It’s Film
Strip Friday!
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Release
Date June 21st, 1996
SYNOPSIS:
At
the urging of his hilarious gargoyle pals Victor, Hugo, and Laverne, Quasimodo
leaves the solitary safety of his tower, venturing out to find his first true
friend, the gypsy beauty Esmerelda. The most unlikely of heroes, Quasi fights
to save the people and the city he loves and, in turn, helps us to see people
for who they are, rather than how they appear.
FUN FACTS:
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated
musical-drama film produced by Walt disney Feature Animation and released to
theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The 34th animated feature in
the Walt Disney Animated Classic series, the film is loosely based on Victor
Hugo's novel of the same name. The plot centers on Quasimodo, the deformed
bellringer of Notre Dame and his struggle to gain acceptance into society.
The film is directed by Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale and
produced by Don Hahn. The songs for the film were composed by Alan Menken and
written by Stephen Schwartz, and the film features the voices of Tom Hulce, Demi
Moore, Kevin Kline, Paul Kandel, Jason Alexander, Carles Kimbrough, David Ogden
Stiers, Tony Jay, and Mary Wicks (in her final film role). It belongs to the
era known as Disney Renaissance, which refers to the ten-year era between 1989
and 1999 when the Walt Disney animation Studios returned to making successful
animated films, recreating a public and critical interest in the Disney
studios. The film received a G rating by the Motion Picture Association of
America, and was rated U by the British Board of Film Classification in the UK.
Despite these ratings, the film is considered to be one of Disney's darkest
animated motion pictures similar to films such as The Black Cauldron.
A direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II,
was released in 2002.
Plot
In 1482 Paris, Clopin, a gypsy puppeteer, tells a group
of children the story of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. Three gypsies sneak
illegally into Paris but are ambushed by a group of soldiers working for Judge Claude
Frollo, the Minister of Justice. A gypsy woman attempts to flee with her baby,
but Frollo chases her and kills her outside Notre Dame, intending to kill her
deformed baby, but the Archdeacon appears and accuses him of murdering an
innocent woman. To atone for his sin, Frollo agrees to raise the deformed child
in the Cathedral as his son, naming him Quasimodo.
Twenty years later, Quasimodo has developed into a kind
yet isolated young man with three gargoyles as his only company, told by Frollo
that he is a monster who would be rejected by the outside world. Despite these
warnings, Quasimodo sneaks out of the Cathedral to attend the Feast of Fools,
where he is crowned King of Fools but immediately humiliated by the crowd after
Frollo's men start a riot. Frollo refuses to help Quasimodo, but a kind gypsy, Esmeralda,
intervenes by freeing the hunchback. Frollo orders her arrested, but she flees
using magic. Frollo scolds Quasimodo and sends him back inside the Cathedral.
Esmeralda follows Quasimodo to find him, but is herself
followed by Pheobus, Frollo's Captain of the Guard. Phoebus, who himself does
not approve of Frollo's methods, refuses to arrest her inside the Cathedral,
and Frollo warns Esmeralda that he will capture her the minute she leaves the
Cathedral before the Archdeacon tells him to leave. Esmeralda finds Quasimodo
in the bell tower and befriends him. As gratitude for helping him in the crowd,
Quasimodo helps Esmeralda escape Notre Dame and is presented a map to the gypsy
hideout, the Court of Miracles. Frollo begins to realize his lustful feelings
for Esmeralda and wishes to be free of them to escape Eternal Damnation. He
soon learns of Esmeralda's escape, and orders a city-wide manhunt for her,
committing arson. Realizing Frollo is losing his mind, Phoebus defies Frollo,
who orders him shot and executed. Phoebus falls into the river, but is rescued
by Esmeralda, who takes him to Quasimodo for refuge.
Frollo soon returns to the Cathedral, forcing Quasimodo
to hide Phoebus. Knowing Quasimodo helped Esmeralda escape, Frollo bluffs that
he knows where the Court of Miracles is and that he intends to attack it at
dawn with a battalion. After he leaves, Phoebus requests Quasimodo's help in finding
the Court before Frollo. Using the map Esmeralda left, they eventually find the
Court and are almost hanged by the gypsies as spies, but are saved when
Esmeralda clears up the misunderstanding. However, Frollo has followed
Quasimodo and has his army capture everyone.
