TCM Pick O’ The Day: Tuesday, January 13th
by John Nolte
5pm PST – Hunchback Of Notre Dame, The (1939) – A deformed bell ringer rescues a gypsy girl falsely accused of witchcraft and murder. Cast: Cedric Hardwicke , Charles Laughton , Thomas Mitchell , Edmond O’Brien Dir: William Dieterle BW-117 mins, TV-PG
Big Acting. Big Acting’s the worst, and we see a lot of big acting today. Here’s the rule: If you can see the acting, it’s big acting – and it’s bad acting. If you’re admiring the “technique,” there’s a problem. Film reviews that glow over accents and other actory affectations shouldn’t entice you into the theatre, they should be a red flag. You’re not supposed to notice that stuff. You’re supposed to be transported. Big Hollywood can give the otherwise talented Kate Winslet all the Golden Globes they want, but that wasn’t a character Winslet created in Revolutionary Road, it big acting and painful to sit through.
Big Characters, however, are one of the great joys of the Golden Age.
Charles Laughton’s performance as the hunchbacked Quasimodo takes us back to time when convincing larger-than-life portrayals could be seen regularly at the local cinema. Actors like Laughton, Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston, Paul Muni… they all knew and understood that the secret to commanding the screen with a towering performance was to make the character larger-than-life, not the acting.
The film itself is a marvel of story, set design and photography. The end is MGM’d a bit, but novels and films are as different a form of art as painting and volleyball.
One quibble with this smart, poignant and literate production is the near heresy of filming Maureen O’Hara in black and white.
On the first day the movie gods created Technicolor.
On the second, Maureen O’Hara
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27 Comments
What do you mean MGM’d?
What happened to Jason Apuzzo? Was he killed in Iraq?
I love Maureen O’Hara and recently watched Jamaica Inn. She was so young! Talk about Big Characters, that fat bastard, Sir Humphrey, sure did steal this show. I forget the actors name…
This film and others of that period is what movies are all about. These actors were bigger then life and kid you not they were acting their hearts out. They have a following, a charisma and staying power that the so called ‘actors’ today will never have. The Hunchback will live as a classic long after the stars of today are long forgotten as the stars of the theater in the 1860s to the beginning of film in 1903.
Quasimoto’s lament at the end of this film, speaking to the gargoyles, “Why wasn’t I made of stone like you,” wrenched my heart when first I saw this film and was one of those thousand bits of sights and sounds that formed me.
Love the comment about Maureen O’Hara! I recently saw her pre-code film Dance, Girls, Dance with Lucille Ball. It was great!
I’ll have to re-watch Hunchback. It’s a classic!
Genre dictates acting. Superhero films and epics *should* be over the top. Hell, even comedy is just a dramatic role turned up to eleven.
Sin City is not the Wrestler.
(Go see the Wrestler and support Micky Rourke. At the heart of the onion is a conservative theme.)
An astounding film…when Quasimodo swings down to rescue Esmerelda
Perhaps it’s the small material that makes Winslet’s acting seem so big. What the hell else is there to see in todays films? Keylight low, camera high, the woman is a goddess on film.
More good movies came out in 1939 then have come out of the last decade. It really was an amazing time.
love this movie! This was one of those movies I saw as a kid, and though I didn’t understand the history of it all, understood the story of the hunchback and the love he could never know. Great stuff! And yeah, that last line is classic!
Note to self for next vacation:
Keylight low, camera high, the woman is a goddess on film.
Got it!
)
The best Big Character performance I can think of would be Alastair Sim’s detective in Green for Danger. But you’re right about Laughton: he could deliver the full-fat with full-flavour. Great to read some appreciation of Heston: he did the hero thing well…but he did the flawed-and-aging hero thing better. Heston as Will Penny!
