The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)
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Template:Infobox Film The Hunchback of Notre Dame is the thirty-fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, released on June 21, 1996. It was produced by The Walt Disney Company, and based on Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame. While the basic structure remains, the film differs greatly from its source material. The plot is centered on the gypsy girl Esmeralda; Claude Frollo, powerful and ruthless judge, who lusts after her; Quasimodo, the protagonist and kind-hearted but deformed bellringer of Notre Dame, who adores her; and Phoebus, the chivalrous if irreverent military captain, who holds affections for her.
The film was produced by Don Hahn, and directed by Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. The songs for the musical film were composed by Alan Menken and Stephen Schwartz.
Contents |
Voice cast
Singing voices
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Heidi Mollenhauer | Esmeralda |
Supervising Animators
Overview
Hunchback is considerably more adult-oriented than the usual Disney fare and touches on themes of sin, religion, and hate. In addition, some disturbing images appear throughout the movie, such as one scene in which the sounds of a prisoner being whipped are heard in the background. As the company has a reputation as a makers of children's animation, this resulted in criticism. On the other hand, this film is one of the last products of Disney's 1990s renaissance in the production of animated features, which spawned The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, The Lion King and Pocahontas.
Critiques
The film has been acclaimed for its visual and artistic merits, and its technical advances in the combination of hand-drawn and computerised animation. Notable details include the use of computer-generated imagery to create otherwise infeasibly large crowds, and the use of actual Christian latin texts and music in the background.
It has also been criticized, along with several other film adaptions of Hugo's novel, for oversimplifying, if not eliminating several of the thematic elements of the original book. The character of Gringoire is absent entirely, and Quasimodo's sidekick trio of gargoyles - Victor, Hugo and Laverne - would look rather out of place in the book, as would the eventual ending. As it is a production of Disney and geared primarily toward children and families, however, some of the alterations are far from irrational.
One particularly notable criticism of the movie is that it handles the theme of religion very differently (and much less controversially) from the novel. The most striking illustration of this is that although the movie omits a number of characters from the novel (such as Gringoire and Paquette), it also adds a character in the person of the benevolent but ineffectual archdeacon of Notre Dame, in effect stripping the ambiguous, flawed character of Frollo (who is the archdeacon in the novel) of its religious connotations.
Trivia
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame received one Oscar nomination for Best Original Score by Alan Menken.
- This was Mary Wickes' last film. She died of cancer before she finished all her lines (Jane Withers provided the remaining dialogue).
- Mary Kay Bergman, who provided the voice for Quasimodo's mother, committed suicide in 1999.
- The names of two of the gargoyles are Victor and Hugo, after Victor Hugo, author of the original novel.
- Belle from Beauty and the Beast, Carpet from Aladdin, and Pumbaa from The Lion King can all be seen in one of the scenes.
Adaptations
This was adapted into a darker, more gothic musical production, re-written and directed by James Lapine and produced by the Disney theatrical branch, in Berlin, Germany. Considered to be a great boost for tourists in Germany, the musical Der Glöckner von Notre Dame (translated in English as The Bellringer of Notre Dame) was very successful and played from 1999 to 2002, before closing. A cast recording was also recorded in German. More recently, Bellringer has been scheduled for a live action TV film on ABC's The Wonderful World of Disney, as well as a possible American theatrical production, like Disney's other successful musical adaptations of their films now playing on Broadway.
External links
- {{{2|{{{title|The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)}}}}}} at The Internet Movie Database
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Template:Disney animated featuresfr:Le Bossu de Notre-Dame it:Il gobbo di Notre Dame (film 1996) he:הגיבן מנוטרדם (סרט) ja:ノートルダムの鐘 zh:钟楼怪人