The Hunchback of Notre Dame

William Dieterle
1939

This rendition of the oft-filmed Victor Hugo classic boasts the great Charles Laughton as Quasimodo, and large-scale big budget production values. Focusing as equally on the drama of the malformed bell-ringer and persecuted gypsy Esmeralda as on the changing sociopolitical climate of Paris at the dawn of the enlightenment, Dieterle comes up with a film strengthened by it's contextualization. Laughton is by far the best actor I've seen as Quasimodo, better even than Lon Chaney in the silent 1923 version, and his gruesome-yet-human makeup pulls no punches as the roly-poly Brit's beefy frame cavorts about the set. The big surprise here is a young Maureen O'Hara showing a remarkable degree of sexual femininity - a far cry from the macho spitfire who sparred with John Wayne in many a John Ford film. The large crowd scenes are impressive, displaying all the ignorance and filth of the middle ages in a gently assertive way, and the final siege of Notre Dame is a spectacle worthy of the picture's scope (particularly the strange makeshift gun/cannon used by the Beggar King and Quasimodo's brutal employment of molten lead on the attackers). Surprise, surprise, another solid RKO picture.