Lon Chaney as Quasimodo 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

Lon Chaney as Quasimodo 1923 Hunchback of Notre Dame

Short answer, yes! As of now there have been two Hunchback movies that seemingly have never got their footing one being from Max Ryan that had a full cast list and the other was from Josh Brolin who just had the director attached. The real question is why should they make a new version?

Salma Hayek as Esmeralda & Mandy Patinkin as Quasimodo, 1997 The Hunchback picture image

Salma Hayek as Esmeralda & Mandy Patinkin as Quasimodo,

Hollywood technically hasn’t made a Hunchback movie since 1939. Disney of course made their version 1996, but Disney is a little separate from Hollywood. The other versions were from France, (1956, and 1999) and the other versions were TV movies (1977, 1982, and 1997.) So there has not been a designated Hollywood Hunchback in  nearly 80 years.

Quasimodo (Charles Laughton) alone at the end 1939 Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

Quasimodo Charles Laughton, 1939 Hunchback of Notre Dame

So yeah there should a new adaptation for a more modern audience. But more than that, there are more reasons than just timeframe.  Pending on the type of the movie that the producers go for, Hunchback could be pure oscar bait. For instant it’s historical-based story with a high  pretension factor. Second make-up, one can get crazy with the Quasimodo’s make-up and people love the trope of the ugly dude with the beautiful soul and I think people on the internet eat that shit up. There also the real-life angle they could make with the Hunchback worker. Oscars LOVE movies based on true stories.

Esmeralda (Gina Lollobrigida) dances, 1956 Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

Esmeralda (Gina Lollobrigida) dances, 1956 Hunchback of Notre Dame

Also adding to the oscar bait factor, the academy loves itself and since it made up of mostly of actors they like movies about actors. Now there isn’t actors so much in Hunchback but Gringoire is a playwright and Esmeralda is a dancer so they are technically part of the larger industry.

Sets of the 1982 Version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

Sets of the 1982 Version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame

They could also go other genre routes, like re-working the story to be like a super-hero movie. Super-hero movies are super popular though they have been waning in recent years. But Quasimodo fits a super-hero type, so it could work.

Esmeralda, Phoebus and Quaismodo Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame picture image

Esmeralda, Phoebus and Quaismodo Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame

There is also the chance, albeit not a super strong one, of Disney doing a live-action adaptation of the Disney version.  This seems to a major trend with Disney right now.  I could see this happening more than an super-hero version or a pure oscar bait.

Josh Brolin Interview for Men in Black picture image

Josh Brolin Interview for Men in Black

I will say that I have no idea what Brolin version was trying to do but I would say given Brolin and the director it might have been a super-hero variety.  I couldn’t even guess on Max Ryan’s version.

But yeah, Hollywood make a new version. What kind of Hunchback version would you like to see?

(Post Script – Max’s Ryan’s movie is a going ahead as well as an  Esmeralda movie in the works)

 

The Thief of Bagdad 1940 picture image

1940 Version of The Thief of Bagdad

The first time I watched the 1940 version of The Thief of Bagdad, I recalled liking it more than the 1920’s version but when I thought about it recently I couldn’t remember why. It could have just been the superficialness of color and sound, or I might have just liked the characters better. I will say that yes I like some of the characters better but this movie has a very odd way telling the story and you can see the Disney version of Aladdin all over this movie.

John Justin as Ahmad and June Duprez as the Princess The Thief of Bagdad 1940

John Justin as Ahmad and June Duprez as the Princess

So the movie at first is told in flashback, Ahmad, a blind beggar with a talented dog tells his story to a group of ladies. In his flashback we learn that Ahmad was the king of Bagdad and the dog was a young thief named Abu. Ahmad was kept at a distance from his people by his royal vizier, Jaffar. One day Jaffar convinces Ahmad to go out among the people and Ahmad learns he is not well liked and that there a prophesy about a hero descending from the sky on a magic cloud-like thing and golden crossbow. Jaffar then has Ahmad thrown in a jail where he meets Abu. They escapes and become friends. They leave Bagdad and head to Basra.

In Basra, Ahmad sees the princess, who doesn’t have a name. Ahmad and the Princess meet and fall in love. However Jaffar also travels to Basra intent on marrying the Princess. Jaffar gives the Princess’ father, the Sultan a mechanical flying horse as he loves toys in exchange for the Princess. The Sultan concedes and the Princess flees Basra however off-screen she is captured and sold in a slave market. Ahmad then confronts Jaffar and he turns Ahmad blind and Abu into a dog which they will remain till he holds the Princess in his arms.