As far as Big Acting goes:
Biggest Contempo Ham Award would make for a vigorous tussle between Anthony Hopkins and Sean Penn. Penn was good in his early teen-doofus movies, and Hopkins did that cannibal role well. After that, they’re a reason NOT to watch a movie. With Hopkins you get all that lispy, mumbly, off-centre stuff. With Penn it’s lots of quivering and grimacing, even when nothing is going on…then the screaming and fitting when something is happening. A giggly, grinning Donald Sutherland can be relied upon to appal, but he’s so sluggish he’s not in the race (plus, his kid’s Jack Bauer, so leave him alone). Daniel Day Lewis is a worry, croaking away behind a permanent Robert De Niro face-pull…but he’s kind of effective, so no Ham for him.
Which brings us to De Niro himself…
I’ll stop now.
I always think of Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau when I see this movie.
“The bells! The bells!”
I still laugh just thinking about how funny Sellers was.
I saw the Marlon Brando version of “Mutiny on the Bounty” the other day. If there was ever a performance that met the definition of big acting, that was it. Still…by the end I had forgotten all about it and was enjoying the movie. Regarding Daniel Day Lewis…as far away from big acting as you can get in my estimation. He fits in so effortlessly in such a large variety of roles.
Maureen O’Hara is a glory to be celebrated. How nice to see her mentioned. People of my acquaintance seem to know her from two films: The Quiet Man and The Parent Trap. She deserves a good deal more attention.
This film is yet another reason that 1939 is The Year of Film
Worst Big Acting I’ve seen: Brando in On the Waterfront. I want to watch a movie, not an acting class.
I don’t know, Addison, I think Lewis in “There Will Be Blood” is exactly the kind of “big acting” Harry is talking about, it was a big character aptly filled by a great actor.
I really am going to have to start writing John Nolte some day rather than Harry some day.
Maureen O’Hara has to be the most gorgeous woman ever filmed in any movie. None of today’s flat-chested, bony-armed, lemon-sucking waifs can hold a candle to her. When I was a little girl, my parents took me to the theater to see Ms. O’Hara and co-star John Wayne in “McClintock”. I adored the Duke but was awe-struck by her beauty.
Hunchback as well as Rio Grande were both filmed in B&W. Thank goodness Ford was smart enough to film The Quiet Man was in color.
Big acting – me thinks you may have Ms Streep in mind?
Laughton also directed the great Night of the Hunter. A shame he didn’t direct anything else.
This version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame is one of my all-time favorites. It is so well done. It casts a spell.
Yes, as someone commented, the moment when Quasimodo rescues Esmerelda from execution is ELECTRIFYING.
“SANCTUARY!! SANCTUARY!!”
For Charles Laughton fans, check out an obscure gem called
This Land Is Mine. Directed by Jean Renoir.
An ordinary, timid man finds his courage in the face of danger, and sets a fine example to his young students about the responsibility of citizens in a free society.
I’m pretty sure it’s on DVD.
What a shame Laughton’s version of The Island of Dr. Moreau
is not on DVD. It’s called Island of Lost Souls. Very effective.
Too bad it’s so rare today to shoot a new film in black & white.
You know, after reading through and thinking about the examples and counter-examples, I’m inclined to think that the line between big acting and big characters might be pretty hard to make out sometimes. And agree with John the Libertarian very much that genre defines acting.
Acting as such shouldn’t be very noticeable at all in more realistic genres. But acting as such should be very noticeable indeed in genres for which stylized acting is a core feature of the genre. Sin City, Singin in the Rain, The King and I, 300, Hamlet, Henry V, the Aeneid, the Oddyssey, and (yes) the Hunchback of Notre Dame all use styles of acting and speaking that “stand out” … and should stand out. Making for “big characters” … yes … but isn’t part of the pleasure involved in the knowledge that they are characters? Not realistic next-door neighbor types? Consciousness that we are experiencing or watching Story, and not watching an inventory unfold or listening to a dryasdust narrative? But in that case is the Big Acting really simply an expression of the Big Character in the Big Story?
I don’t know … just thinking out loud really.
Never seen the movie before, but I checked it out, and it was very great, great recommendation.
Years ago, William Goldman compared 1939 to 1982 in terms of each year’s Oscar nominations and the decline was pretty self-evident.
I agree that Mr. Laughton and Miss o’Hara are gems of the cinema.
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