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Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
Topic Started: Aug 17 2007, 05:39 PM (1,164 Views)
riddlerider
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panzer the great & terrible
May 27 2013, 10:31 AM
I think it's worth pointing out that David does not like this film -- and I agree with him.

All the more reason to run it at the proper speed -- get it over and done with faster.
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riddlerider
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Laughing Gravy
May 27 2013, 10:39 AM
To me, the only weak point is Patsy Ruth Miller, who is not very attractive and a howlingly bad dancer.

Can't agree with you about Patsy, who I find very attractive, although not so much in HUNCHBACK. She "cleaned up" nice and made an elegant, sexy flapper-era heroine. But I also like her in animal skins in the Tarzan ripoff LORRAINE OF THE LIONS. Very interesting and articulate woman, too, with some significant post-Hollywood accomplishments. I very much enjoyed meeting and chatting with her at the HUNCHBACK screening.
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Frank Hale
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I think I also could go through the rest of my life without seeing this film again, but Gravy's takes are always of interest.

A good 35mm print would no doubt help quite a bit.
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panzer the great & terrible
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David has been experimenting with projection speeds all his life, but I doubt if he would ever have run a 1924 film at 16 fps. He's the one who taught me that projection speeds went to 20 fps or even more in the early Twenties, and increased even more as the decade went on.

When he released the Keystone Chaplins, some people complained on the nitrateville site that they were presented at the speed of real life instead of at 24 fps, which is what the posters were used to because of their cheap projectors -- but that was not the speed used in the silent era, until the very end, when silent films like Sunrise had sound-on-film music tracks. I think we all owe Dave and am annoyed when he gets this sort of criticism.

Hunchback is dull because it's dull. Fantastic make-up, but weak direction.
Edited by panzer the great & terrible, May 28 2013, 09:42 AM.
Life is just a bowl of cherries, it's too mysterious, don't take it serious...
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Stony Brooke da Mesquiteer
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Laughing Gravy
May 27 2013, 10:39 AM
But I've never seen a movie with so many subplots.
That's Victor Hugo for ya -- plots, subplots and subplots to the subplots. In THE MAN WHO LAUGHS, Victor likes spoutin' off about royalty like someone naming all the playing cards in a deck.
It's like Rodney King used to say, "Can't we all get a bong."
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CliffClaven
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The deal with "Hunchback" seems to be, get in a few signature scenes and do whatever you want with the rest.

It's been a while, but Chaney's version seemed to be a flimsy little costume romance between moments of Chaney and spectacle.

The Laughton version was intellectual and ambitious, but went to some bizarre pains to avoid any hint of radical politics: The final battle is between beggars who want to hide Esmeralda from the authorities, and tradesmen who want to defend her and the cathedral. The authorities themselves -- presumably the actual bad guys -- are notably absent. See the MGM sound "Scaramouche"; that one manages to skip past the French revolution after establishing it's coming.

The Disney version ricochets between moments of genius and pure corn. Frollo is defrocked, but more sexually obsessed and more piously murderous than in any other version I've seen. Quasimodo becomes a gentle young man, raised to believe in a cruel world and his own hideousness.

There's a short silent version on Weiss-O-Rama", with a prologue declaring Frollo was not a member of the church, but part of criminal syndicate who would most profanely dress up like Catholic clergy in blasphemous parody of sacred ritual. Got that, League of Decency?
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