Sanctuary much… The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), Eureka Masters of Cinema Blu-ray, Out Now

To the towns people he was an inhuman freak, a monstrous joke of nature – and for their jeers he gave them scorn and bitter hate.

This is the UK Blu-ray debut of this Universal classic and it is a 4k transfer of the recent restoration from NBC Universal from two 16mm prints, which looks fabulous and really carries across the scale and daring of this huge feature – a million-dollar super-production. Surprisingly, I haven’t seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame before and so this disc held and extra fascination. Lon Chaney’s transformation is under more scrutiny than ever envisaged for the original screening experience but, once again, it is his performance and not the make-up that convinces and you soon forget the all too obvious prosthetics and just become submersed in this classic tale.

Victor Hugo’s novel of 1831, Notre Dame de Paris was, according to Kim Newman, as much about history and architecture as the hunchback. Then, as now, the building was under threat and Hugo’s novel helped to raise interest in the cathedral and, indeed, the author took part in restoration that helped preserve the building. According to Newman, the book helped create a social movement… but still has a lot more humour than the film, with Esmeralda charged with enchanting a goat, a satire on the French justice system. More on that goat later…

From an era of epic set design... the star of the film?

The film changed more than the story with a number of characters flipping from good to bad and a revision of the ending. This is a primal story that is clearly malleable in terms of meaning, sense of place and dramatic sweep with the cathedral the biggest character and narrative device, a place to hide, to haunt and to swing down from as well as being the ultimate sanctuary. There is nowhere else that Quasimodo can be and when Esmeralda is falsely accused, he carries her there shouting “sanctuary, sanctuary!”. But Notre Dame is also a place hiding the shadowy plotting of Jehan (Brandon Hurst) although the main villain in the book was his brother, the Archdeacon Claude Frollo, here played by Bristol’s finest Nigel De Brulier, as a good man.

 

It's also a refuge from the poverty beyond with the film retaining some political overtones, bemoaning “the King’s justice” and the struggle of the 15^th Century poor more reflective of Hugo’s time – during the early reign of King Louis Philippe I after the revolution of 1830, all far removed from the days of the Republic. Hugo was elected to the National Assembly of the Second Republic after the 1848 revolution calling for the end of misery, poverty and the death penalty as well as other 19^th Century concerns such as universal suffrage and free education. By 1923 all of these things were recognised as undeniably good so writers Perley Poore Sheehan, Edward T. Lowe Jr. and Chester L. Roberts were preaching to the converted.

The film starts with The Festival of Fools, the one day of the year when those “crushed by tyranny” could give themselves to unrestrained pleasure… His Majesty King Louis XI (Tully Marshall, who I always associate with the Clara Bow comedy Mantrap (1926)) rides through the throng, “a crafty oppressor of his people, whose dungeons were always full… “ which may be a little harsh on "Louis the Prudent" as he was called in the 1480s who founded what became the French postal system, built roads and unified France under a more administratively solid monarchy. It’s not my period but the needs of the story must…

Torrence, Chaney and De Brulier

We also see the poor of Paris huddled in the cavernous Court of Miracles … led by King of the Beggars, Clopin (man-mountain Ernest Torrence, who I also always associate with the Clara Bow comedy Mantrap), the enemy of kings… 400 years early.  He too is at the festival, watching from the steps of Notre Dame as the revelry gets wilder, he is chided by the Archdeacon before his brother Jehan crosses over to plot with Clopin… the downfall of Louis and a new world he can mould with the help of his lucky hunchback.

That freak is my slave, he will be useful to us…

There, high above the crowd, is Quasimodo, the “ugliest man in Paris” who will this evening be crowned King of Fools. He looks down on the crowd, pulling tongues and dangling precariously off the buttresses. Lon Chaney makes most of these moves himself, physically transformed so much that the outlandish prosthetics are barely necessary.

