Revisiting an Underrated Classic: The Genius of Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame
When people list off their favorite Disney movies the list can be almost predictable. For those of us who grew up in the 90s and early '00s, you'll hear names like Aladin, Beauty and the Beast, Lion King, Hercules, or Mulan. More modern Disney fanfare will include the likes of Tangled, Frozen, or Moana. However, there is one movie that has always gone under the radar that, to me, is one of the most complex and best entries in the Disney animated catalog. Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is an animated adaptation of Victor Hugo's iconic book La Cathedral de Notre Dame or Notre Dame de Paris. Though the film may be far lighter than its novelized counterpart, the animated film still carries a very mature theme that separates itself from the rest of the Disney catalog and honestly is probably the very reason it is so often excluded from talks of "what's your favorite Disney film."
The theme of the movie is established in its opening song "The Bells of Notre Dame." During which the Jester Clopin tells the tale of "A man and a Monster." This story tells of how the Inquisitor Judge Claude Frollo (voiced ever so menacingly by the late and great Tony Jay) caught a group of Gypsies trying to enter the city. However, one escaped and so Frollo had to make chase. In the process of chasing the gypsy woman who had escaped, he kills her with his horse on the steps of Notre Dame. With her death, it was revealed that the thing she had been hiding was a baby, but that baby was horribly deformed. Convinced the child to be a demon, he goes to toss it in a well and kill it. However, he is stopped by the archdeacon. The archdeacon puts the fear of god's retribution in Frollo for having killed innocents at the door of His (God's) house. The fear for his immortal soul compels the Judge to spare the child and raise him to ring the bells of the Cathedral up in the bell tower. The song is then punctuated by "Who's the monster and who is the man?" which ultimately is the theme of this movie, and just like the opening song, the dynamic between Frollo and Quasi Modo (the titular character) is the element that illustrates this point. What's more, is the way that this is handled is frankly genius.
As stated previously, Quasi Modo and Frollo are the focus of the film. They are the pieces that drive the narrative as they represent each other's foils. The way they illustrate this, outside of the narrative and writing, is the use of the music itself. Every single time that Quasi Modo has a song it serves as a duet with Frollo. These characters start off as people with opposing views. In "Out there" Frollo displays his jaded pessimism and hate for human vice and sin and uses fire and brimstone levels of a sermon to try and scare Quasi Modo into staying shut up in his tower, and just like the best lies he sprinkles it with a bit of truth, people hate and fear what they don't understand:
Now a common trope for making a fantastic antagonist is to give them the same motivation as the protagonist. In Hunchback, we see Quasi Modo and Frollo start off with very separate goals in regard to one another. Frollo wants to keep Quasi Modo locked away because so long as Quasi Modo is ignorant, Frollo can fulfill his very apparent savior complex. Frollo is a man that sees the worst in the world except for himself. He is the most pious individual there ever was and none can be allowed to contradict this. Quasi Modo, on the other hand, wants to escape the confines of his bell tower and experience the world. However, the moment that brings both of their motivations to head is when Quasi Modo does finally escape and gets tormented during the festival of fools. Frollo ignores Quasi Modo's pleas for help, but Quasi Modo is saved instead by a gypsy girl named Esmeralda. The kindness she shows to Quasi Modo is unlike anything he's ever experienced and contradicts everything Frollo has told him and so he is taken to her. On the other hand, between her beauty and the sheer strength of will and defiance Esmeralda shows towards the will of Frollo, he is similarly bewitched and has impure thoughts toward her. This want for Esmeralda culminates in "Heaven's light and Hellfire," and it's not hard to figure out which part of the song belongs to whom.
With as much great material as there is in Dinsey's Hunchback of Notre Dame, it begs to question what prevents it from being in a top spot, and honestly, the answer is that it sadly falls in an odd category of film that is WAY too dark to be a kid's movie, but not mature enough to be fully accepted by adults. Since it's an animated Disney film, it was clearly meant to be marketed for kids, but when your villain actively cold-blooded murders someone in the first 2 minutes and exclaims that he is going to "send the demon back to hell from whence it came." you have kind of destroyed any notion that this movie is appropriate for children. Conversely, the gargoyles (who are literally there to lighten the mood and serve as the film's comic relief) get in the way of the movies more serious tones and can be frankly annoying at times which prevents it from being fully appreciated by adults. Despite its mature themes, fantastic music, score, and character writing, Disney's Hunchback of Notre Dame floundered because it didn't have a proper market to gauge: too scary for kids, too goofy for adults. Honestly, I personally wish they had just gone all-in on the adult stuff, granted I say that now being an adult, but I do genuinely feel that if you tuned down the gargoyles and made them officially just figments of Quasi Modo's imagination instead of being gargoyles who literally came to life, the movie would have been utterly fantastic. That being said, even with its flaws, I want to be among the first to proclaim that Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is my favorite animated Disney movie.
