By Hank Reineke
This Kino Lorber 4K Restoration Blu ray of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame is likely as
good as we’re going to get. Universal
Studio’s official 1923 program heralded Hunchback
as Hugo’s “Mighty Epic of a Mighty Epoch” and, truth be told, director Wallace Worsley’s
film never delivers less than promised. It is, above all, a spectacle. In August of
1922 when announced Universal-Jewel was to begin lensing the film, newspapers
reported it had been Lon Chaney’s “life’s ambition” to bring Hugo’s tale – and
the story of the novel’s titular tortured soul Quasimodo - to the big screen.
Chaney’s Hunchback
would not be the first cinematic adaptation of the famed 1831 novel. Esmeralda,
a ten-minute long French adaptation was brought to the screen as early as in
1905. Albert Capellani’s 1911 French
silent (Notre-Dame de Paris) would also
precede the Universal version, but that film too was a modest production running
a mere twenty-six minutes in length. The
first feature length-effort was Fox’s romantic The Darling of Paris (1917) featuring silent-screen-siren Theda
Bara. A British version of 1922 preceded
Chaney’s by only a year – though, again, only as a short of some thirteen
minutes. All but the 1911 version are
now presumed lost.
If Universal was not the first to bring the epic to the screen,
producer and studio co-founder Carl Laemmle promised a production unmatched in size
and scope. Universal would front a
budget of some $1,250,000, bringing in some 2800 artisans to work on the film’s
massive sets. The centerpiece was to be
the cathedral of Notre Dame, built practically to scale. Universal promised, “The cathedral at Notre Dame is an exact replica in every infinite
detail of the cathedral as it looked in 1482, an extraordinary feat and an
archeologic, historical and technical triumph.”
Such an ambitious project was going to require an
ambitious production team. In October of
1922, gossips whispered the studio was “anxious to have D.W. Griffith direct” Hunchback. On the surface, Griffith would seem a natural
choice. He had, after all, helmed such
pictures as Birth of a Nation (1915)
and Intolerance (1916), both showcase
spectacles of large scale and huge casts. In the end, Universal would announce, January 1923, that Worsley would
direct – with assists by “ten assistant directors and twenty-eight field
captains.” Worsley and Chaney already
had a good working relationship: the two having already combined their talents
on The Penalty, The Ace of Hearts and The
Blind Bargain. This new collaboration would spend six months in pre-production
and one year in filming.
Everything was crafted bigger-than-life. The make-up
appliances for Quasimodo, the film’s monstrous bell-ringer, were painstakingly crafted
by Chaney in a series of three-and-a-half hour sessions. The September 1923 issue of Pictures and Picturegoer magazine
enthused Chaney had promised “something even more startling than usual in the
way of make-up.” Alongside that of Erik, The
Phantom of the Opera (1925), the twisted and feral Quasimodo remains the
most iconic example of Chaney’s make-up artistry.
Biographer Michael F. Blake’s Lon Chaney: The Man Behind the Thousand Faces (Vestal Press, 1990)
and A Thousand Faces: Lon Chaney’s Unique
Artistry in Motion Pictures (Vestal Press, 1995) remain the two most
essential reference books on the man and his films, but they weren’t the first. There were earlier “serious” circulating books
on the actor: Robert G. Anderson’s Faces, Forms Films: The Artistry of Lon
Chaney (1971) came first, N.L.
Ross’s Lon Chaney: Master Craftsman of
Make Believe following more than a decade later. That said, Blake’s sister
volumes remain the most reliable and error free sources of Chaney marginalia. Blake occasionally proffers stern judgements,
some fair and some maybe not so, on preceding Chaney biographers, but all books
mentioned above are worthwhile reads and contain excellent bibliographies.
Blake opens his 1995 study with the declaration “Lon
Chaney was not a “horror actor.” Though this is essentially true, Blake – who contributes
seven pages of booklet notes to this new Kino Blu – sighs the actor’s association
with the horror genre is terribly overblown. He argues this mistaken union was due to the actor’s famous ghastly
make-up creations. It’s doubtful the
audience of eleven and twelve year-olds who sought out these cheap newsprint monster
movie magazines of the 1950s and ‘60s had actually ever saw a Lon Chaney silent film. But the reproduced published stills would fire imaginations, giving
Chaney Sr. instant cult status as a “horror film” icon. At the very least, I think
it’s fair to say that the genre mags were instrumental in keeping Chaney’s
legend alive at a time when few other outlets were interested.
It was that way for me at least. I’m not sure when I first learned the name “Lon
Chaney.” But it was likely through
photographs or an article in the pages of Famous
Monsters of Filmland magazine. I had
become obsessed with Famous Monsters when
chancing upon a used copy of their May 1967 issue at a school “white elephant”
sale. The magazine sent me scouring the
listings in TV Guide in search of the
films I was first introduced to in the pages of “FM.” It was through Famous Monsters I was first introduced to silent films – many of which
I find even today to be as fascinating as any talkie.
In trying to learn about silent films, I discovered
Daniel Blum’s A Pictorial History of the
Silent Screen (1974) at my local library. It was an oversize hardcover held in the reference section. Since I couldn’t bring it home to read at leisure,
I spent hours in the library looking through the hundreds – maybe thousands of
stills – reproduced therein. My
knowledge of and interest in film history really began there. While combing through the pages for Chaney info
(there wasn’t a lot, if I recall), I discovered Chaplin, Keaton, Pearl White,
Fatty Arbuckle, the Keystone Cops and hundreds of others.
