Word: quasimodos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Hunchback of Notre Dame (Paris; Allied Artists) offers a Quasimodo (Anthony Quinn) who is as ugly as an iguana, but as lovable as a kitten and no more frightening. In two earlier filmings of Victor Hugo's romance, Lon Chaney (1923) and Charles Laughton (1939) took care to spook the audience out of its wits before building up sympathy for the. lovesick, crookbacked bell ringer. But the current Technicolor version (with a French supporting cast, dubbed-in English) introduces Notre Dame's resident troll tenderly stroking a pigeon on one of the cathedral's balustrades...
Actor Quinn emotes piteously with his left eye (his right one is matted shut by makeup that realistically puffs, thickens and distorts his entire head to a sub-Neanderthal bestiality), and it seems a shocking breach of manners when Esmeralda, Quasimodo's barefooted gypsy love (amiably played by Gina Lollobrigida), recoils at sight of him. Actor Quinn has done too thorough a job of making his monster human...
...Hunchback of Notre Dame would be like kicking a cripple. But a few mild prescriptions might bring the grotesque old man back to the health he deserves. Charles Laughton is superb in the lead role of Quasimodo, but some of the supporting parts, the photography, and the music fall just short of the excellence such a film must have...
...mist. He has presented at least half the film in almost complete darkness, and at times the scene could as well be a parody of Dante's Inferno. The music too does not seem to fit the action in some places, a little too blaring when Captain Phoebus captures Quasimodo, a little too violiny when Esmeralda prays to the Virgin Mary...