertitles to his speech. Chaney’s interest in the project notwithstanding, producer Irving Thalberg was the enthusiast who talked Universal chief Carl Laemmle into making it a pricey super-jewel production, and then spent an additional pile of money on crowd scenes after the bulk of the picture was finished, gambling (correctly) that news of the gigantic expenditure would be efficacious box-office fuel.

To direct, Universal considered such prominent figures as Erich von Stroheim, the big-spending director whom Thalberg had just fired from Merry-Go-Round (1923), and Frank Borzage, whose breakthrough film 7th Heaven had premiered five years previously. It was Chaney who gave the nod to assign the picture to Worsley, nobody’s idea of a world-class auteur but a capable artisan who had recently directed Chaney in The Ace of Hearts (1921), about a man obliged to assassinate the enemy of a secret society to which he belongs, and The Penalty (1920), about a man bent on revenge against a physician who wrongfully amputated his legs (hopping around on his knees for the latter film probably induced the chronic back pain Chaney suffered for the rest of his life). Worsley did expert work with the spectacular aspects of the picture, controlling armies of extras with the aid of an innovative public-address system and shooting the nighttime scenes at night, deploying the 550 arc lights and fifty “electric suns” touted in the film’s publicity. Chaney himself was deeply involved in many aspects of the production, attending daily script conferences and serving as an overseer on the set by checking camera setups and making suggestions on the lighting even when he wasn’t acting in a scene. And, of course, his costuming and self-applied makeup were flawless; a booklet essay by Michael F. Blake describes his twenty-pound plaster hump, his false teeth and matted wig, the straps and harness that kept him in a stooped-over position, the cigar-holder ends stuck into his nostrils, the tape that held his right eye closed, and other elements that took three hours every day to apply. The picture made Chaney a major star, and deservedly so. His performance brings out the full humanity of Quasimodo without sentimentalizing him; as Nehme accurately observes, his manner when fending off the attack on the cathedral isn’t that of a traditional movie hero, it’s that of a raging mass killer taking feral joy in his deadly task. 

Quasimodo and Esmerelda in the Cathedral Square.

Chaney would be the definitive Quasimodo if not for the equally brilliant performance of Charles Laughton in William Dieterle’s production of 1939, which allows the bellringer to survive his ordeals and conclude the story with a poignant wish that he were made of stone like the cathedral’s gargoyles. No other portrayal meets the high standard set by Chaney and Laughton, although numerous stars have given it a try. Anthony Quinn is fairly persuasive in Jean Delannoy’s 1956 French adaptation, downplaying the character’s deformity with a relatively unobtrusive hump, and Mandy Patinkin is fine in Peter Medak’s excellent 1997 version, although top honors there go to Richard Harris as the evil cleric, got up like Nosferatu in priestly disguise. By contrast, the usually great Anthony Hopkins is undistinguished in Michael Tuchner’s 1982 television film, and the 1996 Disney animation, directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise, makes Quasimodo a cutie-pie and gives him songs to sing.

Worsley’s film got mixed reviews—as Nehme notes, Variety found it too ugly and violent—but it was a tremendous hit, playing at a Manhattan theater for more than five months before going into wide release. Among its other accomplishments, this and another Chaney-Universal landmark, Rupert Julian’s The Phantom of the Opera (1925), prepared the ground for the first full blossoming of American horror cinema, which reached remarkable heights in subsequent years but produced only one stellar performer, Boris Karloff, who can be called Chaney’s peer. The Hunchback of Notre Dame looks fine on the Kino Classics Blu-ray disc, accompanied by a score from Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum and Laura Karpman that nicely suits the dramatic nature of the action. Also here are production stills, publicity materials and correspondence, a vintage “Life in Hollywood” newsreel, and several minutes of 16mm home-movie footage showing Chaney at leisure, puttering in his garden and puffing away on the cigarettes that killed him at age forty-seven, just seven years after Quasimodo made him a true screen luminary. The Hunchback of Notre Dame was a milestone for him, for Universal, and for Twenties cinema, and this high-quality edition is a pleasure to own.

David Sterritt is editor-in-chief of Quarterly Review of Film and Video, film professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, and author or editor of fifteen film-related books.

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Cineaste, Vol. XLVII, No. 2