Frollo orders Esmeralda burned at the stake after she
refuses his proposal of her becoming his mistress. Quasimodo, tied up in the
bell tower, refuses to help, but decides to rescue Esmeralda upon seeing the
gypsy in pain. Phoebus stages a mutiny and a battle ensues between the
citizenry and Frollo's soldiers. Quasimodo places Esmeralda's unconscious body
on a bed and pours a cauldron of molten copper onto the streets to ensure
nobody gets inside. However, Frollo breaks in and force his way past the
Archdeacon. Quasimodo, thinking that Esmeralda has died, breaks down beside her
body as Frollo comes into the room to kill him. Quasimodo, in his fury, fights
back and almost kills Frollo but stops when Esmeralda wakes up. Frollo chases
them to the balconies where he and Quasimodo fight. In his rage, Frollo reveals
that he killed Quasimodo's mother and knocks him off the balcony, but Quasimodo
pulls Frollo down along with him. After a long struggle, both Quasimodo and
Frollo fall off the Cathedral, but while Frollo falls to his death, Quasimodo
is caught by Phoebus on a lower floor, and the three friends reunite.
As the citizens celebrate their victory over Frollo,
Quasimodo reluctantly emerges from the Cathedral to face the populace again,
only this time, he is hailed as a hero.
Cast
- Tom Hulce
as Quasimodo – The bellringer of the Notre Dame Cathedral. He is
physically deformed with a hunched back and is constantly told by his
guardian Judge Claude Frollo that he is an ugly monster who will never be
accepted by the world outside. However, the opening song asks listeners to
judge for themselves "who is the monster, and who is the man" of
the two.
- Demi Moore as Esmeralda (singing voice
by Heidi Mollenhauer) – A beautiful, streetwise, talented, and
always-barefoot gypsy girl who befriends Quasimodo and shows him that his
soul is truly beautiful, even if his exterior is not. She is incredibly
independent and greatly dislikes the horrible ways in which gypsies are
treated. Throughout the film, Esmeralda attempts to seek justice for her
people. She falls in love with Captain Phoebus and helps Quasimodo
understand that gypsies are good people. "Esmeralda" is the
Spanish and Portuguese word for Emerald, which may be why the animators
chose to give her emerald green eyes.
- Tony Jay
as Judge Claude Frollo – A ruthless and self-righteous judge who is
Quasimodo's reluctant guardian. He has an intense hatred of the gypsy
population, seeing them as "impure" and has a desire to
annihilate their entire race. He also lusts after Esmeralda. Frollo
generally does not see any evil in his deeds as he does them in honor of
God, even though the Archdeacon often disapproves of his actions. However,
at one point during the song "Hellfire", the priests singing the
Confiteor manifest as his conscience, chanting the Latin words "mea
culpa" ("my fault"), to reveal that Frollo ultimately knows
the truth of his actions.
- Kevin
Kline as Captain Phoebus – A soldier who is Frollo's Captain of the Guard.
He falls in love with (and later marries) Esmeralda. He is a heroic
idealist with integrity and does not approve of what Frollo thinks or
does. This distinguishes him severely from his character in the original
story. He has a horse named Achilles, to whom he says twice
"Achilles, sit." on one of Frollo's soldiers.
- Paul
Dandel as Clopin – The mischievous leader of the gypsies who will defend
his people at all costs. He introduces the audience to the story,
explaining how Quasimodo, the bell ringer from Notre Dame, got to be
there.
- Charles
Kimbrough, Jason Alexander and Mary Wicks as Victor, Hugo, and Laverne –
Three gargoyle statues who become Quasimodo's close friends and guardians.
In the DVD audio commentary for Hunchback, Wise, Trousdale, and
Hahn note that the gargoyles might exist only in Quasimodo's imagination
(ala Hobbes in Calvin and Hobbes) and thus may well be split-off pieces of
his own identity. However, most of their characteristics, including Hugo's
infatuation with the goat Djali, seem unique to their manifestations when
present. This was Mary Wickes' final film. After Wickes' death, Jane
Withers provided the remaining dialogue for Laverne in the film's sequel
and related merchandise.
- David
Ogden Stiers as The Archdeacon – A kind man who helps many characters
throughout the film, including Esmeralda. He is the opposite of Frollo:
kind, accepting, gentle, and wise. He is the only figure in the film with
authority over Frollo while he is inside Notre Dame. He appears in the
beginning of the movie when he orders Frollo to adopt Quasimodo for
killing his mother. He disapproves of most of Frollo's actions, and at the
film's climax, Frollo, in his rage, openly defies him and knocks him down
a flight of stairs.
