Silent Film Sources - Reviews

Adaptation by Perley Poor Sheehan. Scenario by Edward T. Lowe, Jr. Edited by Sydney Singerman, Maurice Pivar and Edward Curtis. 

Photographed by Robert Newhard. Art Direction by E.E. Sheeley and Sydney Ullman. 

Directed by Wallace Worsley. 

Cast of Characters: Lon Chaney, Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Kate Lester, Winifred Bryson, Nigel de Brulier, 

Brandon Hurst, Ernest Torrance, Tully Marshall, Harry Van Meter, Raymond Hatton, Nick de Ruiz, Eulalie Jensen,  

Roy Laidlaw, W. Ray Meyers, William Parke, Sr., Gladys Brockwell, John Cossar, Edwin Wallock. 

Notre Dame, the  
Cathedral of Paris 

...a spiritual haven in a brutal age... a sancuary where the persecuted could find protection. 

The film was the brainchild of Irving Thalburg while Universal's head of production (1919-1924) in his pre-MGM days.  Lon Chaney had, separately, been trying to mount a production of Victor Hugo's novel for some years.  Chaney could have pursued the idea with Thalburg while at Universal working on The Wicked Darling, Outside the Law or The Trap.  Hunchback was a major step for both actor and studio.  After several years of being underpaid and under-appreciated as a Universal contract player, Chaney began freelancing in 1917.  His career flourished with increasingly flamboyant character roles in Riddle Gawne (1918), The Miracle Man (1919), The Penalty (1920) and A Blind Bargain (1922) -- among many others.  By 1923, he was a leading man and a highly respected character actor but not a superstar.  Hunchback changed that.  The film's great success provided Chaney with the foundation for his legend. 

Universal produced moderately-budgeted westerns, shorts, serials and melodramas for independently owned theaters in mainly rural areas.  Universal was just about the oldest and certainly the least prestigious of major Hollywood studios.  It owned no theaters, and it made virtually nothing but programmers.  The only other prestige releases in its history were Erich Von Stroheim's sophisticated comedies, Blind Husbands (1918), The Devil's Pass Key (1919) and Foolish Wives (1922).  Thalberg believed that Universal needed to acquire urban theaters and upgrade its product in order to follow the demographic curve away from the sticks and into the ever-expanding cities where first-run houses charged premium admissions.  Hunchback was Thalberg's independent gesture toward greater credibility and prestige for Universal.  At $1.25 million, The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the studio's most expensive release.  Its profit of…..did not move company president, Carl Laemmle, however.  He stuck by his low-risk, high-efficiency policy for Universal, and Thalberg moved on to MGM in 1924. 

Universal did continue to release prestige pictures on an annual basis, however: The Phantom of the Opera (also starring Chaney) in 1925; distribution of the French Les Miserables in 1926; Uncle Tom's Cabin in 1927 and Victor Hugo's The Man Who Laughs in 1928.  Production of these big-budget specials subsequently became more frequent. 

Hunchback's story revolves around a beautiful gypsy dancer, Esmeralda (Patsy Ruth Miller) and the men in the life.  Esmeralda's possessive guardian is Clopin, King of the Beggars (Ernest Torrence). He is willing to barter her to advance his interests and those of his impoverished followers.  She loves and is loved in turn by Phoebus de Chateaupers (Norman Kerry) a cavalier of King Louis XI (Tully Marshall).  Esmeralda is also the obsessive object of Jehan (Brandon Hurst) the villainous brother of Dom Claudio (Nigel De Brulier) the cathedral's saintly Archdeacon.  And she is adored by Quasimodo, the grotesque bellringer of Notre Dame for her kindness to him after an unjust flogging.  During a tender moment between the dancer and the soldier, the jealous Jehan stabs Phoebus.  Esmeralda is accused of the crime, tortured and sentenced to hang.  Workmen from the cathedral stop laboring to enjoy her public execution, the following day, while Quasimodo watches in horror. 

Esmeralda's appeal as a sexual and political pawn highlights the base cruelty of this entire medieval society and of mankind in general.  One class of ignorant grotesques commits barbarities against a lower order for the amusement of all. The hunchback is the lowest of the low, but he rises above his degradation through his own selfless love. 

Watching Chaney's performance today is a disillusioning experience. His makeup is certainly horrifying.  Quasimodo's nose goes off in four directions at once; his cheekbones are distorted, a giant wart encloses his right eye. His shoulders are pulled aggressively forward by a twenty-pound hump, and jagged teeth and Brillo-like hair complete the effect.  He is genuinely difficult to watch. 

Chaney uses his body eloquently to express rage, resentment and bristling energy.  He also handles some scenes, such as Jehan's betrayal of the Hunchback to the cavaliers, with subtly and grace.  But the role of Quasimodo gives an actor license to literally climb the walls, and does Chaney ever run with it.  He never stops making faces.  To show humanity, he clasps his mitts and staring ecstatically at his beloved bells, or at Patsy Ruth Miller or at kindly Dom Claudio.  His holy innocent caricatures pious, child-like simplicity.  And Chaney knows no restraint in his portrayal of the bellringer as a dumb animal.  He snarls, sticks out his tongue, beats his breast, claps his hands, stomps his feet and raises his fists.  There are no lulls in this performance and little shading.  Chaney is as out of control in his grab for the brass ring as Quasimodo in the defense of La Esmeralda. 

Chaney was a wonderful actor, but he needed a strong director to sit on him, and Wallace Worsley wasn't it.  The angry irrationalism of Chaney's work here isn't assimilated with the rest of the film.  A perverse-minded stylist like Von Stroheim might have managed.  (And he might even have expanded the sense of complicity in the cathedral workmen to the connoisseurs enjoying the film.) 

Wallace Worsley simply stages Hunchback like a pageant and directs it like traffic cop.  It's not that his direction lacks the dash and dramatic charge of Griffith or De Mille.  It lacks even the pokey stateliness of Henry King's Romola and The White Sister.  There's nothing that brings Thalberg's beautifully designed and lit sets to life, except in a couple of crowd scenes.  And Worsley's slapdash inattention to detail robs the film of moments that might have shaped and defined it.  When Ernest Torrence's Clopin gives his dying words, Worsley cuts away before he's expired.  And though we see the Hunchback throwing stones (and people) off the Cathedral bell tower, as well as his gleeful reaction, we're never shown the result for ourselves.  Worsley's work was perfectly decent in the more modest Penalty, but he doesn't seem in full command of the elements here.  According to Patsy Ruth Miller, Chaney directed as much of the film as did Worsley, his friend. 

As a piece de resistance, the film was shortened from twelve reels to eight after roadshow engagements, according to Chaney's biographer, Michael Blake.  This was a customary practice, but the result is a decided choppiness with some scenes starting in the middle. 

Hunchback has few peers for lavish spectacle in the early Twenties (basically just Robin Hood, Orphans of the Storm and The Ten Commandments).  It's easy to see what the public found so fascinating.  But this elaborate production is far less than the sum of its parts.  And if you don't respond to Chaney's performance, there may be a good reason why.  Kino on Video's version is, like all versions, based on the surviving 16mm Show-at-Home prints.  Nobody likes the scratchiness of this material, but it has an aesthetic appeal, and the tinting is very nice. (Review © 1998 Christopher Clotworthy)