The Hunchback

In medieval Paris, a deformed foundling named Quasimodo grows up under the care and tutelage of Dom Claude Frollo, the archdeacon of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Quasimodo is humpbacked, lame, and blind in a drooping eye -- a human gargoyle who keeps to the shadows of the great church as its ...more

In this 1997 television adaptation of Victor Hugo's classic 1831 novel -Notre Dame de Paris, Mandy Patinkin warms up Charles Laughton's 1939 film interpretation of hunchback Quasimodo with Salma Hayek in the role of Esmeralda. Like Laughton before him, Patinkin lards himself with makeup, then sets to work unscrewing the soul of the humpbacked Quasimodo to release it from its hideous encasement. What he reveals is a human being superior in sensitivity and insight to the men who bedevil him. ...more