The session: Happy (Belated) 100th Birthday to the Phantom of the Opera
Keith shows us three classic Lon Chaney silent films and a documentary about his career
Week 3: The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923)
Directed by Wallace Worsley
My Level of Prior Knowledge:
I'd seen a few versions of Hunchback, and I knew of this version. But I had never seen it before.
Plot Synopsis:
In medieval Paris, the deformed bell-ringer Quasimodo becomes entangled with a kind gypsy dancer and his cruel master, leading to betrayal, persecution, and a desperate attempt to protect her within Notre Dame.
Reaction and Other Folderol:
I keep running into the same issue with these Lon Chaney films: I don’t quite know how to place them within my own movie-watching framework. I’m a product of later decades, with different pacing, different storytelling rhythms, and a whole different visual vocabulary. So when it comes time to “grade” something like this, I’m always a little unsure whether I’m judging the movie…or my own expectations.
That said—Chaney is just phenomenal. The makeup alone is astonishing; not just technically impressive, but expressive. He doesn’t just look like Quasimodo—he moves like him, hunching, climbing, contorting, until he really does seem like some living gargoyle perched on the cathedral. And the spectacle around him is just as striking. The massive sets, the crowds, the sheer number of extras (apparently thousands were used for some sequences) give the whole thing a scale that’s hard not to admire. The acrobatics, especially in and around Notre Dame, are genuinely thrilling to watch.
Oddly, though, for all that, Chaney doesn’t always feel like the central figure. The story sprawls a bit, shifting attention around enough that Quasimodo sometimes feels like part of the tapestry rather than its clear focal point. Maybe that’s intentional, maybe that’s just how storytelling worked then—but it stood out to me.
The bigger issue is the length. It just goes on. And because of that, there are stretches where it drags, and I found my attention wandering more than I’d like to admit. Maybe that’s on me; maybe audiences at the time were more attuned to this style. Either way, it’s there.
Still, I’m inclined to give it the benefit of the doubt. The ambition, the visuals, and especially Chaney’s performance carry a lot of weight. Even if it doesn’t fully land for me as a complete experience, there’s enough here that feels groundbreaking—and still impressive a century later—that I’m comfortable giving it a strong grade.
And Joe rated it a 10.
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