Phantom of the Opera (1943) Review: Less Phantom, More Opera...

 Welcome once again sugar junkies, to another episode of "why money can't cure everything."

Remember when I said Bride of Frankenstein was just a big dumb action movie with lots of good special effects but no real story to speak of? Well, I admit (and not for the first time) that said appraisal was overly harsh. Of all the movies I’ve watched so far (and this is the nineteenth) for my thirty hubs challenge, this is the movie that thus far best fits that description…sort of. It doesn’t quite have the ACTION but the 1943 Phantom of the Opera, a remake of the 1925 silent classic was bigger, louder, spent more money, and is about a hundred times dumber. Worst of all, the filmmakers forgot everything that made the original film great and instead, left us with a Batman-esque villain, an unlikeable protagonist, a love quadrilateral instead of a love triangle (it could even be considered a love pentagon if you factor in Christine’s love for the opera), and a focus on the SONGS rather than the characters.

Right from the get-go we are forced to suffer through more singing than I care to experience in my typical movie during the opera’s opening night. Ten minutes later, Christine Dubois (The Climax’s Susanna Foster) is backstage with her boyfriend Raoul (Edgar Barrier of The War of the Worlds and The Giant Claw) who is an inspector with the police and none too fond of the opera. As such, he’d like her to quit and settle down and be a nice housewife. So far, so good. In 1925 Christine was a singer, Raoul was a cop and he wanted her to quit the opera so they could be together. Just then we get our first sidebar and it’s pretty much all downhill from here…a second suitor, lead operatic baritone Anatole Garron (Nelson Eddy leant his voice to Disney’s Make Mine Music, if you’d like further hinting at what is REALLY wrong with this movie) appears to try to win Christine over. He might not want her to quit the opera (at least not yet), since it’s there that he can see her most often, but he would like Raoul to stop visiting, that’s for sure.

Then we have Eric Claudin (The Invisible Man’s Claude Rains). Eric is a violinist in the orchestra, but lately, he’s been experiencing some arthritis in his left hand (the one he uses to hold the strings) and cannot play as well anymore. The conductor has overheard his poor playing and is forced to let him go. Nobody thinks it will be that big of a deal, the opera pays its violinists enough to live comfortably even after their career is done, but Eric has had some additional expenses. He has been living as poorly as possible, and sending the bulk of his money to pay for Christine to get singing lessons from the world’s best teacher. Now, Eric only knows Christine in so far as he is madly in love with her. Being twice her age isn’t helping his cause any, but she might actually be interested in him if she knew who this mysterious benefactor was. After all, the “I have money, baby” play only works if the girl knows who you are!

Without a penny to his name, Eric needs to get some money so he can keep putting Christine through singing lessons until she either becomes a star or he can work up the nerve to ask her out. To that end, he has recently (in fear of losing his job before it happens…at least the man is a planner) submitted a concerto to a nearby publisher. When he loses his job, he goes in to follow-up. What he doesn’t know is that you need a little clout to get a piece of music even listened to, but lucky for him, Christine’s teacher likes being paid so he is in another room in the back, playing Claudin’s concerto for the publisher. When Claudin (after being given the runaround by the underlings at the publishing house who are no doubt informed to keep “pesky” people like Claudin at bay) hears his concerto, he flips his lid. He thinks they are stealing it and so he kills the dude that has been rude to him most recently. This doesn’t exactly go over well with the rest of the workforce so one of the women throws a pan full of engraving acid on his face, causing Claudin to stumble painfully out into the streets and hide from the police in the sewers where we can assume he’s going to be spending the rest of his life now.

Meanwhile, Raoul and Anatole are trying to win Christine with some of the worst comic relief ever and they are about to run into another issue. On the night of the next performance, the opera’s female star Mademoiselle Biancarolli has her drink spiked and she faints in between scenes. The director makes a decision to go on with the show with Christine (Biancarolli’s understudy) in the star role. She’s so good that she gets a bigger response from the opera house than anybody else thus far and it seems her star is born. Raoul is going to have an even harder time convincing her that she should leave the opera now and Anatole might have his hands full trying to prove his innocence since it is known that he loves Christine and thus assumed he is helping her claw her way to the top.