The theme of the movie is established in its opening song "The Bells of Notre Dame." During which the Jester Clopin tells the tale of "A man and a Monster." This story tells of how the Inquisitor Judge Claude Frollo (voiced ever so menacingly by the late and great Tony Jay) caught a group of Gypsies trying to enter the city. However, one escaped and so Frollo had to make chase. In the process of chasing the gypsy woman who had escaped, he kills her with his horse on the steps of Notre Dame. With her death, it was revealed that the thing she had been hiding was a baby, but that baby was horribly deformed. Convinced the child to be a demon, he goes to toss it in a well and kill it. However, he is stopped by the archdeacon. The archdeacon puts the fear of god's retribution in Frollo for having killed innocents at the door of His (God's) house. The fear for his immortal soul compels the Judge to spare the child and raise him to ring the bells of the Cathedral up in the bell tower. The song is then punctuated by "Who's the monster and who is the man?" which ultimately is the theme of this movie, and just like the opening song, the dynamic between Frollo and Quasi Modo (the titular character) is the element that illustrates this point. What's more, is the way that this is handled is frankly genius.
As stated previously, Quasi Modo and Frollo are the focus of the film. They are the pieces that drive the narrative as they represent each other's foils. The way they illustrate this, outside of the narrative and writing, is the use of the music itself. Every single time that Quasi Modo has a song it serves as a duet with Frollo. These characters start off as people with opposing views. In "Out there" Frollo displays his jaded pessimism and hate for human vice and sin and uses fire and brimstone levels of a sermon to try and scare Quasi Modo into staying shut up in his tower, and just like the best lies he sprinkles it with a bit of truth, people hate and fear what they don't understand:
You are deformed... and you are ugly... and these are crimes for which the world shows little pity, you do not comprehend... why invite their calumny? and consternation? stay in here, be faithful to me.However, from Quasi Modo's perspective, his experience with people has always been at a distance so he's gotten to see the best of the human tapestry from afar and wants more than anything to be among these people he doesn't know. There is a fantastic line from Quasi Modo to juxtapose Frollo's view:
Out there among the millers and the weavers and their wives, through the roofs and gables I can see them. Every day they shout and scold and go about their lives, heedless of the gift it is to be them. If I was in their skin, I'd treasure every instant.While this song introduces the device (Frollo/ Quasi Modo duets) really well what really hammers it home is the climactic song of the movie which ultimately establishes Frollo as Quasi Modo's antagonist instead of his protector. The song that quite possibly makes this movie so special, "Heaven's Light and Hellfire."
Now a common trope for making a fantastic antagonist is to give them the same motivation as the protagonist. In Hunchback, we see Quasi Modo and Frollo start off with very separate goals in regard to one another. Frollo wants to keep Quasi Modo locked away because so long as Quasi Modo is ignorant, Frollo can fulfill his very apparent savior complex. Frollo is a man that sees the worst in the world except for himself. He is the most pious individual there ever was and none can be allowed to contradict this. Quasi Modo, on the other hand, wants to escape the confines of his bell tower and experience the world. However, the moment that brings both of their motivations to head is when Quasi Modo does finally escape and gets tormented during the festival of fools. Frollo ignores Quasi Modo's pleas for help, but Quasi Modo is saved instead by a gypsy girl named Esmeralda. The kindness she shows to Quasi Modo is unlike anything he's ever experienced and contradicts everything Frollo has told him and so he is taken to her. On the other hand, between her beauty and the sheer strength of will and defiance Esmeralda shows towards the will of Frollo, he is similarly bewitched and has impure thoughts toward her. This want for Esmeralda culminates in "Heaven's light and Hellfire," and it's not hard to figure out which part of the song belongs to whom.
Heaven's Light
Quasi Modo's part of the duet, "Heaven's Light," is a beautiful sonnet. It's short and heartfelt and is the whims of a boy who has just fallen in love. It's a song about the hope that this experience has given him, that despite being this freak that is so far from heaven's perfection, he can still share in the warmth from heaven's purest creation: love. It starts off as a somber self-reflection of everything Frollo has shoved down his throat his entire life and ends as this hope-filled love letter that showcases how all those notions that had been instilled in him his entire life have been completely shattered by this unwarranted show of compassion from someone utterly beautiful and perfect in his eyes. But as the bells fade, a chant of religious prayer comes in and the innocent love sonnet of deformed Quasi Modo becomes twisted into the intense power ballad of religious fervor that is "Hellfire."
Hellfire
There is a lot to unpack in this part of the song. In this song Frollo is praying to the Virgin Mary for guidance in regards to the lustful thoughts he has for Esmeralda, it's bad enough as a member of the clergy for him to have these impure thoughts go through his head, but on top of that, she's a gypsy! The scum and vermin that Frollo has waged his own personal crusade of hunting down and expunging from Paris. The song quickly shifts from a song asking for guidance to literally Frollo facing a subconscious inquisition court of himself where he pleads his case, blaming the power of the devil and the witch Esmeralda for these impulses and desires he now has burning inside of him. Just like before, the wickedness of Frollo is the result of others and not himself, he is ever pious. However, where this takes an even more terrifying turn is when he comes to reaffirm his desires as his mission to make Esmeralda his personal concubine, and by serving him exclusively this will mean a great victory for him and therefore god. If she refuses him though, all he has to do to prove that he is stronger than his temptations of the flesh is burn the girl to the stake. Lust and Love are two sides of the same coin and it is at this moment where we see the honest portraits of each of these characters' intentions and have the roles defined officially as foils and is consequently the last musical number that either character participates (by participate I mean sing) in. (On a side note, Kudos to this being literally the best Disney villain song ever).
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