Bruno Pelletier as Gringoire with Helene Segara as Esmeralda
Notre Dame de Paris is often praised for being one of the more accurate version of Hunchback and while it is the wedding scene is REALLY rush to the point that it’s hardly there.
Really it’s glossed over. You could say it takes place during La Cour des Miracles, Clopin asks if a lady wants Gringoire and Esmeralda say she’ll take him. Clopin says in the original version something like “He’s yours as a spouse but not as a lover.” End of Wedding, no jug and no wedding merriment unless you count Esmerald and Gringoire dancing as the song wraps up.
In other versions Clopin’s line is more like Esmeralda had to sleep in his bed. Gringoire then sings a line about how she saved in just in time and Esmeralda response by singing that though she saved him she won’t sleep in this bed. In either version these line are a littler superfluous as the next song aging shoot him down though he is all like Baby you can be my muse, really do you need to repeat this two times but forgo much of the wedding scene?
Then they have their wedding night which is a sweet number though Esmeralda still rejects Gringoire for Phoebus. I mean she just changed the subject when he tries and it like I would rather know what the name Phoebus means. She doesn’t mince any words.
There is nothing much from the original book scene expect they get married in the court of miracles as a means to save Gringoire and Esmeralda rejects him afterwards. While it would have been nice to have the jug scene or a longer song with some of the book lines, Notre Dame de Paris
, Gringoire tells us he met a girl, followed her and lost her. That’s it. It’s like drive-by exposition. I mean if you don’t know he meant Esmeralda, would you REALLY know he meant her? The rest of the song tells us Paris is a dark and sexy place. It’s very moody and Gringoire is a delight in the song but alas isn’t a little more than forgettable.
. When Phoebus saves Esmeralda he puts the moves on her and she rebuffs him, telling him he as gotten the wrong girl as Esmeralda isn’t a soldier-girl. So then what happens? He tells he he’ll meet her at a brothel the “Cabaret de Val d’amour.” And for whatever that line worked and she’s now like Phoebus, in fact later on she says her heart beats for him, but I’m getting ahead of myself. It’s just like what! In under two minutes the ruined a very pivotal scene.
tells us about the Court of Miracles and Clopin’s outlook on the world as a world without much divide of status and religion. Then there is the drive-by exposition where Gringoire just literally pops in, is hanged in a bag, which looks like fun and married off. Any humor of the scene is gone.