That ends the flashback part. As it turns out, Ahmad was brought to the house where he just told his story because the Princess ( I wish she had a name) is sleeping a sleep which she can’t wake from till Ahmad shows up. The Princess is then told there is a doctor that can cure Ahmad’s blindness so she goes and she is told the doctor in one a ship. When the Princess boards the ship with Abu, it sails away. It was all a scheme by Jaffar. Jaffar was the one who bought the Princess and cared for her while she slept. He tells her that he can cure Ahmad if he holds her which she allows and Ahmad and Abu are cured. Prior to Abu changing back to a human he stow-a-way on the boat but was thrown off and changes back to human on reaching the docks.

Abu reaches Ahmad and they go after the Princess but Jaffar conjures up a storm and they are left shipwreck. Abu finds a magic lamp on the beach and a Djinn comes out. Abu’s first wish is a sausage. The Djinn then takes Abu to get an all-seeing crystal mainly because Abu claims he can steal it but the Djinn doesn’t believe him and he does steal it and uses it to see where Ahmad is.

As that is going on, Jaffar tries to magically make the Princess love him but can’t bring himself as he want her to love him truly. He then ask her to command him and she asks him to bring her back to Basra. Once there the Princess begs her father to not force her to marry Jaffar which he agrees to but Jaffar has the sultan killed with a mechanical toy called the Silver Maid which stabs him in the heart.

The Djinn takes Abu to Ahmad and they look through the seeing crystal, which is called the All-seeing Eye, to see the Princess. Jaffar arranges for her to smell the Blue Rose of Forgetfulness which causes her to forget her love and agony. This cause Ahmad to lash out on Abu and Abu wishes Ahmad way which is his final wish and he left alone.

Ahmad appears at Jaffar’s palace and the Princess regains her memory. Jaffar then orders them both to be executed. Abu the shatters the All-seeing eye and is transported to the Land of Legend. Abu is thanked for freeing the inhabitants who had been turned to stone and is gifted a magical golden crossbow and is named the king’s successor. Abu however steals a magic carpet to save Ahmad.

As Ahmad is about to be executed as the Princess is forced to watch, Abu comes flying done on the magic carpet. This sparks a revolt. Jaffar tries to flee on the mechanical flying horse but Abu shots him with the crossbow. Ahmad and the Princess get married and Ahmad names Abu as the royal vizier but Abu peaces out on the carpet for more adventures.

So much narrative.

Sabu as Abu The Thief of Bagdad 1940

Sabu as Abu

This movie is presented with a lot of narrative and to be fair it could have a lot more. I would have loved to seen the Princess’s journey but the movie wasn’t about her it was about Abu’s adventure saving Ahmad who was in love with the Princess and Jaffar’s scheming. It’s a little weird but that the titular character is spend a fair chunk of time on the side and the other characters are not concern with him. The heart of the movie centers on Ahmad’s and his dilemma but it’s Abu who saves the day. It defiantly a weird direction to go in.

June Duprez as the Princess and Conrad Veidt as Jaffar The Thief of Bagdad 1940

June Duprez as the Princess and Conrad Veidt as Jaffar

Despite all the narrative, there isn’t a lot of character development in this movie. None of the character grow and change. They are all static. They are likable enough but they don’t have  any arcs. Personally, I enjoyed the interactions between Jaffar and the Princess over Abu and Ahmad.

June Duprez as the Princess The Thief of Bagdad 1940

June Duprez as the Princess

I got to say, I found the Princess an interesting character. Yes, she is a damsel in distress but she did try to take her life in her own hands as she ran away and does resist Jaffar. She tries to be an active player. I wish she had gotten more screen time and a name.

Sabu as Abu with Rex Ingram as the Djinn The Thief of Bagdad 1940

Sabu as Abu with Rex Ingram as the Djinn

I think this movie much like the 1920’s movie was more for style. This movie is impressive for the 1940’s and it did some great chromo work. You can see a clear style over substance in scenes like the Silver maid and Abu stealing the All-seeing eye. These scenes go on for a while but instead of character development it just a neat scenes to look at.

Also the costumes were lovely. Ahmad main costumes is like a reversal of Disney’s Aladdin costume. But for me everything the princess wore was like beautiful.

June Duprez as the Princess The Thief of Bagdad 1940

June Duprez as the Princess

The 1940 version of The Thief of Bagdad is an entertaining movie that while doesn’t have the most development characters and the plot is all over the place is fun to watch and enjoyable.

