Review: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

By 1923, Lon Chaney had worked his way up through the motion picture business from being an extra to playing bit parts to getting featured character roles to receiving star billing. But with his performance as Quasimodo, the title character in this, the first widely regarded adaptation of Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame (there had been at least two other versions before this), Chaney became a superstar.

Even now, more than 80 years later, Chaney's performance is something to marvel at. He manages to hit emotional notes that one wouldn't have thought possible, given the physical restrictions of the role--heavy makeup, a weighty rubber hump (how weighty depends on which source you listen to) and a harness to alter his posture. He is still able to appear menacing, terrified, pitiful, enraged at turns, all expressed through pantomime and expressive eyes. (Actually, just one of Chaney's eye is visible--the other is covered with makeup--thus making his skill at expressing feeling with a look all the more remarkable.) Combine this ability to convey emotion with his incredible, self-applied makeup (which Chaney based on the descriptions from Hugo's novel), and Chaney's Quasimodo is certainly a memorable one.

It's a shame that the rest of the movie doesn't hold up nearly as well.

Maybe I'm being too hard on this "Hunchback." Maybe its melodrama didn't seem nearly so stale all those decades ago. Maybe I just have a problem with silent film adaptations of Victor Hugo stories (I wasn't too thrilled with Universal's The Man Who Laughs, either). Or maybe Chaney's performance really is that much better than anything else in the movie. Any way you look at it, though, one thing is clear: When Lon Chaney isn't on screen, The Hunchback of Notre Dame drags badly.

The story is familiar by now. The gypsy girl Esmeralda (Patsy Ruth Miller) inspires varying levels of love/lust in three very different men: Jehan (Brandon Hurst, who played villains in many silent films), vile brother of the saintly Arch-deacon of Notre Dame; Phoebus (Norman Kerry), captain of the king's guard; and Quasimodo, who feels genuine gratitude toward the girl for giving him water after he's been whipped publicly for trying to kidnap her at the urging of Jehan. Also on hand is Clopin (Ernest Torrence), the self-appointed "King of Thieves," who looks on Esmeralda as his daughter and tries to keep her from the arms of Phoebus, a playboy who learns, much to his own surprise, that he really does love the girl.

A lot of time is spent on the romance and Jehan's plotting to either get Esmeralda or make sure nobody else can have her. There are also plenty of subplots, including dealings between Jehan and Clopin and the rantings of Esmeralda's true mother, who realizes much too late that the gypsy girl upon whom she has heaped so much scorn is really her flesh and blood.

Maybe if the center of all of this activity, Esmeralda, were a stronger presence, the melodrama swirling around her would at least seem justified. But Miller, while pretty, doesn't project the kind of sexual aura that would draw so many men to her. She just doesn't have the raw energy that Maureen O'Hara possessed in RKO's remake, or the exotic allure of Salma Hayak in the 1996 made-for-TV version. Miller's Esmeralda just doesn't seem to be worth all the fuss.

Still, this Hunchback is consistently good-looking, with some fine, elaborate sets (including a remarkable reproduction of the facade of Notre Dame) and detailed period costuming, and is worth a look if only for the career-making performance from Chaney. But for a more exciting rendition of this story, look to William Dieterle's 1939 Hunchback instead. It may not have Lon Chaney, but it at least doesn't induce sleepiness in the viewer when Quasimodo is off-screen.