Fortunately for Anatole, Raoul is more professional than jumping to conclusions and the two quickly put their heads together in a scheme to lure out the phantom. How word spreads so quickly that there’s a PHANTOM and how said phantom becomes a legend in a mere matter of days is beyond me, but Anatole and Raoul both think they know who the phantom is and what his motivations are. Raoul’s portion of the plan is to have a new opera performance wherein the star is very obviously NOT Christine, incensing the phantom to make an appearance and do something about it. Anatole, meanwhile, wants to have Claudin’s concerto played to confuse the man under the assumption that he will be unable to resist a performance of his own music.

Do I need to tell you that neither plan really works out that well but in the end some Scooby-Doo-esque goofiness happens that leads to the plans working together? Do I also need to tell you that the phantom is luckily (for his own sake) unrecognizable at the opera because he’s wearing a mask similar to what the chorus is wearing that night? How about the fact that the phantom will be dropping that chandelier and in the ensuing confusion kidnapping Christine? Would you then figure out that there will be an unmasking? Care to guess how this movie ends? I’d bet you wouldn’t guess that the phantom’s underground lair collapses for absolutely no discernable reason!

What a s***-sandwich. 1925’s phantom (as a character) worked because it made SENSE (and was pretty similar to the book version). Eric was BORN disfigured (in the novel, he had a SKULL for a face; in the movie, Lon Chaney Sr. tried to imitate a skull’s appearance). Being born with such a hideous disfigurement lead to much of what made the character the phantom. The years of neglect and hatred towards his appearance scarred him psychologically and emotionally and convinced him he wasn’t a human. Being so ugly, there was no place logical to live than in the catacombs of the opera house (especially since he likes music). Due to his presence at the opera house for YEARS he has become known as a legend and is able to use his intimate knowledge of the inner-workings of the opera house to deal with any foes that would arise or people he just plain doesn’t like. Also (and perhaps most importantly) he has loved Christine from afar since the day she joined the opera and it is HE who has taught her to sing and been her nurturer and mentor. Did you pick up on a single iota of ANY of that from my plot synopsis?? I didn’t think so, because it’s NOT THERE! This film’s version of the phantom is pretty much Two-Face from Batman without being half as interesting. We can sympathize with the 1925 phantom for thinking Christine will love him because he personally has spent years getting to know her and he hopes that personality is more important to women than appearance. The 1943 phantom on the other hand, never really had a chance BEFORE he was disfigured, so what hope does he have of winning Christine’s hand with only half a face?!?!

Also, there is just TOO MUCH SINGING. I totally get that this is a movie about an opera house and as such, I should expect a musical number, perhaps even two, and if the movie had limited us to Christine singing Eric’s concerto and a final performance of said piece of music and MAYBE one other song, I’d be fine with it. This movie, though, features no fewer than five musical numbers and it seems like the characters do nothing OTHER than sing. This might not be so bad, except that not one of the songs in this steaming pile does a single thing to advance the plot. We’ve got a musical where the music is not part of the story…ugh.

So what did we learn today? I’m sure there’s a lesson or two in here…how about this? Love TRIANGLES might be interesting (though they usually devolve into rom-coms) but love quadrilaterals are just stupid. We’ve also learned that if you don’t have the guts to ask out your dream woman, you might want to try getting splashed in the face with acid, although I should caution you that while that will give you the guts, it will hurt your chances of actually getting said date more than help them. We’ve also learned that if you notice a mask is missing, you should find DIFFERENT masks for everyone else to wear so you can be on the lookout for the oddball. Further, we’ve learned that a hacksaw can cut through an inch-thick chain for a chandelier in little more than the length of one song.  Finally, we’ve learned that bigger, louder and more colorful does not mean better…in fact, many times it means worse, much, much worse.

The movie probably boils down to about 25 minutes if you skip past all the singing. Stick with the Lon Chaney version…they can’t ruin a silent film with long songs, after all. Final rating below. For a full index of reviews and an explanation of my ratings system, just CLICK HERE.

This hub is number nineteen in my “30 Hubs in 30 Days (PLUS THREE!) Challenge” where I will be reviewing essentially all the old Universal monster movies (the 30) as well as the very first, the very best and the very worst films to feature ensemble casts of ALL the monsters (PLUS THREE) over the period of just thirty (plus three) days. Who “challenged” me? Nobody…well, unless one can challenge themselves. In that case, I challenged me.