Silents are Golden: A Closer Look At – The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

Silence is Golden: A Closer Look – The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)

The silent film era is synonymous with many things: softly lit romance novels, wacky silent comedies, edgy German Expressionism, and of course, big-budget spectacles. Out of intolerance (1916) to metropolis (1927), epics from the silent era are particularly intriguing given that only a few decades earlier entertainment was confined to the confines of a stage. It’s easy to imagine how exciting it must have been to actually film massive crowds and build truly massive sets to bring grandiose visions to life like never before.

One of the better known silent film epics is The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), a universal image of Carl Laemmle and the “child prodigy” Irving Thalberg. Taking six months to produce, using thousands of extras and faithfully recreating the spiers of Notre-Dame Cathedral, the film definitely got the audience excited.

The decision to play the heavily deformed Hunchback Quasimodo was obvious and practically predetermined: Lon Chaney, who was already known for his uncanny ability to play deformed or “crazy” characters. Chaney himself had longed to play Quasimodo before the film caught fire in the eyes of Laemmle and Thalberg. He had even made plans to film a version of it hunchback for the Chelsea Pictures Company in Germany. These plans fell through in early 1922, and Universal’s epic came out in September of that year hunchback Feature was in production.

Chaney was fresh from his famous stint as a con artist The Miracle Man (1919) and The Legless Crime Boss in The punishment (1920). Quasimodo would be one of his greatest challenges as he was one of the most deformed characters to ever appear on silent film. Chaney used putty to sculpt the cheeks and details around the eyes, put in false teeth, put on a heavily knotted wig and finished it off with a hump said to be made of leather and plaster and weighed around 10 to 15 pounds . Apparently, he met people who actually had deformities to learn about their experiences, read Victor Hugo’s descriptions of Quasimodo, and carefully crafted his posture and body language to look as authentic as possible on screen.

Esmerelda was to be played by Patsy Ruth Miller (she had only appeared in films since 1921), Ernest Torrence was cast as Clopin, the beggar king, and leading actor Norman Kerry was chosen to play Phoebus. Wallace Worsley, who had previously worked as a director with Chaney on four of his films (including The punishment) was elected director. Rumor has it that Erich von Stroheim was the first choice to direct, but by that time he had already been fired from Universal.

The plot has been significantly altered compared to Victor Hugo’s 1831 novel, partly to make it less somber and partly to avoid offending Christian sensibilities. The antagonist was replaced by Archdeacon Claude Frollo with a new character named Jehan, the evil brother of a holy Archdeacon. Esmerelda is not hanged in the end, but is reunited with her lover Phoebus, while Quasimodo meets a tragic end.

Production started with a bang, the studio boasting about its lavish sets and “no scrimping” attitude. Elmer F. Sheeley was responsible for the set design and Archie Hall was responsible for the solid construction of the sets as technical director. Sculptor Finn Froelich designed the statues, gargoyles, and other adornments for the Notre-Dame set. Old prints of Paris were poured over to create Universal City’s sprawling, 19-acre complex of medieval streets, shops, and homes, and of course, the focal point was the recreation of the mighty Notre Dame herself. This was a feat of engineering and special effects, and was achieved by recreating the bottom 20 meters of the cathedral to scale, while the top half was actually a miniature that hung between the camera and the set in the background. The on-screen effect is seamless.

Authentic-looking pavers were made from acid-sprayed concrete to give them an aged look, and concrete arches were built over part of the Los Angeles River to convert it into the sewers of Paris. The meticulous work was greatly admired by those who attended the sets and hailed in trade publications as one of the industry’s greatest achievements to date.

One of the challenges of the productions was hiring thousands of extras (about 3,000 in all) for the crowd scenes, all of whom had to be provided with costumes, daily pay, and meals. Many were recruited from downtown Los Angeles. A 125-foot cloakroom building was built to house all medieval clothing, and reportedly some of the more visible extras received their costumes a few days early so they could get used to wearing them naturally. There was a clear desire to make the film feel authentic to its troubled time, rather than “theatrical” or overly romanticized.

In total, hunchback It cost Universal a whopping $1,250,000 to produce. But fortunately, the film was a smash hit, and just behind became the third highest-grossing film of 1923 The covered wagon And The Ten Commandments. The critics were also generally positive, and while some critics felt the film was too dark, all praised Lon Chaney’s remarkable performance.

Today most prints are from hunchback The images in circulation are from 16mm prints, some more choppy than others, and all the original 35mm negatives have long since disappeared. Fortunately, better restorations have emerged in recent years, allowing us to enjoy this ambitious classic – and Lon Chaney’s groundbreaking achievement – with the clearest clarity in decades.

Note: The American Cinematographer article “A Silent Giant: 1923 The Hunchback of Notre Dame” was a very helpful resource for this month’s column.

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–Lea Stans for Classic Movie Hub

Here you can read all of Lea’s Silents are Golden articles.

Lea Stans is a Minnesota-born and raised actress with a degree in English and an obsessive interest in the silent film era (which she largely credits to Buster Keaton). In addition to blogging about her passion on her website Silent-ology, she is also a columnist for Silent Film Quarterly and has also written for The Keaton Chronicle.