Clopin
Encyclopedia
Clopin Trouillefou is a fictional character first created in the 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by French
author Victor Hugo
, and subsequently adapted.
agrees to marry him in order to save him.
Near the end of the novel, Clopin receives news of Esmeralda's upcoming execution for the framed murder of Captain Phoebus
. In order to rescue her, he rounds all of the Truands to attack Notre Dame Cathedral
where Esmeralda is protected by Quasimodo
. In response to the assault, Quasimodo retaliates with stones, timber, and molten lead. Finally, the author notes that Clopin dies courageously during the attack.
, in which he is a more jovial and less sinister gypsy than in the novel. However, he is much darker, in clothing and humor, when Quasimodo
and Captain Phoebus
arrive in the Court of Miracles, suggesting his personality during the day to have been something of a façade. However, he shows to have a gentle nature at the end of the film when he picks a little girl up and entertains her with a puppet resembling Judge Claude Frollo
. He is voiced by Paul Kandel
.
As well as narrating the whole film, Clopin introduces the film and begins the story with the song "The Bells of Notre Dame". He also sings "Topsy Turvy" about the traditional Parisian "Feast of Fools", held every year on January 6.
Clopin wears two main costumes during the film: a jester suit (seen to the right), which he wears at the Festival of Fools; he also wears a similar costume in the catacombs
, but it is almost completely purple with no gold trim, no mask, and no bells. In "The Court of Miracles", he wears a lawyer outfit, a judges outfit, and an executioner's outfit for brief periods of time.
He appears in the film five times. The first appearance is when Clopin sings "The Bells of Notre Dame," which tells the tale of how Frollo killed Quasimodo's mother, but was stopped by the Archdeacon before he could kill Quasimodo by drowning him in a well.
The second appearance is at the Festival of Fools, where he sings "Topsy Turvy," a riveting dance number that explains that it is "the day we do the things that we deplore on the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four." It is also during this song that he crowns Quasimodo the "King of Fools."
His third appearance is much later in the film, at the Court of Miracles, which is where he and a large group of gypsies believe Quasimodo and Phoebus to be spies. They sing the song "The Court of Miracles" as Clopin puts Quasimodo and Phoebus on "trial" which includes a jury consisting of a puppet crafted in Clopin's likeness. He eventually finds them "totally innocent, which is the worst crime of all." He prepares to hang them, but Esmeralda arrives in time to stop him and tell the gypsies of their good intentions. Both Quasimodo and Phoebus inform the gypsy people to leave, saying that Frollo knows of their hideout, and they agree to do so. Unfortunately, Frollo arrives just in time to attack the Court of Miracles and Clopin is seen with his people struggling to break free from their bonds.
His fourth appearance is briefly during the climax of the film where Esmeralda is at the pyre before Notre Dame. When Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda, Phoebus breaks free and rouses the civilians into action, and Clopin is seen jumping out of one of the many cages that hold the gypsies freed by the civilians. Along with the civilians they attack Frollo's soldiers.
His fifth and final appearance is at the end, where he sings a reprise of "The Bells of Notre Dame" while entertaining one of the young children as the civilians finally accept Quasimodo into their society.
As the movie's narrator, Clopin has a great deal of knowledge about Quasimodo's past, seemingly more than Quasimodo himself. This suggests that to know the whole story, throughout Paris he must have many contacts.
Not only is Clopin the narrator in the story, but he is also the King of the Gypsies, who at the time were being rounded-up and murdered in an act of "purification" by Frollo.
Clopin also appeared in the straight-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
, as the host for the Festival of Love, although he is no longer the narrator and plays a much smaller role.
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
author Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
, and subsequently adapted.
In the novel
In the story, Clopin disrupts Pierre Gringoire's play, begging the audience for money. Later that night, Gringoire runs into him once again in the Court of Miracles, where Clopin is revealed not as a beggar, but as the King of Truands. He prepares to execute Gringoire for trespassing, until the beautiful EsmeraldaEsmeralda (The Hunchback of Notre Dame)
Esmeralda, or La Esmeralda , born Agnes, is a fictional character in Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame . She is a French Gypsy girl...
agrees to marry him in order to save him.
Near the end of the novel, Clopin receives news of Esmeralda's upcoming execution for the framed murder of Captain Phoebus
Captain Phoebus
Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers is a fictional character and one of the main antagonists in Victor Hugo's 1831 novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. He is the Captain of the King's Archers. His name comes from Phoebus, the Greek god of the sun , with whom he shares handsome looks and skill at...
. In order to rescue her, he rounds all of the Truands to attack Notre Dame Cathedral
Notre Dame de Paris
Notre Dame de Paris , also known as Notre Dame Cathedral, is a Gothic, Roman Catholic cathedral on the eastern half of the Île de la Cité in the fourth arrondissement of Paris, France. It is the cathedral of the Catholic Archdiocese of Paris: that is, it is the church that contains the cathedra of...
where Esmeralda is protected by Quasimodo
Quasimodo
Quasimodo is a fictional character in the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. The role of Quasimodo has been played by...
