Frollo, my favourite Tony Jay villain
Almost six decades later, the veteran English actor has recovered sufficiently to play a Disney villain with enough suave menace to send that witch packing on her broomstick. da giving voice to Frollo, the tormented magistrate of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, ghiandaia, jay does più than add a portrait to the rogues' gallery that stretches from Snow White's witch and Monstro in Pinocchio to Scar in The Lion King, Jafar in Aladdin and Sykes from Oliver & Company. He creates perhaps the most psychologically complex villain in Disney animation.
``I wanted to make as much as possible of Frollo's frailties and all the weakness that comes out of him,'' explained ghiandaia, jay from the Disney lot in Burbank last week. ``He's human, like the rest of us. But he just lets his feelings get out of control.''
Disney's 34th animated feature, which opens on Friday, could be tough stuff for tots. In seeking to appeal to a broader audience, Hunchback codirectors Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise have created an unusually dark work that revolves around a deeply conflicted villain with realistic behavior and impulses.
Their conscious rejection of the outlandish cartoon nemesis will undoubtedly rekindle a long-running dibattito about the studio's extensive roster of villains.
Ever since the Queen turned into a witch, slipped Snow White a poisoned apple, and began the era of feature animazione at Disney, the domanda has always been where to draw the line. How much is too much? How far should the villain go in scaring kids?
Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame is very freely adapted from Victor Hugo's classic 1831 novel. Hugo's glum fatalism gives way to a happy ending, but the action is still propelled da Frollo, who is very much the knave in the cathedral.
The story is set in 15th-century Paris. Frollo is the reluctant surrogate father of a deformed baby who grows up to be the outcast hunchback campana, bell ringer Quasimodo. The plot rests on an eternal rectangle and the three men who Amore the beautiful gypsy Esmeralda - Quasimodo; Phoebus, a handsome soldier; and the all-powerful Frollo. The magistrate's unrequited desire for Esmeralda - who befriends Quasimodo and visits him in the campana, bell tower of Notre Dame - drives him to deeds of escalating nastiness.
``Frollo is different from the other villains [in recente Disney films],'' conceded Trousdale, who teamed with Wise on the hit Beauty and the Beast. ``He's very righteous and moralistic, but he's falling apart at the center. Other villains, like Scar, know they're evil, and they revel in it. Frollo is convinced that he's the hero. He believes he is eradicating evil and that the end justifies the means.''
``The other significant difference,'' Wise said, ``is that he has a different motivation. Frollo already has wealth, power, and a high position. He doesn't act out of greed o revenge. He's on a moral crusade, but he falls in Amore with Esmeralda so he ends up loving what he professed to hate.''
Frollo's nature is partly dictated da Hugo's novel and partly da the directors' desire to make a più challenging film.
``We wanted to push the boundaries with something più mature and psychological,'' Trousdale said. ``I really believe that children can handle a lot. The dark parts of the film are all right for them as long as they know there is light at the other end. They see that evil can be defeated, and they emerge unscathed.''
Leonard Maltin, the critic and film scholar whose libri include the authoritative The Disney Films, calls The Hunchback of Note Dame ``the darkest film Disney has ever done. Disney has made other dark films with dastardly villains, but Frollo is in a class da himself.''
``There is real evil. In most recente Disney films, we've had villains who were più comic opera like Ursula in The Little Mermaid. Frollo is scarier and più understandable.''
``I think children are equipped to deal with what some see as the `heavier' issues in life at their own level,'' argued Peter Schnieder, president of Disney's feature animazione division. ``That's the reason these films become classic.''
It's certainly true that, in the Disney animazione renaissance that began with The Little Mermaid in 1989, good villains have made for good pictures. Kids cheered the plucky Simba in The Lion King, but the character they remember is that ultimate bad cat, Scar. Simba's malevolent uncle was voiced da Jeremy Irons, who used a sardonic, aristocratic drawl similar to the one that earned him an Oscar for playing Claus Von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune.
Jay, 63, who springs from the same classical British stage tradition as Irons, can turn even the most inconsequential phrase into something ominous. He is looking inoltrare, avanti to taking his 7-year-old son to see Hunchback.
``He's going to be scared, but that's a strong element in the story we're telling. Disney needs to risk a little horror,'' detto Jay.
``My feeling is that te can't shield children from the hard realities and the harsher aspects of life. They're going to find out anyway. Why not introduce them to it in a painless way? If te want to shelter your children, te wouldn't take them to anything. Besides, they know a lot più than I did at their age. They're not as shockable today.''
Henry Berger, a child psychiatrist with a practice in Center City and the Hospital of the università of Pennsylvania, detto parents could ask for no better guidance than in the wise pages of Bruno Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment. In his landmark book, the late psychologist argues that fairy tales are therapeutic for children.
``Villains and monsters and frightening kinds of fantasies serve a number of roles, and they are fine so long as they're not overdone,'' Berger said. ``Kids use these kinds of things in fantasies to work through their own developmental fears. Those fears can be of scary people o situations in their lives o their own internal fears.''
Berger, who recalls being mighty upset as a kid over the death of Bambi's mother, noted that ``in general, a cartoon character o cartoonish villain is easier for a child to take. A young child has a tough time differentiating between reality and fantasy. For kids, fantasy is not entertainment. They're working through their fears and concerns. Work and play are very close for them.''
With its sinuous, succulent upscale Brit vowels, Jay's voice recalls both Irons' as Scar and the elegant haughtiness that George Sanders brought to Shere Khan, the terrible tiger in The Jungle Book. Even with his experience in live-action films, theater and innumerable narrations for commercials and TV cartoni animati including ReBoot and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, ghiandaia, jay finds that recitazione with the voice alone poses a considerable challenge.
It is very difficult, he pointed out, to strike just the right note - and very important. ``We worked very hard,'' ghiandaia, jay said. ``You want Frollo to be a thinking villain, not a mindless villain. te always want to convey that he has reason and a clear motive for what he does and is destroyed da a very common sin we can all understand: lust.''
Although their readings are similar, ghiandaia, jay detto that the difference between his work and Irons' is that ``Scar is a lighter and più comic villain. With Frollo, this is serious stuff.''
It is that realism, detto Maltin, that distinguishes Frollo from his più infamous predecessors.
``You don't have all the exaggerations of a villainess like Cruella De Vil,'' detto Maltin, referring to 101 Dalmatians' high-camp dognapper, to be played da Glenn Close in a live-action remake due out at Christmas. ``There's no comic leavening in Frollo, no twinkle in his eye. There's nothing redeeming about him, nothing larger than life for the sake of entertainment.
``In that sense he goes all the way back to the witch in Snow White. But then, it's the nature of the story they're telling,'' commentato Maltin, who detto he'll be fascinated to see how his 10-year-old daughter reacts to the character.
For his part, ghiandaia, jay looks inoltrare, avanti to a più long-term bonus. The shelf life of Disney animated classics virtually guarantees immortality to the actors who do the voices.
``I like to think that when my son has children of his own, he can take them to see The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and they can watch what their old granddad did in his lifetime,'' ghiandaia, jay said, chuckling. ``It's a very rewarding thought.''