Patsy Ruth Miller

In his video essay, film historian, Jonathan Rigby describes the impact the film had including its blockbuster two-month stint at the Empire Leicester Square, which featured an “Impersonate Quasimodo” competition featuring seventeen contestants designed to encourage British acting talent. As Charles Laughton, Quasimodo in 1939, later said, Chaney wasn’t just a great actor but a magnificent dancer and clearly this physicality was an influence although we don’t know if Laughton entered the competition.

Having danced onto the screen, we get to meet the other main players, the newly promoted Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers (Norman Kerry, playing slightly gormless here) and his fiancée Fleur de Lys (Winifred Bryson) who watch the festival from across the cathedral square. Fleur’s attention is caught by a dancing goat – told you – who is being coached by a pretty gypsy called Esmeralda (Patsy Ruth Miller) who, even from a distance of a hundred metres, takes de Chateaupers’ mind completely off goat dancing.

Esmeralda is the most connected character in this film, being not only the adopted daughter of Clopin, who bought her off some gypsies because he always wanted to adopt but couldn’t be bothered with all the paperwork, as well as the object of Jehan’s wicked desires, not to mention her new admirer, who is forgetting all about his fiancée. Later in the day after Quasimodo’s coronation as King of Fools, he sees Esmeralda dancing and then he too has lost his heart to her fresh face and regular features, not to mention high-level armography and syncopation.

The kindness of Esmerelda

Passions run fierce and Jehan orders his man to kidnap Esmeralda, as that is the surest way to any woman’s heart, only for Quasimodo to be arrested and sentenced to a lashing. Before that, Esmeralda meets de Chateaupers, who takes her to a tavern before discovering that she’s not that kind of girl, suggestive moments when he pulls down the strap of her dress to reveal her naked shoulder before edging it back up again as she reveals her true heart.

From this point Esmerelda motivates the central characters and not anachronistic revolutionary thoughts. She shows mercy to Quasimodo as he calls for water after a brutal lashing in front of the cathedral… and if he didn’t know she was the girl for him beforehand he does now and his loyalty will not waver.

De Chateaupers takes Esmerelda to a nobles’ party only for Clopin to raise an army of beggars in order to go and “rescue her”, forcing her to intervene and go with her stepdad, to be with her own people. Minor character and coded gay poet, Gringoire (Raymond Hatton), rescued by Esmerelda after accidentally ending up in the Court of Miracles, brings the captain a note arranging a meeting with her in Notre Dame. She intends it as a last farewell and it almost is for De Chateaupers who is stabbed in the back by Jehan, who implicates Esmerelda.

No you don't Norman...

Will her Captain live to tell the truth or will Esmerelda fall victim to Louis XI’s lousy justice with a public hanging at Notre Dame? So many questions for the final part of the film and director Wallace Worsley masters his cast of thousands and stunning sets to full affect for a dynamic denouement. But it is his players that really bring the action with Chaney peerlessly acting through his make-up, dancing his feelings and ringing those bells for all he’s worth with a frightening intensity. Patsy Ruth Miller is also second MVP with a charismatic performance most of the others struggle to match, several roles perhaps being under-written given the need to squeeze so much into a single film from the epic source material.

 

The Blu-ray is released on 17^th October in a Limited-Edition O-Card Slipcase* and has the usual Masters of Cinema extra special features:

·         1080p presentation on Blu-ray from a 4K restoration conducted by Universal Pictures

·         Music by Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum & Laura Karpman (presented in uncompressed LPCM stereo)  

·         New audio commentary with author Stephen Jones and author / critic Kim Newman

·         New interview with author / critic Kim Newman on the many adaptations of Victor Hugo’s novel |

·         New interview with film historian Jonathan Rigby

·         A collector’s booklet* featuring a new essay by journalist Philip Kemp, richly illustrated with archival imagery

 

*Both the booklet and the slipcase are limited to the first 2000 copies so I would urge you to order your copy now and you can do sodirect from the Eureka site.

It’s another important silent release from Eureka, an essential part of any silent film fan’s shelf and one that has not looked or sounded better since the 1920s!

A feast for your eyes...