. In response to the assault, Quasimodo retaliates with stones, timber, and molten lead. Finally, the author notes that Clopin dies courageously during the attack.
Adaptations
| Actor | Version |
|---|---|
| John Webb Dillon John Webb Dillon John Webb Dillon was an English actor. He appeared in 89 films between 1911 and 1947. He was born in London and died in Hollywood, California.-Selected filmography:* Romeo and Juliet... |
1917 Adaptation The Darling of Paris The Darling of Paris is a 1917 silent film directed by J. Gordon Edwards and starring Theda Bara and Glen White. This is a very loose film adaptation of the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo... |
| Ernest Torrence Ernest Torrence Ernest Torrence was a Scottish born film character actor who appeared in many Hollywood films, including Broken Chains with Colleen Moore,Mantrap with Clara Bow, and Fighting Caravans with Gary Cooper and Lili Damita... |
1923 Adaptation The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923 film) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1923 American film directed by Wallace Worsley and produced by Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg. It stars Lon Chaney, Sr., Patsy Ruth Miller, Norman Kerry, Nigel de Brulier, Brandon Hurst. The film is the second most famous adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel,... |
| Thomas Mitchell Thomas Mitchell (actor) Thomas Mitchell was an American actor, playwright and screenwriter. Among his most famous roles in a long career are those of Gerald O'Hara, the father of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind, the drunken Doc Boone in John Ford's Stagecoach, and Uncle Billy in It's a Wonderful Life... |
1939 Adaptation The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939 film) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1939 American monochrome film starring Charles Laughton as Quasimodo and Maureen O'Hara as Esmeralda. It was directed by William Dieterle and produced by Pandro S. Berman... |
| Philippe Clay Philippe Clay Philippe Clay, born Philippe Mathevet, was a French mime artist, singer and actor.He was known for his tall and slim silhouette and for his interpretations of songs by Charles Aznavour, Claude Nougaro, Jean-Roger Caussimon, Boris Vian, Serge Gainsbourg, Jean Yanne, Léo Ferré, Jacques Datin,... |
1956 Adaptation The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1956 film) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1956 French film version of Victor Hugo's novel of the same name, directed by Jean Delannoy and produced by Raymond Hakim and Robert Hakim. The film is the first version of the novel to be made in color.It stars Mexican actor Anthony Quinn as Quasimodo and Gina... |
| Tony Caunter Tony Caunter Anthony Peter "Tony" Caunter is a British actor best known for his role as Jack Shepherd in the Yorkshire TV sitcom Queenie's Castle and also his portrayal of Roy Evans in EastEnders from 1994-2003.... |
1977 Adaptation The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1977) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1977 television series and an adaptation of the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo.-Cast:* Kenneth Haigh as Claude Frollo* Warren Clarke as Quasimodo* Michelle Newell as Esmeralda... |
| David Suchet David Suchet David Suchet, CBE, is an English actor, known for his work on British television. He is recognised for his RTS- and BPG award-winning performance as Augustus Melmotte in the 2001 British TV mini-drama The Way We Live Now, alongside Matthew Macfadyen and Paloma Baeza, and a 1991 British Academy... |
1982 Adaptation The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1982 film) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1982 British-American TV movie, based on the Victor Hugo novel. It was directed by Michael Tuchner and Alan Hume, and produced by Norman Rosemont and Malcolm J. Christopher. It starred Anthony Hopkins, Derek Jacobi, Lesley-Anne Down and Sir John Gielgud... |
| Paul Kandel Paul Kandel Paul Kandel is an American musical theatre actor and tenor singer best known for his work as the Gypsy leader Clopin in the 1996 Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also has appeared on Broadway a number of times, having appeared in Jesus Christ Superstar as King Herod, Titanic, The Who's... (voice) |
1996 Disney Adaptation The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film) The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released to theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirty-fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is inspired by Victor Hugo's novel of... |
| Jim Dale Jim Dale Jim Dale, MBE is an English actor, voice artist, singer and songwriter. He is best known in the United Kingdom for his many appearances in the Carry On series of films and in the US for narrating the Harry Potter audiobook series, for which he received two Grammy Awards, and the ABC series Pushing... |
The Hunchback (1997 film) The Hunchback (1997 film) The Hunchback is a 1997 film based on Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame, directed by Peter Medak and produced by Stephane Reichel. It stars Salma Hayek as Esmeralda and Mandy Patinkin as Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre Dame. The film was released a year after Disney's animated... |
| Luck Mervil Luck Mervil Luck Mervil is a Haitian-Canadian actor and singer-songwriter. He is known for his belief in Quebec independence, and was named Patriot of the Year by the Saint-Jean-Baptiste Society in 2005.... |
1997-2002, musical Notre Dame de Paris (musical) Notre-Dame de Paris is a sung-through French-Canadian musical which debuted on 16 September 1998 in Paris. It is based upon the novel Notre-Dame de Paris by the French novelist Victor Hugo... |
| Dominique Pinon Dominique Pinon Dominique Pinon is a French actor whose most famous roles have been in the films of Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Jean-Jacques Beineix. In the theatre, he has appeared in the plays of Gildas Bourdet, Jorge Lavelli and Valère Novarina... |
1999 Parody Quasimodo d'El Paris Quasimodo d'El Paris is a 1999 French film that is a comedic adaptation of the novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo.-Plot:... |
In the Disney film
Clopin is also present in the 1996 Disney adaptation The Hunchback of Notre DameThe Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996 film)
The Hunchback of Notre Dame is a 1996 American animated drama film produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation and released to theaters on June 21, 1996 by Walt Disney Pictures. The thirty-fourth animated feature in the Disney animated features canon, the film is inspired by Victor Hugo's novel of...