2022 Edit- I recently rewatched this movie. I maintain that it’s fun entertaining movie with a lot of great spectacle. I think some of the aspects that might have bothered me when I wrote this review, like the Princess’ journey being off-screen don’t bother me. The story wasn’t about that we just needed to know that she tried and we can use how imaginations. I do wish she had a name but the movie is more about Abu helping with buddy out. Also it’s not a character driven  narrative and that is fine. It’s not a fault it’s more of a feature.

Clue 1 and Clue 2

This version is so unremarkable. Nothing about this movie stands out in way that is appealing. It is one of the most tepid movies I have ever seen. It’s so bland and that is slightly amazing. Typically movies have something about that makes them standout even if its negative point but this is so under-whemling, that at 25 minutes I felt we should have been at the thrity  minute mark and nothing happened.

Marc-André Grondin as Gywnplaine and Emmanuelle Seigner as Josiana The Man Who Laughs picture image

Marc-André Grondin as Gywnplaine and Emmanuelle Seigner as Josiana

The plot does follow the book, though it has it differences. Like Barky just seems to want to keeps his position, Josiana is aged and is Gywnplaine’s cousin (I think) and they do sleep together which causes Dea’s depression and suicide by arsenic. Homo does very little and he not really a plot point like in the book. The movie puts a lot of focus one the performances of  Gywnplaine, Ursus and Dea.  Gywnplaine  tries to quell his love for Dea not because of the blindness but because of their sister/brother being raised together  relationship. Barky doesn’t send Ursus and Dea away in fact he brings to  Gywnplaine and Dea hears Josiana and  Gywnplaine going at it. Also no David and the Queen wasn’t present or seem to care about screwing over Josiana.  That is all the differences I care to recall.

So how is this movie unremarkable. Well first off the acting. If these people were acting they either were directed terribly  or they didn’t care. I also thought the casting on Dea and Josiana were way off. Dea is supposed to be a celestial ethereally young lady and do not get me wrong, the lady they cast is lovely but she had the wrong type for the role. She seemed earthy and natural. Mary Philbin was better cast. I hate to even say this but the lady who played Josiana was too old. I thought Josiana was supposed to be like Esmeralda, careful and full of life. This women just seemed like a bored housewife. It was a decision the filmmaker made that I neither get nor like though she was the best actress so there is the tradeoff.

Marc-André Grondin as Gywnplaine and Christa Théret as Dea The Man Who Laughs picture image

Marc-André Grondin as Gywnplaine and Christa Théret as Dea

The we have the colors, or rather lack of them. This movie likes grey, black and white. So the acting is dull and boring and so is the color palette. I won’t say that movies can’t have this style but you need to make it visually interesting and its not. The shots are pretty basic and when it tries to have an interesting shot it just seem like uninspired.

Marc-André Grondin as Gywnplaine The Man Who Laughs picture image

Marc-André Grondin as Gywnplaine

The costumes were also boring but what is really was flat,  Gywnplaine’s make-up. It literally looked like they just drew on red paint to make his smile. This make him humanized but it looks so lazy. I can’t see why people would find it fascinating the same way as the 1928 version.

 

Also the music was inappropriate. At ending where Dea and  Gywnplaine die the music during the credits is like super happy and carnival-esque. It was like a slap in the face.

At least Homo was a wolf but that is the only positive thing.

One more thing, I don’t want to give the impression that I know a ton about art history on a whole but at one point in the movie Barky brought out portraits of  Gywnplaine’s parents. The first one was of his mother and it was a John Singer Sargent Portrait of the Duchess of Sutherland. Lovely portrait but it took me right out of the movie.

 

Do not recommend this version.  Just watch the 1928 version.

 

Full Disclosure, I couldn’t actually watch this movie, I tried but the trailer told me everything I could ever need know about this version and then someone on IMDB gave the specifics.

The Who Laughs 1966 Poster picture image

The Who Laughs 1966 Poster

This version seems precious.

You can watch the trailer here, http://www.tcm.com/mediaroom/video/466045/Man-Who-Laughs-The-Original-Trailer-.html

Where do I even start?  What were the screenwriter and the director smoking with this movie? First, The Man who Laughs is not an Adventure Novel. Oh, that just brought a smile to my face.

I mean what is this movie? There is nothing of the novel to be seen in this trailer but my god is this not the best one minute and thirty nine seconds? I feel like the movie’s craziness just leeches off the screen.

