The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Theatrical poster by John Alvin[1]
Directed by	Gary Trousdale Kirk Wise
Produced by	Don Hahn
Written by	Tab Murphy Irene Mecchi Bob Tzudiker Noni White Jonathan Roberts Novel: Victor Hugo
Starring	Tom Hulce Demi Moore Tony Jay Kevin Kline Paul Kandel Jason Alexander Charles Kimbrough Mary Wickes David Ogden Stiers
Music by	Alan Menken Stephen Schwartz
Editing by	Ellen Keneshea
Studio	Walt Disney Feature Animation
Distributed by	Walt Disney Pictures Buena Vista Distribution
Release date(s)	June 21, 1996 (1996-06-21)
Running time	91 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$70 million
Gross revenue	$325.5 million
Followed by	The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released to theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirty-fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is based on the basic story of Victor Hugo's novel, Notre-Dame de Paris, but changes most of its substance. The plot centers on Esmeralda, the Gypsy dancer, Judge Claude Frollo, a powerful and ruthless Minister of Justice who lusts after her, Quasimodo, the protagonist, Notre Dame's kindhearted but deformed bell-ringer, who adores her, and Phoebus, the chivalrous if irreverent military captain, who holds affections for her.

The film was directed by Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale, directors of Beauty and the Beast, and produced by Don Hahn, producer of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King. The songs for the musical film were composed by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz, and the film featured the voices of Tom Hulce, Demi Moore, Kevin Kline, Paul Kandel, Jason Alexander, Charles Kimbrough, David Ogden Stiers, Tony Jay, and Mary Wickes (in her final film role). It belongs to the era known as Disney Renaissance. A direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II, was released in 2002.

Plot

The movie opens in 1482 Paris with Clopin, a gypsy puppeteer, telling a group of children the story of the Hunchback of Notre Dame. The story begins as three gypsies sneak illegally into Paris but are ambushed by a squadron of soldiers working for Judge Claude Frollo, the Minister of Justice and de facto ruler of Paris. A gypsy woman attempts to flee with her baby, but Frollo catches and kills her just outside Notre Dame, intending to kill her deformed baby (Frollo says to the Archdeacon that the baby is "an unholy demon". And that he is "sending it back to hell where it belongs"), but the Archdeacon appears and accuses him of murdering an innocent woman. To atone for his sin, Frollo reluctantly 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, constantly told by Frollo that he is a monster who would be rejected by the uncaring 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. Frollo, in the audience, refuses to help Quasimodo, and the crowd only stops when a kind gypsy, Esmeralda, frees Quasimodo from his restraints and openly defies Frollo. Frollo orders her arrested, but she escapes by means of illusions, which Frollo calls "witchcraft." Frollo scolds Quasimodo and sends him back inside the Cathedral.

Esmeralda follows Quasimodo to find him, but is herself followed by Phoebus, 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 finally leaves when the Archdeacon orders him out, but not before warning Esmeralda that he will capture her the minute she leaves the Cathedral. Esmeralda finds Quasimodo in the bell tower and befriends him. As gratitude for helping him in the crowd, Quasimodo helps Esmeralda escape Notre Dame. In return, she leaves him with a map to the gypsy hideout, the Court of Miracles, should he ever choose to leave Notre Dame again. Frollo himself 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, burning down houses in his path. Realizing that Frollo has lost his mind, Phoebus defies Frollo, who orders him executed, but is aided in escape by Esmeralda. After being hit by an arrow, 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 that 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 find it and are almost hung by the gypsies as spies, but are saved when Esmeralda intervenes and clears up the misunderstanding. However, Frollo's army appears and captures them all, with Frollo revealing that he followed Phoebus and Quasimodo.

Frollo then orders Esmeralda burned at the stake after she refuses his proposal of her becoming his mistress. Quasimodo, tied up in the bell tower, initially refuses to help, but when he sees Esmeralda in pain he gives in to his anger and rescues her, yelling "Sanctuary." As Frollo orders his men to attack the cathedral, Phoebus ignites a mutiny and a battle ensues in the street between the citizenry and Frollo's men. Quasimodo places Esmeralda's unconscious body on a bed and pours a cauldron of molten copper onto the streets to ensure nobody gets inside. Frollo, however, manages to break in and force his way past the Archdeacon. Quasimodo, believing Esmeralda to be dead, breaks down beside her body as Frollo comes into the room to kill him with a dagger. Quasimodo, in his fury, almost kills Frollo but stops when Esmeralda wakes up. Frollo chases them on to the balcony they fight. The battle ends with both Frollo and Quasimodo falling from the balcony. When 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.

