“Judge Claude Frollo longed to purge the world of vice and sin,” explains Clopin in Disney’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame in his opening story The Bells of Notre Dame, “and he saw corruption everywhere except within.” He then proceeds to “tell the tale of a man and a monster”, telling of a gypsy family who attempted to sneak into Paris, but ended up walking into a trap laid by Claude Frollo himself, the minister of Paris. After one of the guards attempts to take the gypsy mother’s child – which Frollo misidentifies as stolen goods – she runs, and is pursued on horseback by the judge himself.
As she stands on the door to Notre Dame, slamming against it pleading for sanctuary, Frollo rides up and takes the child from her, in the process killing her. When he opens the satchel, he finds in it a baby which he refers to as an “unholy demon”, which he intends to “Send back to Hell” by dropping it down a well. Moments before he drops the baby to its watery grave, the Arch Deacon of Notre Dame cries for him to stop, and in one of the most powerful scenes of the movie, he clutches the dead gypsy in his arms and condemns Frollo.
“See there the innocent blood you have spilled on the steps of Notre Dame,” he accuses, looking between the dead gypsy and Frollo.
“I am guiltless, she ran, I pursued,” Frollo responds dismissively.
“Now you’d add this child’s blood to your guild, on the steps of Notre Dame,” the Arch Deacon continues, his voice quaking and near tears. At this point Frollo appears to be growing aggravated by the clergyman’s insistence.
“My conscience is clear!” he exclaims, but the priest would have none of that, and doesn’t even wait for Frollo to finish before continuing.
“You can lie to yourself and your minions! You can claim that you haven’t a qualm!” he yells as he points to the church. “But you never can run nor hide what you’ve done from the eyes! The very eyes of Notre Dame!” As the reality of this begins to set in, Frollo looks upon the carvings of saints etched into the sides of the Notre Dame Cathedral, and the first of many of Frollo’s metaphorical visions comes to him. The eyes of the saints stare down on him judgingly, as the chorus cries out “Kyrie Eleison” – Greek for Lord Have Mercy – the choir call that always herald’s Frollo’s presence.
Clopin continues his story about Frollo’s feelings here in his story. “And for one time in his life of power and control. Judge Claude Frollo felt a twinge of fear for his immortal soul.”
“What must I do?” Frollo asks the priest as he now appears visibly shaken to his very foundation.
Care for the child, raise it as your own,” the Arch Deacon explains – and in spite of a mild complaint on Frollo’s part, he agrees, if the boy can grow in the cathedral itself. So begins one of the least known, but most powerful Disney movies ever put out, with its primary villain – and in many regards its protagonist – so realistic, so believable, that it is not surprising that he is often overlooked in favor of more exaggerated characters who fall in line with more traditional bad guys, usually bent on a self-centered drive for power or some such.
Claude Frollo falls into none of these stereotypes. Even in the opening scene he expresses very human emotions: he finds himself frightened for the outcome of his soul, worried about a power greater than himself that he will never reach, in a way he expresses remorse that is identified by the Arch Deacon, and he goes on to show pity on the creature he names Quasimoto (or half formed).
He raises the child for twenty years – while it would be easy enough for the man to outright kill Quasimoto, he comes every day, eats three meals a day with him, provides him with clothes, and even schools him. He attempts to instill in Quasi a fear of the outside world – partially out of a desire to keep him out of the public’s eye, but it can be argued that he is genuinely shielding the young man from the cruelty of the outside world – a warning that is later confirmed when he does sneak into the town square for a festival, and he is beaten, mocked, and disgraced in front of the entire town.
“The world is cruel, and it is wicked,” Frollo explains to Quasi when he learns that the young man intended to partake in the Festival of Fools, ” It’s I alone whom you can trust in this whole city.” While it is very possible he is dramatically exaggerating the people, the tale finds its merit later in the film. After being declared the King of Fools by Clopin, he is mocked by the crowd, tied to a torture wheel, and the mob proceeds to laugh at him while showering him with tomatoes and other less than dignifying wastes.
He is later saved by a gypsy who appeared to have been hired to dance at the festival named Esmeralda – and this marks one of the most dramatic points of Claude Frollo’s life. In a short showdown between the two, the minister demands she step away from Quasimoto, but she refuses, cuts him loose, and declares that they “crowned the wrong king of fools” as the only “fool she sees is him”, before throwing the crown at Frollo’s feet. Enraged, Frollo and his guards chase Esmeralda into the Cathedral Notre Dame – where the Arch Deacon taunts Frollo, and reminds him of the church’s right of sanctuary.
“Frollo learned long ago to respect the sanctity of the church,” the Arch Deacon explains to Esmeralda long before Frollo has left earshot. Before he unhands her however, Frollo smells the gypsy girl’s hair, and her perfume has a profound effect on him. As she wrenches away from him, he keeps a handkerchief of hers, which he smuggles away in his coat.
