The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Once in awhile I will pop in one of my favorite classics and sit back to enjoy it as if watching it for the first time. One of the top movies in my collection is 1939′s The Hunchback of Notre Dame starring Charles Laughton as Quasimodo and the beautiful Maureen O’hara as the gypsy girl Esmerelda. This like Excalibur in comparison to all other films on King Arthur… is the creme de la creme of the Hunchback movies.

The timelessness of this movie is due mostly to the tremendous acting of everyone involved. The conflict of church and state, good and evil, innocence and corruption, is demonstrated so well within this masterpiece you will probably press hard to find it in many others.

The Plot (Heavy Spoilers)

Quasimodo the bell ringer is a grossly deformed hunchback with a mangled face and permanent scowl. Being left as a babe on the steps of the great Notre Dame cathedral, he is found and raised by Frollo (Sir Cedric Hardwicke), a top member of the church. Frollo is a cold and single-sighted man who stations Quasimodo as bell ringer for the church… a job which the hunchback not only masters but gives his sense of hearing to as the biggest bell of the church has made him deaf. The relationship between the two is as a father with a son non too proud of, as Frollo hides Quasimodo within the church walls only sending him out to carry out his commands.

Esmerelda is a beautiful gypsy woman traveling the country of France in search of a home. It is common law to shun and disallow Gypsies hospice within France due to there nature of stealing and other crimes (allegedly), this leads to Esmerelda and her troupe becoming nomads of sorts, traveling from city to city, performing circus acts and doing whatever they can for food and shelter. Upon arriving in Paris, she begs and pleads with the local magistrates to allow her people some sort of solace to which she is turned down and forced to run to the church of Notre Dame for sanctuary. Upon arrival into the church Esmerelda is greeted with kindness and love from the Arch-bishop (Walter Hampden) and lustful, scorn and loathing from none other than Frollo.

The character of Esmerelda is the complex female nature of many a tale, she is innocent to a flaw, yet naive and easily swayed into romance by heroic men. This mix of emotion causes her flight from the deformed Quasimodo into the arms of Gringoire the poet (Edward O’Brien) to leave him loving her as she dashes to the lusty arms of Captain Phoebus (Alan Marshal). This complex love triangle adds an even odder angle when you couple in the forbidden lust of Frollo who wants her as badly as every male that sets eyes on her… Esmerelda is a stunner, even I wanted her… well theoretically.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame’s beauty comes in with the relationship of Quasimodo and Esmerelda. Here you have two extremely opposite forces in beauty coupled together by their innocence and fate… a turn that comes about when Quasimodo is made to be flogged 50 times with a cat-o-nine-tails whip and placed into public humiliation for an additional hour. This was due to his crime of chasing Esmerelda by Frollo’s command to whisk her back to his awaiting arms in Notre Dame. Taking the flogging without even a whimper, the poor wretch is set out in the sun for an hour as the raging mob throws rotten fruit and insults at his suffering body. Crying out for water, the beautiful Esmeralda is the only soul in hundreds that pitied him enough to share her water skin with him (even though he chased her) and it is a favor he does not forget.

Esmerelda then goes on to saving Gringoire from the king of thieves when she agrees to marry him to spare his execution (long story just run with it). Shortly after the ceremony she tells Gringoire of her love for Phoebus and leaves him to meet the Captain at a celebration. She finds that Pheobus is popular amongst many women and chooses his work as a soldier above love… promising her only one night of love and not the lifetime she had wished upon pursuing him. His lust is halted by the dagger of Frollo and Esmerelda is framed for the murder of the handsome Captain. Tortured into confession of the crime she did not commit, Esmerelda is sent to be hung outside of Notre Dame when the Arch-Bishop (believeing her innocent) denies his blessing for the woman’s sentence. Quasimodo’s love and respect for Esmeralda emerges in a heroic gesture as he swings from the rooftop of the Cathedral and whisks away the maiden to be hidden away within Notre Dame from the blood thirsty mob. There, they bond and Quasimodo’s monologue on himself is one of the most pathetically touching things conveyed within the film. It is strong, it is believable and it is a testament to the ownership that Charles Laughton had of this character.

Gringoire, relying on his belief in the people, writes and prints a letter of concern about the king’s duty to maintain Notre Dames stance as sanctuary from the state. There is dissention amongst the ranks and the top officials of the state sign a petition to release the church’s stance as a sanctuary in order to have Esmerelda hung for her crime. A mob emerges to take Esmerelda from the church and Quasimodo single-handedly fights them off with stones and molten-metal from the Cathedral’s roof… Unbeknownst to him they meant to whisk her away to freedom from a possible takeover by the state but in his heart he felt them to be the same mob wishing her to be hung… this was bittersweet as you realize that he wins but it is at the cost of many an innocent life. In a beautiful finale the showdown between good (Quasimodo) and evil (Frollo) takes place and the film ends with Frollo broken on the streets of Notre Dame, Esmerelda in the arms of her true love Gringoire and Quasimodo, alone, sad, clutching unto a gargoyle asking it “why couldn’t I have been made of stone like thee”. A tragic ending within a positive one, but very real in it’s interpretation an ending befitting one of the best adaptations of this story.

I cannot re-iterate the acting and how well this movie was carried out. Esmerelda is breath-takingly beautiful both inside and out, and Quasimodo is as charismatic as you can ask of a pathetic wretch that the hunchback is. One more noteable character was that of King Louis XI (Harry Davenport) who represented one of the best human traits in this movie, because all of the characters represents our traits and the good king would be tolerance and acceptance of new things. His character was the opposite of the connivingly one-sighted Frollo, who relies on deception and corruption to hide a blackened mind hidden within the guise of a lawful man. The good guys represent innocence whether pious or not, and the evil guy (emphasis on this singularity) was the character of Frollo.

If you are a fan of film and you have not seen this movie I implore you to go pick it up and give it some time. It is a true gem that is timeless for one’s movie collection. Aside from it being a black and white film, the special effects are extremely well done, the music is beautiful and the acting isn’t as stiff and typical of movies in that time period. In other words it does not feel old, it just feels right. One of my favorite of all times and the king of all the hunchback movies (in my opinion) 1939′s The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

Written by Greg Dragon – who has written 365 reviews on Spicy Movie Dogs.

Cinephile and opinion writer, Greg Dragon has been a fan of movies since the 80's when Kung Fu theater was all the rage and Roger Moore was James Bond. As an opinion writer that has reviewed Box Office releases on a number of prominent websites, Greg is the founder and lead critic of Spicy Movie Dogs.