Perhaps, now that this has been done so many times, the time has come for film and theater people to give it a rest. It comes ready-made with dramatic set pieces, entertaining dialogue, moving soliloquies, skillfully blocked stage business, characters making dramatic entrances and exits, vividly described scenery, and impressive spectacles that leave one thinking, “I wonder how this could be engineered for the stage.” Sometimes its melodrama is downright operatic: “With a few cuts,” one thinks, “this could easily be made into a libretto.” As the villain struggles to hang on while dangling 200 feet above certain death, one thinks, “I know just how I would edit this scene, intercut with shots of the gargoyles and sculptures on the church’s facade.” You see where the idea comes from. It’s not hard to see why so many theater and film producers have found it hard to resist the urge to adapt this book to their medium. Another conclusion that I came to while listening to David Case’s expert audiobook narration, is that it was written in a way that lends itself to dramatic interpretation.

One conclusion I could draw from this is that it’s a very popular tale, and so there is a good chance that you already have some idea of what it’s about.

Published in 1831 in French under the title Notre-Dame de Paris, this book has been made into an opera, a ballet, several stage plays, two musicals, and at least 15 films, including TV and animated versions.

Hugo the hunchback