The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Directed by Jean Delannoy, this 1956 French-Italian production was the first color screen version of Victor Hugo's 1831 novel. Set in fifteenth-century Paris, the story unfolds around the annual carnival near Notre Dame cathedral, where the alchemist Claude Frollo first encounters the beautiful gypsy dancer Esmeralda and becomes consumed by an obsessive desire for her. He enlists Quasimodo, the cathedral's hunchbacked bell-ringer, in his schemes, but Esmeralda's heart belongs to the handsome Captain Phoebus, and she is desired by more than one man. The film is notable for keeping Hugo's tragic conclusion: Esmeralda dies by a stray arrow rather than on the gallows, and a closing narration recounts how, years later, the skeletons of Quasimodo and Esmeralda are discovered locked in an embrace. Anthony Quinn plays a less grotesquely disfigured Quasimodo than in most adaptations, with Gina Lollobrigida as Esmeralda and Alain Cuny as Frollo. The screenplay was written by Jean Aurenche and Jacques Prévert.