3:00 pm | $7/$5 | Piano accompaniment with Marta Waterman
The acclaimed first version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Lon Chaney, will be the first in the Sunday Silents series at the Rosendale Theatre, playing at 3 P.M. Sunday, November 1.
Filmed in 1923, from a novel of 15th century Paris by Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a dramatic tale of a hunchback befriended by a gypsy dancer. It is one of the high points of silent film, a hallmark that has stood the test of time.
Lon Chaney, known in his lifetime as the “man of a thousand faces,” plays Quasimodo, a deformed bellringer of the Notre Dame cathedral in Paris in 1482. This version is often noted for splendid attention to detail in the sets and costumes. Seeing the hunchback clambering down the façade of the cathedral, or swinging from pinnacle to gargoyle to statue; or, to see his defense of Esmeralda, the gypsy girl, from the crowd of beggars he thinks has come to kill her, is to enjoy some of the great visual moments of cinema. The silent films in Rosendale’s series are enhanced by the piano of Marta Waterman.