This blog entry is part of my “movie year countdown”. To read more about that check out my first Spout filmblog entry.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
This is both the first version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame that I've ever experienced (I've never read the book or seen any other movies or plays about it) and the first Lon Chaney movie I've ever seen. And this actually would not normally have been my first choice for my introduction to either of these.
I'm not about to set about reading the novel. It's just too long and daunting and honestly the story is just not interesting enough to me to go into it. And as for film William Dieterle's version is famously the best. And Dieterle's The Devil and Daniel Webster is one of my favorite films, so I've been wanting to see another one of his adaptations for a while.
As for Lon Chaney I was hoping to see The Unknown or one of his clown films first. Or of course even his most well known The Phantom of the Opera would have been preferable.
The reason I did chose this movie was simply because in creating my obsessive movie year countdown project, this seemed to be the only movie released in 1923 that really worked best with the combination of everything else I was watching.
I say all this to explore the fact that maybe I didn't enjoy or rate this movie as well as I would have if I didn't have this feeling that I was missing out on something better. Also, the DVD copy available is just horribly marred and could benefit from a further restoration I think. That is, if anyone deemed it worth preserving.
Another thing that really confused me for most of the movie is how the film was trying to get me to react to Phoebus. Again, I am not familiar with any other versions of this story, but at first it seemed like the movie was setting him up to be a villain, but by the end it seems like we are supposed to be cheering for him. The problem is, I'm not sure where this change takes place and it isn't a situation where the ambiguity is a good thing. Maybe if it had been presented differently where we see a more identifiable change it would work. I did some brief research on this character and it seems like different adaptations of the work present him as entirely villainous or sometimes redeemable, I'm not sure why. Although I'm not sure if I'm interested enough to care too much.
I'll be sure to watch the William Dieterle version later though and see if that piques my interest.
Rating: 6/10