My wife and I have a lovely tradition (or at least I'm trying to make it one - 4 years is a tradition, right?) where we watch a horror movie on New Year's Eve. She's not too into the horror genre and is decidedly against the blood and guts, so I have to choose wisely about which movies to watch. So far, we've checked out The Cat o' Nine Tails, Detention, Pan's Labyrinth, and now Phantom of the Opera. I think the Phantom was her favorite so far, in that it's pretty far from a horror film and very Old Hollywood (huge cast, big set pieces, broad comedy). It was a little disappointing to me personally, having recently become enamored with Dario Argento's insane take on the tale. But still, it was an enjoyable time on the couch.
Here, the phantom is played by Claude Rains - also The Invisible Man! - we get to know a little about him in his pre-phantom days. He is a violinist at the famed Paris Opera House, and is struck by some sort of nerve issue that limits his ability to perform. He is secretly obsessed with the understudy Opera singer Christine DuBois (Susanna Foster), and is anonymously funding her obscenely expensive singing lessons with the best Opera teacher in Paris. Now that he can no longer make money playing the violin, he attempts to sell a sonata that he has written. When he brings it to the publishing house, he (mistakenly?) thinks they are going to steal it from him and freaks out. He gets acid in his face for his troubles (and murders two people in his rage) and the Phantom is born.
From that point on, I don't know how much I have to get into the story. You have the general business about the Phantom wanting to help Christine, but resorting to nefarious deeds to do so. And a chandelier drop. And chases around and beneath the Opera house. You probably know the gist of it by now.
I don't know if this Phantom entirely succeeds as a horror film. It just isn't scary, like at all. I know it's an old movie and everything, but this is the softest I've seen from the Universal monsters thus far. There are a couple of eerie shots of the Phantom's shadow on the wall, but nothing that really reaches the iconic shots from The Mummy or The Invisible Man. And sure, the Phantom kills a few people, but they are all along the line of "he approaches the camera slowly, and then we cut to a scene saying so-and-so has been murdered!" I think we see his hands around the neck of one guy, and maybe one other tussle. The chandelier drop just kind of happens, and there is a general panic, but you never get the idea that anything too serious occurred.
So while it leaves a a lot to be desired as far as horror goes, this Phantom of the Opera really succeeds as a comedy and a musical. This was quite a surprise to me, as my previous Universal Monster experiences stayed pretty far away from anything other than horror (and maybe romance - but I think that was a requirement filmmaking at the time). There is a lot of actual opera music here - even more than you would expect from a movie with "Opera" in the title. I don't get opera - the vocals sound too unstructured to my ears, and don't seem to make sense with the music. But there's enough non-singing stuff going on that I found all three of the extended opera scenes enjoyable. It's never just one or two people standing there bellowing. These scenes are much more in the grand musical tradition - a cast of thirty plus people dancing around in elaborate costumes with intense choreography.
The comedy? I actually really liked the two non-phantom guys who were competing for Christine's heart. One is a fellow opera singer played by Nelson Eddy, and the other is a police inspector who is assigned to the case of the Phantom, played by Edgar Barrier. These two play off of each other nicely, and ended being the most memorable part of the movie for me. It's kind of an old-style comedy duo - the singer is a little more bombastic and emotional, and the cop is more rational. But they end up doing to exact same things to win Christine's heart. They get to verbally spar with each other, and they work some physical comedy in there as well (there is one recurring bit where they try to walk through doors at the same time). I tried to play it cool and chalk it up as being too corny for me, but I was won over by them in the end. They're just old-school charming - I'd like to see a sequel where just the two of them are just hanging out, on a cruise or solving crimes or something.
And the movie just looks awesome. I watched it on Blu Ray, and the color popped and the crispness of the picture was out of this world. Whoever restored this at Universal did a great job. All of the restorations on the Universal Monsters box set look great, but the extra added issue of color here just made things stand out even more. (Comparing it to the old washed out preview made the difference even more stark - the picture above is from the preview, as I can't screen capture blu ray in my current set-up.)
Overall, this was just a fun movie to watch, and really reminded me of why I like going back to Old Hollywood from time to time. I don't watch a ton of movies from this era (particularly comedic musicals), so I can't say for sure if this was par for the course... regardless, I had a good time with it, and so did my wife. Not a bad way to finish up 2014.
I would recommend this film.
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