A sweeping claim? Perhaps. But despite the presence in Hollywood over sixty subsequent years of Ford, Wyler, Kubrick, Coppola, Scorsese et al, The Hunchback of Notre Dame remains as fresh, as emotionally resonant and yes as powerfully artistic as the day it was made. What constitutes 'art' is of course a personal matter, just as the Breughel-like compositions of Hunchback might be as mystifying to someone whose favourite film is A Clockwork Orange (Lichtenstein?). But what makes Hunchback so satisfying as art is precisely that its makers didn't set out with art in mind. Dieterle and his co-creators embarked on the project with the aim of telling a great yarn, making it look authentic, and above all ENTERTAINING the audience. It is to this end that the Grand Guignol excesses of the novel were trimmed or altered, and the Hollywood bittersweet ending imposed. Audiences filed out with their Kleenex in hand having witnessed a three-ring circus of a movie, then went home to read the war-soaked newspapers.
Virtually every frame of this movie could be taken in isolation, made into a poster and hung on a wall. Examples include Gringoire cradling the dying Clopin as a rivulet of lead trickles past in the background, the voyeuristic eye of Quasimodo peering through fence palings at the dancing Esmeralda - I could go on and on. And pervading it all is the magnificent score of Alfred Newman, surely his finest ever.
Rather than sing its obvious praises, the film can simply speak for itself. As narrative, as character, as cinema craft, it is totally successful throughout. The Hunchback of Notre Dame is my favourite film of all time, bar none. Ten out of ten
