This is a review of William Dieterle's 1939 film 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' starring Charles Laughton and based on Victor Hugo's 1831 novel of the same name.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of my favorite books so when I came upon this film version of Victor Hugo’s classic I had some prejudices to overcome. There are few cases where movies based on successful novels have been successful without staying faithful to the source material. Namely, those movies that come to mind are The Godfather, The Shining, A Clockwork Orange, A Scanner Darkly, and Bladerunner to name a few. Then there are those movie adaptations that turned out to be disasters like Puzo’s The Sicilian, Anna Karenina, Sin City: A Dame To Kill For, Noah, etc. But in all fairness to the latter list, the problems with them were not so much the fact that they could not be translated to film, but the fact that these films didn’t have the right person—director—translating them.
I’d never heard of William Dieterle, the Hunchback’s director, so I was even more skeptical about it (Before I continue with this review, I want to warn those who have not read the book nor are familiar with the story that there will be a few spoilers here; however, I will try to skim around the plot as much as is possible to point out some of the differences between the book and film). The novel is centered around the characters Esmeralda, the Gypsy Girl, and archdeacon Claude Frollo, the story’s villain who views Esmeralda as evil because of the temptations her beauty arouses in him; by contrast, the film devotes equal attention to its central and supporting characters as well as the then technological innovation of the printing press, which, in this film, represents an epoch from the age of architecture—as expressed in the intricate design of the Notre Dame cathedral—to the age of the written word. Another difference of the film from the book is that there is no personal history of the gypsy-girl Esmeralda or her mother. In the film, Captain Phoebus is killed; in the book, Captain Phoebus is not killed, but wounded. In the film, Esmeralda rides out of the town square with Gringoire, whom she loves; in the novel, Esmeralda does not love Gringoire, but merely tolerates him. In the film, both Esmeralda and Quasimodo (the Hunchback) are alive at the end; in the book, they are both dead, Esmeralda by murder and Quasimodo by natural causes. These are only a few of the differences between the book and the film and there are many more. Despite these changes, I’m happy to say that this is one of the rare cases where the film—while not better than the book—is equal to the book.
There are acting performances that are so inspired, so powerful, that they become larger-than-life performances:
Al Pacino—The Godfather, Scarface
Peter O’ Toole—Lawrence of Arabia
Albert Finney—Under the Volcano
Brad Davis—Midnight Express
Marlon Brando—On The Waterfront
Giulietta Masina—La Strada
Sylvester Stallone—Rocky (the 1st movie)
Robert De Niro—Raging Bull
Liv Ullman—Cries and Whispers, Scenes From a Marriage
David Thewlis—Naked
John Hurt—The Elephant Man
In this film, actor Charles Laughton channels the pathos of Hugo’s Hunchback to the degree that I found myself frequently reaching up to wipe away tears. Despite being submerged under tons of makeup, Mr. Laughton—as John Hurt accomplished under similar conditions in John Lynch’s Elephant Man— was able to show the wounded soul of his character by how the world treated him, which was relentlessly cruel.
Other performances of note are Maureen O’ Hara’s Esmeralda and Sir Cedric Hardwicke’s Jehan Frollo. The direction by William Dieterle was extraordinary, especially the crowd scenes and the mob scene at the end of the film. Speaking of the film’s ending, it was perfect. No one dies, however, it was not a happy ending either, at least not for Quasimodo. Moving away from comparisons to the book, this film, imo, ranks up there with some of the best, namely, Citizen Kane, Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931 film), and Bride of Frankenstein to name a few.
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