Eureka, out now

 

The classic take on Victor Hugo’s novel…

It’s been a bit of a wait for this in the UK, being basically the Kino Lorber release from September 2021, taken from Universal’s 4K restoration, with some different extras.

Quasimodo, aka the eponymous Hunchback Of Notre Dame, is one of the earliest iconic screen characters, who got retrospectively and quite unfairly added to the roster of Universal Monsters years after this movie was made, is usually viewed as the main protagonist of Victor Hugo’s famous novel. This is something of a retcon, as the novel is properly titled Notre Dame de Paris (Our Lady Of Paris), referring to the legendary cathedral, the Virgin Mary after whom it’s named, and Esmerelda, the female lead is the focus of most of the male characters’ attention.

In fact most prior 19th century stage adaptations from the novel had been operettas, ballets, and the like, centring on the Gypsy dancer, and usually explicitly titled with her name.

Then along came this 1923 silent epic – already the ninth screen adaptation, the others being more variants of Esmerelda – and Lon Chaney’s Quasimodo changed the world’s perception of the story forever. Hugo’s original novel had been a vast epic with a couple of dozen main characters, on the 19th Century themes (it was published in 1831) of Hugo’s own times: religious corruption, and the various factions of society in post-Napoleonic France, and how that society allowed such brutal and often bizarre behaviours. The novel is actually a lot funnier in places than you’d expect, but given its size it had to be compressed down a lot, as well as facing censorship issues.

In essence, the plot concerns the scheming by Jehan, brother of Archdeacon Frollo of Notre Dame, to foment a conflict between the Parisian peasants and beggers, led by “King of Beggars” Clopin (an imposing Ernest Torrance) and the King, in order to… Well, actually that’s a little vague, because in the book the Archdeacon is doing it to increase the power of the church, but that wasn’t allowed here, so the scheming gets shunted onto the lesser character of his wastrel brother. Meanwhile Captain Phoebus (who has a great part-armoured costume, but few brain cells) is in charge of keeping order, but is more interested in date-raping Esmerelda (and this is way tamer than in the book, where he’s even more of a complete misogynist bastard – great model for the guy who gets the girl in the Disney version, huh?) who in tun is the adopted daughter of Clopin. She’s the one – nicely and innocently played by Patsy Ruth Miller – who shows mercy to Quasimodo, who despite external appearance wants to be able to be recognised as soft and gentle, rather than having to spit back at the jeering mob. Throw in literal backstabbing by Jehan, Esmerelda ending up tried for sorcery, a peasant uprising, and the old bigoted trope of Gypsies stealing away babies, and you have a complex and unforgettable – usually for the right reasons – epic.

Obviously to modern audiences, Chaney as Quasimodo is the main draw, and while he doesn’t have much of his own face visible under the rubber with which to emote, his movements and actions carry his thoughts and emotions with surprising subtlety in places. The big acrobatic actions and his feral, animalistic stance and walk make great use of his dance-trained flexibility, but his muscular control gives us good insight into his character too. It’s only right that this movie made him a star, but it’s a shame that it did so as a supposed monster, when in fact he’s a sympathetic character, very much more in the mould of John Hurt’s Merrick in The Elephant Man.

Patsy Ruth Miller is fine as Esmerelda, and very much directed and played with childlike innocence, quite unlike the feistier character of the book and other film versions, while Brandon Hurst makes an OK Jehan, hampered by the fact that the plots and schemes and nasty stuff he does is disconnected from the character’s persona, having been simply ported across and lumped onto him from his brother Frollo (here renamed Don Claudio, since both men have the same surname), who is now a wise ascetic in the form of Nigel de Brullier, who (and also with dance training) makes a good visual foil to Quasimodo.

Speaking of visuals, director Wallace Worsley gives us a mixed bag. His shot composition is rather flat and stagey, but he brings out great performances from all concerned – though it’s worth pointing out that Chaney directed a lot of the action scenes and his own scenes, having got hold of the rights, and more leverage over the production, even to the extent of keeping Carl Laemmle’s name to one credit at the very start. Worsley does have a nice touch for detail though, for example the caption about the Festival Of Fools allowing peasants to have their fun without restraint is followed by a shot of two guys in monkey costumes trying to assault two passing women – censorship dodging to show what “without restraint” could mean in 1482, or 1920s idea of comedy, you decide.

The print has a variety of tints, starting off untinted, then blue on the next reel, and yellow later, which seems to be a first for this movie. The picture quality is perhaps more variable than any previous Masters Of Cinema silent release I can think of, with the 4K restoration having been from a single cut-down 16mm print. The original premiere fortnight saw the movie run 12 reels, and around 117 minutes, but after that the wider release print was cut down to a 10 reel, 100 minute print, and that’s all that’s known to exist today. So, a lot of the film still looks scratched and streaked and wobbly- watch the famous punishment scene of Quasimodo being whipped, for example, and you see a glorious crisp and sharp shot when he walks up the steps, then a scratched mess next… Or when Esmerelda saves the cute poet Gringoire (the author POV character in the book) from hanging and the mast shot is fine, but the close up of her is washed out and streaked… It’s not that good, print-wise, but it’s still better than any version before, and basically the best we’re ever likely to see, barring a lot of CGI work or time travel.

Given how much compression of plot and character was necessary to start with, this has also left various inconsistencies, such as the briefest cameo by the King, or the plotline with Esmerelda’s mad real mother just stopping when she drops dead mid-scene. The film also seems to have lost a lot of moments of violence to censorship- no whip is seen to hit Quasimodo in the famous whipping scene, nobody is seen hit by rocks or boiling oil dropped on them in the uprising, etc. All this stuff was trimmed down after the first two weeks.

Though a silent film, we do have some musical accompaniment here, in the form of a new score by Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum and Laura Karpman (who gave us the amazing score for Ms Marvel this year). The score is mostly decent, having the feel of a Noughties videogame score (perhaps not surprising as Karpman scored the Everquest series), though the cue for the big uprising sequence is somehow underwhelming.

Other extras are limited – there’s a fun and informative chatty commentary with Stephen Jones and Kim Newman, some of which covers the same ground as Newman’s separate and wonderful to-camera talk on the history of the novel, its legacy, and the history and legacy of the adaptations, albeit with the distraction of an awesome waistcoat and tempting bookshelves behind him. Jonathan Rigby also brings us a to-camera talk, about the background to and making of the film, which is definitely well worth watching.

There’s a collector’s booklet by Philip Kemp, which has some gorgeous pristine photos and posters and the like, and of course the first 2000 copies come with a stunning O-card slipcase whose busy artwork is way more colourful and evocative of the epic scale of the film than the actual sleeve artwork.

Verdict: An iconic epic, in not the best condition but the best we’re ever likely to see it, with a suitable score that fits the tone, and few but highly informative extras. At the time, Universal divided their productions into regular, Jewel, and, as here (and visible on the narrative intertitles) Super-Jewel. The Super-lustre may have faded and worn over the past hundred years, but it’s still a precious jewel belonging in the collection of any fan of silent films, epic gothic melodrama, or even, in some scenes, horror. 9/10

David A McIntee

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