It was around this time I also managed to catch Robert
Youngson’s affectionate silent-era doc Days
of Thrills and Laughter on television. As with Blum’s book, I don’t believe Chaney, again to my great disappointment,
was even mentioned in the doc. Youngson’s
emphasis was mostly on the slapstick comedy of Charlie Chaplin, “Fatty”
Arbuckle,” Snub Pollard and Ben Turpin. Though
a rare, brief clip of Boris Karloff in King
of the Congo (1929) further fueled my interest in early cinema, Chaney –
frustratingly – would remain a man of mystery.
Knowing what I know now, the notoriously private and
reclusive actor – non-ceremoniously interred following his passing, age forty-seven,
in a Glendale sepulcher – would have likely preferred it that way. At age nine I finally had the opportunity to catch
Chaney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame
on WNET-13, Manhattan’s PBS-TV affiliate. Hunchback was the last title to
be featured on the network’s “The Silent Years” series (each segment introduced
by Orson Welles) in September of 1971.
OK, I apologize. I have digressed. I will also confess
it’s taken me quite some time to finally getting around to view this Kino issue
of Hunchback. I was gifted a copy
back in the autumn of 2021 but chose to put the Blu-ray aside – for the time
being, anyway. I had already planned to
attend a genuine film element screening of Hunchback
at a local cinema that October, one complete with live organ
accompaniment. That night, sadly, proved
to be a projection booth disaster. The
theater ran the last two reels in reverse so inter-titles appeared Cyrillic and
completely unreadable. God bless Ben
Model, the silent film historian/organist accompanying the program. He calmly and expertly navigated through this
maelstrom with amazing poise and finesse, salvaging what would have been
otherwise a completely disastrous evening.
There’s no point in discussing here the plot of Worsley’s
The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It’s a
more-or-less faithful rendering of the Hugo novel. This is a century old film, one I find as
entertaining today as it was a hundred years ago. Yes, the acting often is – as was the order
of the day – visually exaggerated and overly emotive, but the story remains a
compelling one. The scenario really
revolves around Esmeralda, the soft-hearted street dancer, and not the tragic
Quasimodo. To his credit, Chaney – though
top-billed – recognizes this and admirably serves as an essential member of the
ensemble, not as the film’s principal player.
This Kino release has been cobbled together from the best
existing prints available, so there are temperature and tinting changes from
section to section. But it’s a beautiful
4K restoration and while surviving element damage is not totally absent, the
film looks remarkable all things considered. This edition also features a lively and original musical score. This new soundtrack is composed and performed
by Nora Kroll-Rosenbaum and Laura Karpman, both Julliard-trained artists and
the previous recipients of Grammy and Emmy Award nominations/victories.
Over this millennium, The
Hunchback of Notre Dame has been re-made on any number of occasions. The best recalled of these are RKO’s 1939
version featuring Charles Laughton or the French-Italian 1956 version featuring
Anthony Quinn and Gina Lollobrigida. Folks of my generation might better recall these two post-Chaney re-tellings,
especially if they have little interest in silent cinema. Younger folks were likely first introduced to
the tale via Disney’s 1996 animated musical adaptation – a film whose cartoon
Quasimodo most resembled Laughton’s pitiful, less grotesque caricature. Having said that, Chaney’s Quasimodo, despite
age, will forever remain the most iconic.
A few notes on this generous bonus materials supplied on
this set. Included is a vintage, silent Life in Hollywood newsreel that features
a birds-eye view of the massive Universal City lot, described on an inter-title
card as “the strangest city in the world.” Once on soil, we watch as a procession of Universal’s silent-era stars
and starlets’ parade out of a studio canteen. Most of these names are now sadly lost to the memory of all but a small cabal
of film historians. The newsreel,
running approximately eight and a half minutes in length features a small clip
of Chaney – sans costume and make-up - demonstrating a bit of acrobatics on the
exterior of the Notre Dame structure.
The set also features a thirteen-minute silent reel of
“Mabel and Bill Dumphy’s Visit with Hazel and Lon.” This is sourced from 16mm footage shot during
the couple’s visits with Chaney, his wife Hazel, and their wire-haired terrier
Sandy, at rest during the family’s residencies in Soboba Hot Springs and
Saratoga. The Soboba footage is
primarily interesting in its moody capture of the former’s Riverside County
hamlet’s Spanish mission-styled architecture and terraced landscapes. There’s not much Chaney in the Soboba
footage, aside from Lon looking out pensively over the hillside, or playfully
tugging at Sandy the dog’s tail in another.
The Saratoga footage documents additional glimpses of the
Chaneys at home. We watch as Chaney and
guests mill about a backyard garden, the reclusive actor letting down his guarded
reserve. We watch as Lon playfully
wrestles a giggling Hazel on the lawn or smoking and drinking with friends. The latter clip is of interest due to the recognizable
presence of Lon’s son, Creighton (strategically “re-christened” Lon Chaney Jr. following
his father’s passing), smiling as he too puffs away on a cigarette in the
background. The set also features an
audio-commentary track by Farran Smith Nehme, a film historian and critic whose
work has appeared in such publications as Film
Comment, The Wall Street Journal, Village Voice and New York Post. The set
rounds off with a generous gallery/slideshow of publicity materials and
production stills.
One hundred years following the date of its production,
Worsley’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame
admittedly puts the “retro” in Cinema
Retro. But despite the film’s age,
its heart still beats soundly. Anyone
interested in film history should visit this film at least once in their
lifetime, and this Kino Blu-ray might just be the best conduit for one to do
just that.
Click here to order.