All Hallow's Eve seemed like the right time to watch the 1939 version of the Hunchback of Notre Dame, courtesy of Turner Classic Movies. I admit I consistently forget the movie is based on Victor Hugo's novel. The film's ending remains an enduring moment. In it, Charles Laughton, playing Quasimodo, sits next to one of the cathedral's gargoyles and sighs Why was I not made of stone like thee?This wonderful line has the right tone and sentiment for this holiday weekend, at once entirely American and a complete departure from the American way.
PS. TCM showed a newsreel about Paris and a world's fair that took place in the post-war years. One sequence showed a water-skier being pulled along the Seine. That moment, in which the water-skier glides by Paris' architectural patrimony, is right at home in the heart of Surrealism.
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