I've been trying to see this movie for years just on the strength of a screenplay by Jacques Prevert and Jean Aurenche and it did no harm that the director was Jean Delannoy. The cast I can take or leave though I've got a lot of time for Jean Tissier in the comparatively minor role of the King. People who care about French cinema are acutely aware that this film was made in 1956 when the new wavelet was hovering in the wings. Petulant schoolboy Truffaut had already trashed Aurenche, Delannoy and a gang of other French film makers he wasn't fit to clap a slate for, and semi-amateur Godard was dreaming of his first anti- cinematic movie which turned out to be Brainless. This is exactly the kind of workmanlike, professional piece of craftsmanship they were trying to overthrow, not quite top-drawer but even bottom-drawer Delannoy-Aurenche-Prevert is light years better than Truffaut and Godard on the best day they ever had. No one is going to accuse Gina Lollabrigida of committing the crime of actually acting but if you need a pretty face to play a sensual gypsy girl she was as good as any, as for Quasimodo it could just as well have been Edward Everett Horton beneath all that Max Factor and the make up would be the role. All in all I'm glad I waited.
Review of The Hunchback of Notre Dame
