The Hunchback of Notre Dame

A sumptuous dramatization of Victor Hugo's novel produced in 1923 by Universal Studios at the then phenomenal cost of $1.25 million. An extraordinary gamble, the film boldly deviated from established Hollywood formula and made its central character not a romantic ideal but a gruesomely disfigured "monster" incapable of arousing the beautiful leading lady to anything more than pity. As Quasimoto, Lon Chaney is a marvel of makeup and nonverbal expression, shuffling through the streets of medieval Paris, communing with the cathedral gargoyles, dutifully suffering the lash and humiliation for a crime committed against another, expressing a heart-rending love for a beautiful gypsy girl who naively sees only the military officer as the heroic ideal.