Phantom of the Opera (1943)

During a major war, a lot of things get put away for the duration. One of them, understandably, is the horror film. When cities are being bombed out of existence, civilians flee in terror and a generation of young men march to meet other young men who may be less than sympathetic, then the goings on of the working vampire or struggling werewolf tend not to be a big box office draw. Small wonder that the 1940s were a decade singularly lacking in the spine chilling.

One of the rare exceptions was Universal Studios' 1943 remake of The Phantom of the Opera. Or it would be, if it actually was a horror film instead of a Hollywood spectacle that takes a feeble stab at the genre. True, the original 1925 production starring Lon Chaney was also a spectacle, but it was a spectacle... of TERROR! Sorry, I couldn't resist the bad advertising copy. I've seen too many trailers. The most important part of any horror story is setting the atmosphere. You need to introduce the props and settings that tell the audience "Your popcorn will be scattered all over the place by the end of act two". There has to be gloom, or overbearing architecture, or a black cat, or a flickering shadow, or a creepy undercurrent to the music, or a clown. Definitely a clown. That doesn't mean that every horror story needs to start with a fog-shrouded, dilapidated graveyard overshadowed by ruined castle with a solitary light in the highest tower suggesting ancient secrets straining to be unleashed upon an unsuspecting world (though it helps). A story can open on a cheery, sunny day with flowers and bunnies so long as one of the bunnies has a sinister air about him. That's not what we have with this Phantom, however. Not that it's really a surprise when Nelson Eddy gets top billing. We open with an opera set (the one from the original 1925 film, by the way) lit for Technicolor with a happy opera number just warming up. In a real horror film we'd get about eight bars in before the camera cuts to a shadowy figure undoing a rope. Here, the camera pans, zooms in, and before you know it, we're through the proscenium and on stage with the actors. And if you know anything about musicals, you realise that at this point, all hope is lost.

Don't get me wrong. Phantom of the Opera isn't a bad movie. In fact, it's a very good one. It whittles down the Gaston Leroux novel to its bare bones, but at least it preserves the story of an obsessed, hideously disfigured musician whose idea of "helping" a struggling young singer at the Paris Opera is by lurking in the woodwork and killing anyone who gets in the way of her career, and the Claude Rains turns in a solid performance as the Phantom. The film is beautiful to look at with an excellent "opera" score pieced together out of symphonic pieces because the war made securing the rights to operas still under copyright next to impossible. Not to mention that the Oscar it picked up for use of colour was well deserved and the film did make an unprecedented four million dollars at the box office. True, the costumes have the period's usual Hollywood over the top quality and I cannot believe that an opera manager's office was ever larger and more ornate than the apartments of Louis XIV, but such lavishness is excusable, given the source. What is wrong with it is that it isn't a horror film. It's a musical flying under false colours.

During my years in the theatre, I've only been involved with one musical when I did dialect work for a production of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. It was a fascinating experience. First, because I was the only unattached straight male in the company, which did my social life no end of good, and I got to see a completely different side of how to put together a show. In a normal play with musical numbers in it, the usual way of rehearsing is to work all the lines and blocking. When you get to the musical bit, everyone just goes "La, la, la. We'll stick that in later" and you carry on with the dialogue. With musicals, it's exactly the opposite. I was amazed to watch the performers go through very intricate song and dance routines, get to the end, and go "Blah, blah blah, we'll stick the dialogue in later".

That's what we have here. The focus is not the tortured Claude Rains or his terrified involuntary protege. It's spectacular musical number after musical number; each staged in a pseudo-operatic fashion that is actually that of a high-brow Hollywood musical complete with musical comedy bits and romantic interludes to lighten a story that it already so frothy that it's a wonder it doesn't float away on a light breeze. Even having the infamous chandelier crashing down at the climax doesn't help matters when it refuses to fall until Mr Eddy has finished his aria. The lesson is that if you're here for the Technicolor and the music, then you're in for a great time. But if you in it for the suspense, then the plot will drag from the first five minutes and there are long stretches where you forget that Claude Rains is even in the picture and his end turns out to be, shall we say, perfunctory while the end of the film seems as long as a Minnesota goodbye with a closing gag that I've heard inexplicably quoted three times today.

All in all, it would be a very fallow time until Hammer produced a decent remake in 1962.