The Hunchback of Notre Dame

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

MAJOR SPOILERS!

            What can I say about this film? I guess I’ll start by saying that if you’re reading this you’re probably under seventy and you probably aren't an expert in French Literature. (I've been trying to draw the Septuagenarian-French-Lit Crowd, but it’s so hard to pull them away from writing Three Musketeers fan-fiction.)

"...then Porthos and Athos crossed swords while D'Artagnan watched."

      But, since you're reading this and not writing musketeer fan-fic or a treatise on Sarte I'm guessing that your closest experience with Victor Hugo's gothic classic is the 1996 Disney version and maybe passing The Hunchback of Notre Dame in Barnes & Noble and thinking "that is WAY too long to read."

Watch the characters sing, dance, and enjoy living in a world where people don't die horrible, horrible deaths.

        Here's the part where I repeat what your high school English teacher probably told you a thousand times. AT THE END OF THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME ALL THE MAIN CHARACTERS ARE DEAD!

       Let's do a quick bodycount:

         Captain Phoebus: Murdered by Frollo.

         Clopin: Gets melted when Quasimodo pours molten lead on him. (I would have like to see Disney animate that part and put it in the DVD special features by the way.)

         Esmeralda: Tortured and hanged.

         Archdeacon Frollo: Pushed off the cathedral by Quasimodo.

         Quasimodo: Crawls into the ditch where they toss Esmeralda's body and dies of thirst.

      I know right now you are probably thinking "well of course Disney changed the story. They wanted to market it to kids and their parents." And you would be right. The problem is that Disney isn't the first to butcher The Hunchback. The 1939 version did too. Even the 1923 version made changes to make the movie more palatable to an American audience.

       The changes aren't as major as the ones made by Disney, but the film ends with Esmeralda and Captain Phoebus still alive and kissing on the cathedral steps. And while Quasimodo dies, Frollo lives because in the movie he isn't the bad guy. Instead the studio made Frollo's drunken brother the villain and Frollo himself is hardly in the movie at all. I guess the studio didn't want to give people the impression that the 1400s Catholic Church was in any way corrupt. 

Besides, Frollo didn't have much time to murder guard captains 

and rape gypsies when he had the boys choir to worry about.

     However, minor changes aside, I think the 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame preserves the real moral of the book. Like all literature set in France, the moral of the story is that France is a terrible place full of awful, awful people and if you go there, you will be tortured and killed for next to no reason.

"zat will teach you to order red vine with fish! Auh hau hau!"

    

     Now, I know not that many people really care about the Hollywoodization of classic literature, and in the grand scheme of things it really isn't that big a deal. However, these stories are part of our culture. They help shape the lens through which we view the world. If they are changing, it means the way we look at the world is changing, and maybe that isn't always a good thing. 

     

     Also, I think changing a tragic ending to a happy one is an insult to the intelligence of the American people. Contrary to popular belief, I think Americans are smart. I think Americans want smart entertainment. I think they want entertainment that not only amuses them but makes them think and makes them feel. Changing French tragedy into Hollywood romance is Hollywood's way of telling us that they think we're stupid. Their line of thinking is that Americans can't handle a grown-up ending, so they'll give us a dumbed-down happy ending to get us to buy more movie tickets. And as long as Hollywood thinks like that we're going to keep seeing rehashed pieces of garbage in the theaters.

Make your own joke here. This is an easy target, and also I didn't watch it.

    

  

    (If you're into silent films or you just got high and are looking for a way to kill an hour and a half, the title of this article is a hyperlink to the original film.)