The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Part of me groans a little when I see Disney adapting well-known tales like The Hunchback of Notre Dame (or more recently, Rapunzel). It just seems lazy or uninspired, and with Disney you always know what you'll inevitably get - something that's neutered or boiled down to be as family-friendly and 'safe' as possible. Coming towards the end of a period when Disney was experience a renewed vigour and golden age for animated feature films, The Hunchback of Notre utilises a cutting edge combination of traditional and computer-assisted animation and sets about telling a familiar story as faithfully as possible. It results in one of the darkest animated films that Disney have ever made, and one that manages to address quite a varied scope of themes contained in the original novel.

Quasimodo (Tom Hulce) is a deformed and hunchbacked individual brought up in the care of a pious city official named Frollo (Tony Jay). Frollo keeps Quasimodo captive in the city's belltower and tells him it's for his own good, though he doesn't really have Quasimodo's best interests at heart. Quasimodo yearns for freedom, and when this gets the better of him he sneaks out to enjoy a day of festivity in the town square. It ends badly for him though, and the townsfolk turn on him and humiliate him when they realise he is deformed. He is saved by Esmerelda (Demi Moore), a feisty gypsy woman, and the two become friends despite Frollo's ongoing persecution of the local gypsies.

There are some aspects of The Hunchback of Notre Dame that are certainly quite brutal and disturbing for a Disney film - such as Quasimodo's humiliation at the hands of the townsfolk, the murder of his mother right before our eyes, and scenes that allude to hangings. Disney are able to largely offset this by modifying the character of Quasimodo... sure, he's deformed, but his voice and mannerisms are very much those of a regular Disney hero. More importantly, he is given a predominantly positive attitude - a wise decision that plays down the self-pitying angle in order to spare the audience's empathy from the worst dimension of the story (being the inhuman treatment of Quasimodo). Most of all, Quasimodo wants acceptance, and it's hard not to cheer for a character of this nature.

The nature of the villain, Frollo, is also a lot more complex than the standard villain seen in Disney's animated output - he's racist, highly religious and uses deception to manipulate Quasimodo at every chance. He's also the worst kind of villain; a man who believes in what he is doing. It's a far cry from the usual cartoonish Disney villains motivated by greed or vanity, and veteran voice artist Tony Jay does a sublime job of portraying the character's internal integrity.

The production team wisely use a muted colour palette for the film's look, calling to mind its historical setting and the more serious nature of the story. There's a good sense of space and movement, especially in scenes where Quasimodo runs and climbs across the city's rooftops, and the highly detailed backgrounds are some of the best I've seen in 1990s animation. Like a lot of Disney films, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is highly musical, but here the songs are very much of a sombre nature or in a key that matches the overall tone of the film, which only serves to reinforce the sense of reverence it seems to have to its subject material. It's a real stand-out in Disney's back catalogue.

DIRECTOR: Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise
WRITER/SOURCE: Written by Tab Murphy, Irene Mecchi, Bob Tzudiker, Noni White and Jonathan Roberts. Based on the classic novel by Victor Hugo.
KEY ACTORS: Tom Hulce, Demi Moore, Tony Jay, Kevin Kline, Paul Kandel, Mary Wickes, Charles Kimbrough, Jason Alexander, David Ogden Stiers

RELATED TEXTS:
- The novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, written by Victor Hugo in 1831.
- There have been several film versions of the story, most notably a silent version starring Lon Chaney in 1923, and a Universal film starring Charles Laughton in 1939. Other adaptations include a 1956 version starring Anthony Quinn and a 1982 version featuring Anthony Hopkins.
- The story has also been adapted into a television series and a radio series.
- Disney drectors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise previously worked together on another French-set Disney film, Beauty and the Beast, and teamed up again a third and final time for Atlantis: The Lost Empire.

AWARDS
Academy Awards - nominated for Best Music.
Golden Globes - nominated for Best Original Score.