The Hunchback of Notre Dame. 1923. Directed by Wallace Worsley.

(4/24/00)

Lon Chaney's Quasimodo is considered one of his greatest performances and it deserves to be. He shows hate, he shows pain, he is like a wild animal. He feels love and is kind to those who have been kind to him. When Patsy Ruth Miller doesn't respond to him hist expression subtly changes and you hurt.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a big, impressive production. It's well done. It has a lot of action. It tells an intricate story with a lot of characters. It has vile villains, deceit, but also nobility. It's larger than life. There is torture and there is betrayal.

It is set in Paris in the late Middle Ages, but the action seems to revolve around Notre Dame Cathedral. The cathedral, beautifully reproduced, dominates the film. Maybe it's a representation of the spirit of the time. It certainly represents an ideal that the characters of the story fail, for the most part, to live up to.

Esmerelda is the great exception. She is almost a personification of the Virgin, an embodiment of the values that the cathedral represents. But she is so sexually desirable that she represents Venus as well as the Virgin. We first see her as an attractive gypsy dancing girl, but as the film progresses it is her attractive spirit which comes to dominate our image of her.

I liked Patsy Ruth Miller in the opening scenes. When we first see her in closeup--in the scenes with Norman Kerry at the inn (or wherever they stop to eat)--I didn't find her so attractive. But maybe that was a response to the shift in how she is presented because she seemed quite suitable as the film progressed.

Some of the scenes that impressed me were the ones in which Esmerelda gives water to Quasimodo after he has been whipped and when the woman who has been cursing Esmerelda because her own daughter had been stolen by gypsies rips the locket off of her and realizes that she is her own daughter. Both are powerful scenes. I unfortunately lost focus and missed what happens to the woman who we have learned is Esmerelda's mother. I think she was killed, but I missed how.

This film was unfortunately shown in a very worn 16mm print and without music. I would really love a chance to see it under better conditions.

(4/26/00)

A couple of other points about The Hunchback of Notre Dame:

It is fascinating to watch Lon Chaney flick his tongue, sort of like a snake. In fact, he seems very animal-like in a lot of his footage. And I also wanted to mention that after Phoebus arrives, he and Esmerelda just blithely go off together, leaving Quasimodo to die alone. This is sad, especially in view of the fact that Esmerelda is basically a kind person.