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The Hunchback of Notre Dame |
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1939
Black & White
1 hour and 56 minutes
Academy Award Nominations
- Muscial Score
- Alfred Newman
- Sound, Recording
- John Aalberg
This film is often overlooked, premiering as it did in the same year as Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz and several other films that stand out as the best in the century. Yet it still managed to snag some nominations, and it is definitely worth two hours of your time.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is about good and evil, love and hate, hope and despair, and the triumph of ideals over prejudice, superstition, and igorance. An excellent cast fills every minute with humor, tragedy and excitement, and Charles Laughton is particularly fine as the grotesque, tortured, and misunderstood Quasimodo. But in one sense the true star of the picture is the cathedral itself. It towers over the outdoor scenes and hosts interior sequences with gothic majesty. Filmed in glowing black and white, the picture never lets you forget the edifice and all it means to the people of Paris and the history of France.
For more about Cathedrals of the Middle Ages (including a brief history of Notre Dame), visit our Subject Index for Church Architecture.
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The image of the Notre Dame cathedral is in the public domain.
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