OVP: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Film: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Stars: Charles Laughton, Maureen O'Hara, Walter Hampden, Alan Marshal, Thomas Mitchell, Edmond O'Brien, Cedric Hardwicke, Harry Davenport

Director: William Dieterle

Oscar History: 2 nominations (Best Score, Sound)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Maureen O'Hara-click here to learn more about Ms. O'Hara (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As I mentioned last week, Maureen O'Hara is a strange choice to do in a retrospective about Alfred Hitchcock.  In 1939, she did have her first major role in his Jamaica Inn, but it didn't bring the kind of mainstream success that later films would bestow on Hitchcock's leading ladies, and as a result it's not one of the films that we'd consider a "major" picture in her career (O'Hara might be the only actress all year where if I was making a list of her most important movies, I'd skip Hitch).  The first really important film of her career, instead, came about in 1939, and would star her Jamaica Inn costar Charles Laughton in one of his most iconic roles, as Quasimodo in a retelling of Victor Hugo's classic The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

(Spoilers Ahead) This is one of the most famous (and longest) stories in all of fiction, so I'm going to breeze through this, but for those who are new to the story, get ready to head to 15th Century France.  Here we have King Louis XI (Davenport) who is overseeing tumult in Paris as a group of gypsies have entered the city, some without a permit.  One of these is Esmerelda (O'Hara), a beautiful young woman who takes refuge in Notre Dame Cathedral (where she can claim "sanctuary" from the law) and it's here that she meets Quasimodo (Laughton), a man suffering from facial deformities & deafness who spends his days ringing the bells of Notre Dame.  She also meets young Captain Phoebus (Marshal) with whom she falls in love, Gringoire (O'Brien), a young man she marries out of pity, and the cruel Claude Frollo (Hampden), who becomes obsessed with her even though he assumes her beauty is a temptation from the devil to drive him mad.  This is indeed the case, as he murders Phoebus out of jealousy, but frames Esmerelda for the crime.  Quasimodo saves Esmerelda from the gallows, and watches as people lay siege to Notre Dame Cathedral as he defends it...all-the-while the king realizes that Frollo was the one who murdered Phoebus, and sets the guards on him, with Esmerelda to go free.  The film ends with Esmerelda joining her husband Gringoire, now in love with him, and Quasimodo looking on from afar, wishing to be a stone gargoyle so he does not feel the abandonment of Esmerelda, his love.

The film is considered a landmark today, and did launch O'Hara's career, but little about her rings true for Esmerelda.  Her performance here requires her to be beautiful (check), but not much else, and O'Hara wasn't always at her best when the script wasn't asking more from her.  She also has the slightest hints of her Irish accent here, which reads even more ridiculous for a woman playing a gypsy dancer.  Charles Laughton is considerably better, and genuinely inhabits his Quasimodo...I know this might be controversial both because it's a bit overacting & also because his portrayal of Quasimodo strips the character of a good chunk of his humanity (especially toward the end), but I was fascinated by his work here, and think it's one of the better performances that Laughton gave.  It's him who lifts this story to classic status in a way she doesn't, but it's a middling classic at best...in a year like 1939, you gotta stand out.

We're going to jump quite a bit ahead in O'Hara's very long career next week, so I'll talk more about what her life was like after Hunchback then, but I'd be remiss if I didn't touch on the film's two Oscar nominations.  Of the two, the Sound nomination feels better.  The siege of Notre Dame, and of course the infamous, omnipresent bells add presence & a bit of depth to the film, and I was impressed with the way that the designers found ways to make them gain some of the symbolism of Hugo's novel.  The Scoring nomination feels odd.  Yes, Alfred Newman did a fine score, but that's not really what the goal of the "Scoring" category is, which is a look at both the score itself but also additional original music (usually this featured musicals or films with musical plots, which Hunchback isn't).  Church music does show up to a slight degree, but it does feel like this was simply nominated on Newman's reputation alone, and while his score is good, it is a strange fit for this category.