Underplayed Gems

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1911)

The Hunchback of Notre Dame poster
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
The 3D catalogue: film cases on wooden shelves, with the cat sitting at the counter next to its greeting.

The catalogue in 3D

The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.

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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)

More like this

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