Apparently someone did see it according to a post of IMDB and here some core differences, so SPOILERS;

-Dea’s mother didn’t die and travels around with Dea, Ursus and Gwynplaine. And here I thought they cut Ursus as he didn’t seem to be in the trailer. (This is a weird change but it seems harmless, misses a point but whatever.)
-Gwynplaine is the royal court executioner and not a mountebank. Though he says cool lines and such before he axes people. (But still why? It’s just No, that is stupid.)
-Gwynplaine and Josiana sleep together (That is BS but we’ll see this change again.)
-Apparently Barkilphedro and soldiers gang rape Dea. (That is just awful, F-U movie, you ruined it. You had this stupidity that was darling and now it’s all gone. I hate you.)
-Gwynplaine keeps his title and gets sugery to correct his deformity and Dea’s eyes get magically fix. (This movie should be destroyed!)
source

Well it seems like this movie had some idea of a story they wanted to make, some Royal Court intrigue but they needed a source for characters so they attached the Man who Laughs. This movie seems like a Fan-Fiction.

If it wasn’t for the some BIG plot changes like Dea and the very stupid happy ending it would seem like hilariously naive version but it seems more waste of the original source material and I didn’t even like the original source material but this movie seems like crap-poo, no wonder you can’t watch it.

Also it takes place in Italy instead of England and it’s the Borgias. So wrong place and time. That doesn’t bother me, just saying. Though I did like the Showtime show of The Borgias.

Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine and Mary Philbin as Dea The man who laughs picture image

Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine and Mary Philbin as Dea

I just finished watching the 1928 The Man Who Laughs. Maybe it’s that I have a low attention span for silent films based on books I don’t really like or maybe it was because I have been on a crazy Modern Family watching binge, either way this movie was work to finish.

I will admit I was a little interested in seeing this movie as Mary Philbin, who was in Phantom, Conrad Veidt who I just saw in another movie recently where he plays a Frolloesque character and Brandon Hurst who played Frollo in the 1923 version. Here Hurst plays the villain again, man he is type-cast as Hugoian villains. So I didn’t not want to watch it but then it started…

Like the book the plot just goes Zoom-By. I still didn’t really get a feeling for any of the characters, in fact we lost Homo’s sensitivity and Ursus’ grumpiness but we didn’t get long histories of the peerage system OR that snow storm as sea scene, so take you pick at which one was better.

Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine and Olga V. Baklanova as Josiana The man who laughs picture image

Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine and Olga V. Baklanova as Josiana

Really, the only good thing about this movie is Veidt’s facial or rather eye emotions. The look of Gwynplaine it so otherworldly that is the only thing memorable about anything along with Veidt’s acting. The other people aren’t bad but there isn’t much to go on really.

The ending was a mixed bag too. The lovers live and that is fine, I actually think the ending didn’t make much sense in the book, Hugo just wanted a tragic ending so it was trite but before they can get to the happy ending there is a big dumb chase because silent movies love big dumb chases at the end, ask Phantom of the Opera. And if that wasn’t bad or dumb enough Homo kills Barky. It doesn’t really matter, Barky was a lame villain anyway but still he could have just drown which would have been at least a call back to the book. Also Homo was a dog not a wolf, that isn’t a complaint just a fact, was more likely easier on the production.

Now here are some weird things;

-The lady who played Josiana, Olga V. Baklanova, looked like Madonna, the singer…. good thing they didn’t remake this movie in Madonna’s heyday. Josiana also got a monkey,. Apparently Baklanova’s resemblance to Madonna has been noted by modern critic…… and people on IMBD but if you have eyes you can see it too, it not subtle.
-I don’t know what the heck they did to David’s character. I thought he was suppose to be sophisticated but he acted so derpy in this movie. Was he meant to be a flop?
-This movie is ALL over the place with its costumes and set pieces timeframe. Like it said 17th century (pretty sure), at the start but the costumes range from the 1700s to late Victorian to the 1920’s. They had no idea of what period this story takes place in. But you know that didn’t REALLY bother me but you know what did a little bit, the amusement park rides. This movie has a rides at the 17th century fair. This just looked so out of place.
-as of 2015 there hasn’t been an American remake of this movie and the 1928 movie it is the ONLY American version.
-This version is the basis for the Joker’s look, not a weird thing just awesome…

Basically with the this version of the book the best thing you can say is the make-up and the acting were decent but the rest of it felt moldy. I wish the characters were better developed but then we wouldn’t have gotten that chase scene…….. can’t win…….it’s either a snow storm or a chase.

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