, in which he is a more jovial and less sinister gypsy than in the novel. However, he is much darker, in clothing and humor, when Quasimodo
Quasimodo
Quasimodo is a fictional character in the novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame by Victor Hugo. Quasimodo was born with a hunchback and feared by the townspeople as a sort of monster but he finds sanctuary in an unlikely love that is fulfilled only in death. The role of Quasimodo has been played by...
and Captain Phoebus
Captain Phoebus
Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers is a fictional character and one of the main antagonists in Victor Hugo's 1831 novel, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame. He is the Captain of the King's Archers. His name comes from Phoebus, the Greek god of the sun , with whom he shares handsome looks and skill at...
arrive in the Court of Miracles, suggesting his personality during the day to have been something of a façade. However, he shows to have a gentle nature at the end of the film when he picks a little girl up and entertains her with a puppet resembling Judge Claude Frollo
Judge Claude Frollo
Archdeacon Claude Frollo is a fictional character and the anti-hero from Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame.-In the novel:In his youth, Claude Frollo was a highly knowledgeable but morose young man who was orphaned along with his infant brother Jehan when their parents died of the plague...
. He is voiced by Paul Kandel
Paul Kandel
Paul Kandel is an American musical theatre actor and tenor singer best known for his work as the Gypsy leader Clopin in the 1996 Disney film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. He also has appeared on Broadway a number of times, having appeared in Jesus Christ Superstar as King Herod, Titanic, The Who's...
.
As well as narrating the whole film, Clopin introduces the film and begins the story with the song "The Bells of Notre Dame". He also sings "Topsy Turvy" about the traditional Parisian "Feast of Fools", held every year on January 6.
Clopin wears two main costumes during the film: a jester suit (seen to the right), which he wears at the Festival of Fools; he also wears a similar costume in the catacombs
Catacombs
Catacombs, human-made subterranean passageways for religious practice. Any chamber used as a burial place can be described as a catacomb, although the word is most commonly associated with the Roman empire...
, but it is almost completely purple with no gold trim, no mask, and no bells. In "The Court of Miracles", he wears a lawyer outfit, a judges outfit, and an executioner's outfit for brief periods of time.
He appears in the film five times. The first appearance is when Clopin sings "The Bells of Notre Dame," which tells the tale of how Frollo killed Quasimodo's mother, but was stopped by the Archdeacon before he could kill Quasimodo by drowning him in a well.
The second appearance is at the Festival of Fools, where he sings "Topsy Turvy," a riveting dance number that explains that it is "the day we do the things that we deplore on the other three-hundred-and-sixty-four." It is also during this song that he crowns Quasimodo the "King of Fools."
His third appearance is much later in the film, at the Court of Miracles, which is where he and a large group of gypsies believe Quasimodo and Phoebus to be spies. They sing the song "The Court of Miracles" as Clopin puts Quasimodo and Phoebus on "trial" which includes a jury consisting of a puppet crafted in Clopin's likeness. He eventually finds them "totally innocent, which is the worst crime of all." He prepares to hang them, but Esmeralda arrives in time to stop him and tell the gypsies of their good intentions. Both Quasimodo and Phoebus inform the gypsy people to leave, saying that Frollo knows of their hideout, and they agree to do so. Unfortunately, Frollo arrives just in time to attack the Court of Miracles and Clopin is seen with his people struggling to break free from their bonds.
His fourth appearance is briefly during the climax of the film where Esmeralda is at the pyre before Notre Dame. When Quasimodo rescues Esmeralda, Phoebus breaks free and rouses the civilians into action, and Clopin is seen jumping out of one of the many cages that hold the gypsies freed by the civilians. Along with the civilians they attack Frollo's soldiers.
His fifth and final appearance is at the end, where he sings a reprise of "The Bells of Notre Dame" while entertaining one of the young children as the civilians finally accept Quasimodo into their society.
As the movie's narrator, Clopin has a great deal of knowledge about Quasimodo's past, seemingly more than Quasimodo himself. This suggests that to know the whole story, throughout Paris he must have many contacts.
Not only is Clopin the narrator in the story, but he is also the King of the Gypsies, who at the time were being rounded-up and murdered in an act of "purification" by Frollo.
Clopin also appeared in the straight-to-video sequel, The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
The Hunchback of Notre Dame II
The Hunchback of Notre Dame II is a 2002 direct-to-video sequel to the 1996 Disney animated film The Hunchback of Notre Dame. It was produced by Walt Disney Animation Japan...
, as the host for the Festival of Love, although he is no longer the narrator and plays a much smaller role.