Frollo, narrator of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. © Walt Disney Pictures.

Max Fleischer's motto was "If it could be done with live action, it's not animation," and Dave Fleischer once griped to me about how many thousands of times he had to repeat that to the animators over the years to get them to improve their work with those imaginative, visionary impossibilities that belonged exclusively to the realm of creative animation. What would the poor Fleischer brothers think about the current animation scene, in which almost every animation studio is involved in duplicating live-action stories?

One can hardly help asking that question about Disney's latest feature, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which has already been filmed several times as a live-action feature, in addition to Franz Schmidt's operatic treatment (which supplied some of the music for the Alfred Newman score to William Dieterle's splendid 1939 version). The answer, however, is that Disney has managed to make a wonderful movie out of Hunchback (with one hideous blemish, which we'll come back to later), a film so moving and thrilling and inspiring that it doesn't matter whether it's live-action or animation. It's just a good movie.

The adaptation of the story, credited to Gorillas in the Mist screenwriter Tab Murphy, cleverly eliminated some of the complexities of Victor Hugo's storyline, carefully sidestepping the brothels, tortures and philosophical intricacies (the two heroes, one poet and one warrior, are condensed to one sensitive soldier) and other aspects of the original which would have been unsuitable for younger viewers. Making Clopin a narrator/master-of-ceremonies was also an excellent idea that allows the basically adult story to become an excellent childrens' adventure tale.

The rescue scene with Quasimodo and Esmeralda from The Hunchback of Notre Dame. © Walt Disney Pictures.

Of Dieterle Born
It must be noted that the adaptation is very much of Dieterle's Hunchback--in particular, Charles Laughton's boyish Quasimodo with his one lumpy eye is clearly the model, just as Sir Cedric Hardwicke's thin, pinched face inhabits the animated villain Frollo. But this doesn't really matter, because the Dieterle film is so fine, it amounts to good taste to imitate it, and in most cases the Disney version lives up to the high standard set by the earlier film. For example, the brilliant scene (not in Hugo, but created by Bruno Frank) in which Esmeralda enters Notre Dame for the first time, and prays to Mother of God to help her outcast people while the "devout Christians" pray for money, sex and glory, the Disney team have supplied a great musical number "God Help the Outcasts" with knockout color visuals, Esmeralda slowly walking through the shadows and light-shafts of the cathedral until she finally stands bathed in a mandala of light from one of the stained-glass rose windows.

Art director Dave Goetz, layout supervisor Ed Ghertner and background/color artist Lisa Keene deserve special credit for creating and sustaining a medieval atmosphere, and a clear sense of the antithesis between the sacred and profane which lies at the heart of the story. Key staff visited Paris to study the real Notre Dame cathedral and Victor Hugo's own sketches of the Paris he knew and imagined, while Disney's unit continued to provide authentic detail, and this all pays off superbly.