Production
According to producer Don Hahn, the original idea for the film came from
development executive David Stain, who was inspired to turn Victor Hugo's novel
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame into an animated feature film after reading the Classics
Illustrated comic book adaptation. Stain then proposed the idea to
Disney, who called on Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale to work on the project. Wise
and Trousdale were working on other projects at the time, but "none of
them were quite gelling", so they "jumped at the chance" to do
the film. According to Wise, they believed that it had "a great deal of
potential...great memorable characters, a really terrific setting, the
potential for fantastic visuals, and a lot of emotion."
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the second Disney
animated film directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise after Beauty and the
Beast in 1991. The duo had read the novel and were eager to make an adaptation,
but made several changes in order to make the storyline more suitable for
children. This included making the film's heroes, Quasimodo, Esmeralda, and
Phoebus, kinder than in the novel, changing Frollo from Archdeacon to Judge
(and creating an original Archdeacon character), adding sidekicks in the form
of three anthropomorphized stone gargoyles, and keeping Quasimodo and Esmeralda
alive at the end. This ending is perhaps more inspired by Hugo's opera libretto
based on his own book, in which Esmeralda is saved by Phoebus at the end of the
drama.
The film's animators visited the actual cathedral at Notre
Dame in Paris for a few weeks. They made and took hundreds of sketches and
photos in order to stay fully faithful to the architecture and detail.
Several of the film's voice actors had been part of past
projects Trousdale and Wise attended. For example, Tony Jay and David Ogden
Stiers, the voices of Judge Claude Frollo and the Archdeacon, respectively, had
previously worked on Beauty and the Beast, providing the voices of Monsieur
D'Arque and Cogsworth/the narrator respectively (although their characters did
not share any scenes together). Also, paul Kandel, the voice of Clopin, was
chosen after the directors saw him playing the role of Uncle Ernie in the opera
production of Tommy. Demi Moore was chosen for the role of Esmeralda based on
her unusual voice, as the directors wanted a non-traditional voice for the
film's leading lady.
Despite the changes from the original literary source material
in order to ensure a G rating, the film does manage to address mature issues
such as lust, infanticide, sin, profanity, religious hypocrisy, the concept of Hell,
Prejudice and Social Injustice, as well as acceptance that Quasi yearns for.
Songs also contain rather mature lyrical content such as the words
"licentious" or "strumpet" which introduce the concept of
sexual indulgence, as well as frequent verbal mentions of Hell. Also notably,
it is the first Disney animated film to use the word "damnation".
Music
The film's soundtrack includes a musical score written by
alan Menken and songs written by Menken and Stephen Schwartz. Songs include
"The Bells of Notre Dame" for Clopin, "Out There" for
Quasimodo and Frollo, "Topsy Turvy" also for Clopin, "God Help
the Outcasts" for Esmeralda, "Heaven's Light" and "Hellfire"
for Quasimodo, the Archdeacon, and Frollo, "A Guy Like You" for the
gargoyles and "The Court of Miracles" for Clopin and the gypsies.
Release
The film premiered on June 19, 1996 at the New Orleans
Superdome, where it was played on six enormous screens. The premiere was
preceeded by a parade through the French Quarter, beginning at Jackson Square
and utilizing floats and cast members from Walt Disney World. The film was
widely released two days later.
Reception
The Hunchback of Notre Dame opened on June 21,
1996 to positive reviews. As of September 2011, Rotten Tomatoes gave the film a
positive 73% based on 49 reviews with its consensus stating "Disney's take
on the Victor Hugo classic is dramatically uneven, but its strong visuals, dark
themes, and message of tolerance make for a more-sophisticated-than-average
children's film". Despite this approval rating, Rotten Tomatoes placed it
on their list of Kids' Movies Inappropriate for Children. Chicago Sun-Times
film critic Roger Ebert rewarded the film 4 star calling it "the best
Disney animated feature since Beauty and the Beast--a whirling,
uplifting, thrilling story with a heart touching message that emerges from the
comedy and song". Some criticism, however, was provided by fans of Victor
Hugo’s novel, who were very unhappy with the changes Disney made to the
material. Critics such as Arnaud Later, a leading scholar on Hugo, accused
Disney of simplifying, editing and censoring the novel in many aspects,
including the personalities of the characters. In his review, Later wrote that
the animators "don't have enough confidence in their own emotional
feeling" and that the film "falls back on clichés." London's The
Daily Mail called The Hunchback of Notre Dame "Disney's darkest
picture, with a pervading atmosphere of racial tension, religious bigotry and
mob hysteria" and "the best version yet of Hugo's novel, a cartoon
masterpiece, and one of the great movie musicals". Janet Maslin wrote in
her New York Times
review, "In a film that bears conspicuous, eager resemblances to other
recent Disney hits, the film makers' Herculean work is overshadowed by a
Sisyphean problem. There's just no way to delight children with a feel-good
version of this story."