Production

The Hunchback of Notre Dame was the second Disney film directed by Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise after the hugely successful Beauty and the Beast in 1991. The duo had read Victor Hugo's 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 corrupt minister (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 themes such as lust, infanticide, profanity, religious hypocrisy, the concept of Hell, prejudice, and social injustice. 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 animated Disney film to use the word "damnation."

Cast and characters

• Quasimodo (voiced by Tom Hulce) – The protagonist of the film. He is a courageous and enthusiastic character. He is 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.
• Esmeralda (voiced by Demi Moore, 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 isn't. She is incredibly independent and greatly dislikes the horrible ways in which gypsies are treated. Throughout the movie, 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.
• Judge Claude Frollo (voiced by Tony Jay) – A ruthless and powerful judge who is Quasimodo's reluctant guardian. He is the main antagonist of the film. 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, which would make him more of an anti-hero than a villain. 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.
• Captain Phoebus (voiced by Kevin Kline) – 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.
• Clopin (voiced by Paul Kandel) – 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.
• Victor, Hugo and Laverne (voiced by Jason Alexander, Charles Kimbrough, and Mary Wickes*, respectively) – 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.

*This was Mary Wickes' (Laverne) last film. She died of cancer before finishing her work on the film. Jane Withers provided the remaining dialogue, and provided the voice for Laverne in The Hunchback of Notre Dame II.

• The Archdeacon (voiced by David Ogden Stiers) – A kind man who helps many characters throughout the course of the movie, 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.

Crew

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.

Three songs written for the film were discarded during the storyboarding process and not used: "In a Place of Miracles", "As Long As There's a Moon", and "Someday", a candidate to replace "God Help the Outcasts". Though not included in the body of the film, "Someday" is heard over the end credits, performed by R&B group All-4-One in the North American English release, and Eternal in the British English version. Luis Miguel recorded the version for the Latin American Spanish version, which became a major hit in Mexico.

Reception

The Hunchback of Notre Dame opened on June 21, 1996 to positive reviews. 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,^[2] 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".^[3]

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. Although the film could not out-gross its predecessors, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King and Pocahontas it nevertheless out-grossed other Disney films released within a decade of its premiere, such as The Little Mermaid, and Hercules.

Awards

• BMI
  • BMI Film Music Award (Won)

• Satellite Awards
  • Best Animated or Mixed Media Feature (Won)

• Oscar [1]
  • Best Original Score by Alan Menken (Nominated, lost against Emma)

• Golden Globes[2]
  • Best Original Score (Nominated, lost against The English Patient)

• Young Artist Award [3]
  • Best Family Feature Film - Animation (Nominated, lost against James and the Giant Peach)

• Razzie Award
  • Worst Film to Gross Over $100 Million (Nominated, lost against 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").^[4]

Home video

The Hunchback of Notre Dame was first issued 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 and VHS, along with its direct-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II. It is still one of the few Disney films that is yet to be released on Platinum/Special Edition DVD or Blu-Ray Disc.

Other media

Adaptations

Disney Comic Hits #11, published by Marvel Comics, features two stories based upon the film.

Disney-MGM Studios had a stage show based on the film from the late 1990s to 2002. It was located in The Backlot Theatre in the New York Street section of the theme park (now called Streets of America). After the show's closing, and part of the re-theming of the area, a mural of a San Francisco street went up to block off the view of the theatre's vacant interior. Recently, The Backlot Theatre underwent a major renovation to enclose it. No new attraction for the location has been announced, although it is often used during special events.^[5]

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 Berlin, Germany. The musical Der Glöckner 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.^[6]

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 Pheobus'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.

Quasimodo, Esmeralda, Victor, Hugo, Laverne and Frollo all made guest appearances on the Disney Channel TV series House of Mouse. Frollo also can seen amongst a crowd of Disney Villains in Mickey's House of Villains.

References

External links

• The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Internet Movie Database
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame at the Big Cartoon DataBase
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame at Allmovie
• The Hunchback of Notre Dame at Rotten Tomatoes

The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo Characters Esmeralda • Claude Frollo • Quasimodo • Captain Phoebus • Clopin Trouillefou • Pierre Gringoire Films Esmeralda (1905) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911) • The Darling of Paris (1917) • Esmeralda (1922) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) • Notre Dame de Paris (1956) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1966) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1977) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1986) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996) • The Hunchback (1997) • The Hunchback of Notre Dame II (2002) Other adaptations La Esmeralda (1844 ballet) • Notre-Dame de Paris (1998 musical) • Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (1999 musical)