Phantom of the Opera (1943) - film review

When Erique Claudin loses his job as a violinist at the Paris Opera House he hastily sets about selling the concerto he has been working on for years.  All the money he has earned he has spent in providing singing lessons for a young soprano, Christine Dubois, whom he loves and who knows nothing of his benevolence.  Reduced to desperation, Claudin attacks and kills a music publisher who, he believes, has stolen his concerto, only to have a dish of acid thrown into his face by the publisher’s assistant.  Horribly disfigured, Claudin takes refuge in the sewers of Paris and, his mind broken, plans a terrible revenge.  A short while later, a series of mysterious accidents begin to blight the Paris Opera House.  Biancarolli, the leading diva, is drugged one evening and Christine is forced to take her place.  Believing that Christine’s baritone boyfriend, Anatole Garron, is responsible for this skulduggery, Biancarolli insists that Christine be demoted to the chorus.  In truth, it was Claudin who drugged Biancarolli and, driven insane by his love for Christine, he gives a dire ultimatum.  If Christine Dubois does not sing the leading part in the next opera, he will bring death and terror to the opera house...

It took Universal Pictures more than fifteen years to get round to remaking their earlier adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s celebrated horror novel The Phantom of the Opera.  The original 1925 version, which starred "man of a thousand faces" Lon Chaney in one of his most memorable roles, was an early success for Universal and encouraged the studio to embark on the production of a series of horror films, the popularity of which transformed the fortunes of the studio.   Various attempts had been made to remake the film in the 1930s, but these came to nothing, and it wasn’t until the early 1940s that circumstances conspired to give the masked Phantom his eagerly awaited return to the silver screen.

The 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera is a mixed bag of a film and appears to suffer from something of a Jekyll and Hyde identity crisis.  Leroux’s novel is transformed into something that more closely resembles a musical comedy than a Gothic horror film and the story of the Phantom is all but overlooked.  On the plus side, the film is visually stunning, and won Oscars for its lush Technicolor cinematography and lavish artistic design.  It features some very popular actors of the day, notably Claude Rains and Nelson Eddy.   The sequences in the opera house (which re-used the set of the original 1925 film) are well staged and evoke something of the magic of the Parisian opera of the late 19th century.  However, any true enthusiast of the horror genre cannot fail to be dismayed by the film’s abject failure to capitalise on the horror and pathos in Leroux’s story.  

Although his part is tragically underwritten (to make way for some tedious burlesque involving the other characters) Claude Rains does succeed in bringing some poignancy to his portrayal of the Phantom.  He doesn’t quite convey the same level of menace that he achieved in his earlier Universal horror flick, The Invisible Man (1933), but he does provide the film with the emotional centre that it badly needs.   Perhaps the most disappointing aspect of the film is that it fails to explain Claudin’s interest in the young singer Christine Dubois.  In the original screenplay, there was a scene in which Claudin was revealed to be Christine’s estranged father.  This sequence was excised from the film when the studio bosses became anxious that it may carry incestuous undertones.   

Despite its obvious imperfections, this whimsical take on The Phantom of the Opera is entertaining and was one of Universal’s biggest successes.  The studio planned to cash in on the film’s popularity by making a direct sequel in which the Phantom returns to resume his reign of terror.  The unavailability of lead actors Claude Rains and Nelson Eddy resulted in a major plot rethink and the film that was made, The Climax, wasn’t so much a sequel as a similarly themed follow-up – which proved to be a spectacular box office failure.   In 1962, the British film company Hammer brought the Phantom back in a spectacular production (directed by Terence Fisher and starring Herbert Lom as the masked monstrosity), which, for all its failings, at least evokes something of the Grand Guignol horror of Leroux’s novel.

© James Travers 2008

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