Let us face it - the 1923 version of THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME is as good in it's way as the 1939 sound version with Charles Laughton and Maureen O'Hara. The only reason the Laughton version is better recalled now is that it is accessible to Americans born through or after 1927: when movies starting talking. Just like the 1956 version is accessible to people who speak French.
But given it is a silent movie, it is remarkably strong work. Chaney's Quasimodo is the most monstrous looking of the personifications of that character (Laughton's make-up is good too, but he somehow seems less frightening). The scene that everyone recalls from this version, of course, is the public whipping scene, when Quasimodo has been captured trying to "kidnap" Esmeralda (actually ordered to do that by Frollo) and is whipped. The gypsy takes pity on him and gives him water. It is the point that he starts falling for Esmeralda.
Aside from making Phoebus more conventionally heroic (to be with the gypsy at the end), this film gave a memorable death scene to Clopin, dying amidst his beggar army in front of the Cathedral (Ernest Torrence's Clopin gives the role the right degree of gravitas in the face of death). Also, the conclusion wraps up the confusion of the end for the hunchback. Unlike the 1939 ending, which has a sad Laughton bemoaning his perennial lonely state, and the 1956 version which follows the novel in mentioning that years after the execution the skeletons of two people, one deformed, were found in the crypts of the Cathedral, and crumbled into dust together, this one killed off the Hunchback. It was not a bad ending, but at variance with the other two films.
But given it is a silent movie, it is remarkably strong work. Chaney's Quasimodo is the most monstrous looking of the personifications of that character (Laughton's make-up is good too, but he somehow seems less frightening). The scene that everyone recalls from this version, of course, is the public whipping scene, when Quasimodo has been captured trying to "kidnap" Esmeralda (actually ordered to do that by Frollo) and is whipped. The gypsy takes pity on him and gives him water. It is the point that he starts falling for Esmeralda.
Aside from making Phoebus more conventionally heroic (to be with the gypsy at the end), this film gave a memorable death scene to Clopin, dying amidst his beggar army in front of the Cathedral (Ernest Torrence's Clopin gives the role the right degree of gravitas in the face of death). Also, the conclusion wraps up the confusion of the end for the hunchback. Unlike the 1939 ending, which has a sad Laughton bemoaning his perennial lonely state, and the 1956 version which follows the novel in mentioning that years after the execution the skeletons of two people, one deformed, were found in the crypts of the Cathedral, and crumbled into dust together, this one killed off the Hunchback. It was not a bad ending, but at variance with the other two films.