In perhaps the most dramatic and effective displays of music in a Disney movie, Frollo languishes that night about his lust for Esmeralda. In the song Hellfire, he begins by appealing to the Holy Virgin Mary. “Beata Maria, you know I am a righteous man, of my virtue I am justly proud,” he says as he overlooks Paris. “Beata Maria, you know I’m so much purer than the common, vulgar, weak, licentious crowd.” While here he attempts to rationalize to himself through his own prayer to Mary his own virtues, he finds himself weakening to the thought of Esmeralda.
“Tell me Maria, why I see her dancing there, why her smoldering eyes still scorch my soul,” he implores. “I fear her, I see her, the sun caught in her raven hair is blazing in me out of all control.” As he does this he feels the girl’s handkerchief, and clearly has her scent still caught in his nose. As the thoughts of her set in, he continuously attempts to remind himself, through his prayers, that he is a good man, a virtuous man, a canon man. He’s above lust and carnal desire – and yet he admits to himself that he feels a “fire, hellfire” burning in his skin.
He even refers to it as a “burning desire”, that’s turning him to sin. It is an important look into the Claude Frollo character, as a man who strives in himself to do good, who submits himself to a higher authority, but through the redundant, archaic, and often times contradicting teachings of the Church, he is languishing over something that he does not feel comfortable coveting. Even in the midst of the massacre he reaps on her people, unlike other Disney villains, Frollo does not seek ultimate dominance for himself, but rather truly feels he is doing his own Lord’s work – and in a way feels that connection with God is in jeopordized by these feelings of lust he has for Esmeralda.
As he pleads to Mary, who is acting as his own alter ego for the moment, a Catholic Mass goes on in the background, punctuating his feelings.
“Confiteor Deo Omnipotenti. Beatae Mariae semper Virgini. Beato Michaeli archangelo. Sanctis apostolis omnibus sanctis. Et tibit Pater. Quia peccavi nimis. Cogitatione. Verbo et opere,” they say, translating to:
“I confess to God almighty. To blessed Mary ever VirginTo the blessed archangel Michael. To the holy apostles, to all the saints. And to you, Father. That I have sinned. In thought. In word and deed.” The choir’s mass in the background acts as a continued explanation of the feelings felt by Claude Frollo as he labors over his choice between Church and Woman. As he feels the woman’s cloth in his hands, he sees nearly nude visions of her dancing in the fireplace.
As the feelings of lust and fears of personally betraying God Himself mount in Frollo, he is challenged by his own representation of God’s tribunal staring down on him.
“Mea Culpa,” or, “Through my fault” heralds the arrival of hundreds of red robed, demonic looking figures who stare down on him as emotionless judges, dominating Frollo’s sight as the image of Esmeralda disappears. They do not actually exist of course – as when a guard later intrudes on Frollo’s moment of weakness, fear, and passion, they are all gone – but this is the judge’s own vision of his own vindictive God.
“It’s not my fault,” he says to them, “I’m not to blame. It is the gypsy girl, the witch who’s set this flame.”
His lust is replaced by the fear of the repercussions of acting on them – he implores the Virgin Mary to save him from Esmeralda, whom he calls a siren, imploring that she not let her cast her spell on him. As the red robed judges stare on him, reminding him of his sin with the single phrase “Mea Culpa”, he runs down an endless path trying to escape them.
He finally escapes his divinely inspired nightmare by the pounding on his office door by a guard – informing him that Esmeralda had escaped the Cathedral, and that she was nowhere to be found. Claude Frollo dismisses him angrily, and returns to his pondering. He steels his jaw and resolves to himself that Esmeralda will be his – or she would burn.
This is an important look into the entire Frollo character – a look at how he views God as a merciless, capricious, and vindictive judge who callously looks upon his torment, reminding him of the Hellfire that awaits him if he gives in. It demonstrates his actions of violence against the gypsies as his attempt at appeasing these red robed judges, he already admits that he feels that God made the Devil “so much stronger than a man” – and he is trying in every way to overcome it. The majority of the violence in the film comes after this, as the sexual frustration he feels, bottled by the Church’s stance on clerical celibacy, finally explodes into a rage that lights most of Paris on fire.
It is not until the end of the movie that, almost mercifully, he is slain by his own psychotic visions of God’s wrath, when it seems as though Notre Dame itself comes alive to right the wrongs he’d waged against it.
Claude Frollo is unique amongst all the Disney villains – rather than being the wholly self centered pursuer of dominance on a grand scale, he lives in constant fear of a higher power. Indeed, the one time he finally submits to what he perceives to be a selfish desire, he is torn by a mixture between guilt and fear of the Almighty which culminates into a violent rage against the city in his pursuit of gypsies, and specifically, Esmeralda.
And these layers of complexity make him, very possibly, one of the greatest Disney villains in the long line of their great villains.
