Me at my Annual Performance Evaluation.
It’s one of the supreme classics[1], so what can I say? The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), starring Lon Chaney, fights through its technical shortcomings, such as people moving too fast and a very scratched up film[2] (ours came from a DVD compilation of horror films) to deliver a tight, twisted plot and a fascinating performance by Mr. Chaney in this early, early example of film noir.
The year is 1482, in Paris. Briefly, Quasimodo (Chaney) is the deformed & isolated monstrous minion to Jehan, who both live, at the dispensation of Jehan’s brother the Arch-Deacon, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Jehan is a man of lusts and jealousies – carnal, wealth, and prestige. He has none of them, and so is consumed with jealousy for the standing of the Captain of the Guard, Phoebus, for the affections of the street dancer Esmeralda, and, just to round out the sentence, of the mostly unseen presence of the instrumentality of Godly vengeance, King Louis XI. Esmeralda, the pivot for much of the plot, is a Gypsy, dancing for a living, and also the object of fatherly affection of the King of the Beggars, Clopin, who adopted her after she was stolen from her crib.
Jehan resolves to reduce one of his jealousies by kidnapping and ravishing Esmeralda, and to that end he and his minion, Quasimodo, operating in the dead of night, track her down and attack her. But Phoebus, soon to be promoted, happens on the scene with his men and rescues Esmeralda, capturing Quasimodo in the process. Jehan slips away in the confusion, leaving Quasimodo, pleading silently for help, to his fate.
Please pick the lice from my pelt.
Phoebus falls in lust with Esmeralda, but restrains his carnal instincts upon encountering her innnocence, and invites her to the ball celebrating his appointment to the Captaincy. Meanwhile, Quasimodo is given a quick trial and sentenced to be lashed for his attempted kidnapping and assorted alleged bestial urges. It being a public, lesson-to-be-learned punishment, Esmeralda stumbles upon the scene at the end of the performance, brings Quasimodo water, and helps release him from his chains, thus winning the monster’s gratitude.
Onwards to the ball (surely one of the greatest gatherings of wimples in their natural habitat presented on film), step-father Clopin leads a mob that breaks in and accosts Phoebus in mid-woo, causing Esmeralda to proclaim herself unsuited to the aristocracy, and leaves with her step-father. She arranges for a note to be sent to the heart-broken Phoebus, begging him to meet her in a secluded garden for a farewell before she takes up the veil. Unknown to her, Jehan has continued to lust after her, and, trailing her, leaps upon Phoebus while he necks with Esmeralda, stabbing him in the back.
Esmeralda is arrested for the crime, and, under the King-endorsed wickedly augmented interrogation procedures, confesses. For this, there is no redemption: she is to be hung. Phoebus, who has survived the attack, is utterly sick with worry, but as Esmeralda is conveyed to the gallows, past the Cathedral, Quasimodo clambers down the front of Notre Dame, knocks over the guards like bowling pins, and carries Esmeralda into the sanctuary of Mother Church.
My punishment is not that I must wear a wimple, but that I think I look good wearing it.
But Mother Church is infested with a tick, a tick by the name of Jehan, who tells Esmeralda that Phoebus has died and instructed Jehan to take care of Esmeralda. Meanwhile, step-father Clopin reconstitutes his mob to rescue Esmeralda from Notre Dame. Puzzlingly, Notre Dame has boiling lead ready for itinerant mobs, and Quasimodo, in his isolated and damaged condition, does not recognize the mob as rescuers, but as attackers. He pours the boiling lead on their heads as they batter at the doors; Esmeralda is distraught at the deaths of her friends, far below, and in a moment of inattention, Jehan attacks her, meaning to take her by force. Quasimodo, remembering Jehan’s abandonment at his moment of need, throws Jehan from the battlements of Notre Dame into the crowd, far, far below, now a battleground as Phoebus and his men counter-attack the mob. But Quasimodo is not unscathed, as Jehan’s parting gift is several knife thrusts into the hunchback’s body. Quasimodo, mortally injured, manages to return to his one true love, the ringing of the bells of Notre Dame, for one more tug on their cords, and the cords of your heartstrings.
Obviously, there’s a lot going on here: social commentary, moral teachings, and a lot of cleverness I chose not to report. But perhaps the most interesting part is how simply it’s presented. It’s not a labored, tedious movie about the inequalities of France in the late 1400s, but a movie about a man afflicted by both God and Man, and how the thick currents of societal ignorance, sauced by class resentment, lead to general and unjust disaster, as the self-interested decisions of far too many lead to a black ending for those who merely struggle to survive.
This movie is often classified as horror, but I see it as the classic film noir, as the decisions of men & women, inevitable yet defective, lead down the path to black endings, tragically instructive.
Put up with the scratches, the unnatural speed, the captions. Pay attention. Strongly Recommended.
1Which didn’t keep me from making fun of it, but only with the greatest of affection.
2Do film buffs consider this patina or rust?
