The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911)

Original title

Notre-Dame de Paris

Directed by

Albert Capellani

Genre

drama film, silent film

Country

France

Runtime

36 min

Rating

5.5 of 10 from 4 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

This silent film adapts the Victor Hugo novel about Quasimodo, a deformed bell-ringer at Notre Dame cathedral. He becomes entangled with the beautiful Esmeralda and the cruel clergy who persecute her.

somberdramaticdarkausterefaithfulhistoricalmelodramatic

What happens

The Hunchback of Notre Dame was a 1911 French film d'art silent film directed by Albert Capellani and produced by Pathé Frères. It was released under the name Notre-Dame de Paris. It starred Henry Krauss and Stacia Napierkowska. The film was based on the 1831 Victor Hugo novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. Considering the film's brief running time, critic Christopher Workman considered it "remarkably faithful to its source material" but it "contains no discernible humor, unlike most other horror films of the period, and thus represents a bellwether of sorts for the genre....(Henry Krauss as Quasimodo) "looks remarkably like Charles Ogle in (Thomas) Edison's 1910 Frankenstein." Although the film vilified organized Christianity by portraying members of the clergy as "sadistic and duplicitous", it was theatrically released in the US in December 1911, shortly before Christmas. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

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• The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)
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• Loin des yeux, près du cœur (1911)
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