In its opening weekend, the film opened in second place
at the box office, grossing $21 million. The film saw small decline in later
weeks and ultimately grossed just over $100 million domestically and over $325
million worldwide, making it the fifth highest grossing film of 1996.
Awards
- BMI
- BMI Film
Music Award (Won)
- Satellite
Awards
- Best
Animated or Mixed Media Feature (Won)
- Oscar
- Best
Original Musical or Comedy score by Alan Menden (Nominated, lost
against Emma)
- Golden
Globes
- Best
Original Score (Nominated, lost against The English Patient)
- Young
Artist Award
- Best
Family Feature Film - Animation (Nominated, lost against James and
the Giant Peach)
- Annie
Award Tony Jay
- Outstanding
Achievement in Voice Acting – Tony Jay (Nominated)
- Golden
Screen, Germany (Won)
- Artios
Award
- Best
Casting for Animated Voiceover (Won)
- Golden
Raspery Awards
- Worst
Written Film Grossing Over $100 Million (Nominated lost to Twister)
The film currently stands with an 73% "fresh"
rating at Rottentomatoes.com, with a 60% "fresh" rating by
established critics (the "Cream of the Crop").
- AFI’s
Greatest Movie Musicals - Nominated
- ARI’s 10
Top 10 - Nominated Animated Film
Home video
The Hunchback of Notre Dame was first released on
VHS, standard CLV Laserdisc, and special edition CAV Laserdisc on March 4, 1997
under the Walt Disney Masterpiece Collection label. It was then re-issued on
March 19, 2002 on DVD along with its direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of
Notre Dame II.
Other media
Adaptations
Disney has converted its adaptation of The Hunchback
of Notre Dame into other media. For example, Disney Comic Hits #11,
published by Marvel Comics, features two stories based upon the film. From 1997
to 2002 Disney-MGM Studios hosted a live-action stage show based on the film and
Disneyland built a new theater-in-the-round and re-themed Big Thunder Ranch as
Esmeralda's Cottage, Festival of Foods outdoor restaurant and Festival of Fools
extravaganza, which is now multipurpose space accommodating private events and
corporate picnics.
The film was adapted into a darker, more Gothic musical
production, re-written and directed by James Lapine and produced by the Disney
theatrical branch, in Berline, Germany.
The musical Der Glockner von Notre Dame (translated in English as The
Bellringer of Notre Dame) was very successful and played from 1999 to 2002,
before closing. A cast recording was also recorded in German. There has been
discussion of an American revival of the musical, which was confirmed by
composer Alan Menken in November 2010.
Sequels and spin-offs
In 2002, a direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre
Dame II, was released on VHS and DVD. The plot focuses once again on Quasimodo
as he continues to ring the bells now with the help of Zephyr, Esmeralda and
Phoebus's son. He also meets and falls in love with a new girl named Madellaine
who has come to Paris with her evil circus master, Sarousch. Disney thought
that it was appropriate to make the sequel more fun and child-friendly due to
the dark and grim themes of the original film.
Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Victor, Hugo, Laverne and Frollo
all made guest appearances on the Disney Channel TV series House of Mouse.
Frollo also can be seen amongst a crowd of Disney Villains in Mickey’s House of
Villains.
Video games
In 1996, to tie in with the original theatrical release, The
Hunchback of Notre Dame: Topsy Turvy Games was released by Disney
Interactive for the PC and the Nintendo Game Boy, which is a collection of mini
games based around the Festival of Fools that includes a variation of Balloon
Flight.
Japanese gaming magazine Famitsu have revealed at the
first Square Enix Premier Party that a world based on The Hunchback of Notre
Dame, La Cité des Cloches (The City of Bells), will make its debut
appearance in the Kingdom Hearts series in the upcoming Kingdom Hearts 3D:
Dream Drop Distance, making it the first new Disney world confirmed for the
game. Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Phoebus, Frollo and the three gargoyles have been
confirmed to appear so far.
http://disney.go.com/disneyinsider/history/movies
http://en.wikipedia.org
