Classics of the silent screen (1959)

Lon Chaney as Quasimodo— his most unforgettable portrait. The Hunchback of Notre Dame 1923 Of all the film spectacles built around one period or another in France's history, two stand out above all the rest: D. W. Griffith's Orphans of the Storm and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, made for Universal by director Wallace Worsley, and starring Lon Chaney. It remains the most famous of the many versions ( four of them American ) of the Victor Hugo tale. Actually, Griffith would have been an ideal director for this film. Its whole plot, construction, and sweep cry out for his expert hand, and it contains many of his favorite ingredients. The street battles, the lost-daughter motif, the implied criticism of kingly domination, the interplay of unrelated characters and the lastminute rescue from execution are common to both Hunchback and Orphans. Griffith, however, did not make The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and despite its huge spectacle scenes, it emerges as a film in which the personality of the star rather than that of the director creates the greater impression. This of course is no criticism of the film, merely a notation of the differing ways in which similar subject matter can be approached. Chaney's pathetic, dog-like performance as the hapless Quasimodo was a masterpiece of pantomimic tour de force, and must certainly rank among the great screen portrayals of all time. But although The Hunchback of Notre Dame was one of Chaney's most successful films, it was by no means one of his most typical. Generally he tried to avoid big spectacles which tended to minimize the contribution of the actor. The Hunchback, of course, was the film which really made him, and when it went into production he was by no means the top-ranking star that he was soon to become. Accordingly, it was not really a star vehicle and there are stretches of film in which Chaney is off the screen, and either the romantic story or the spectacle come to the forefront of attention. The elaborate 45