A Filmmaker's Review: "Phantom of the Opera" (1943)

I wrote about the 1925 version starring Lon Chaney and you can view that here. But, this one created almost twenty years' later was loosely based on the book and this production, having more of a mix between noir and horror instead of just monstrosity like the original. I found that this film was less scary than the 1925 one and that's probably because I saw the 1925 one when I was young and I was terrified. As I said though, th 1943 version had more noir/crime content and themes. It was far more of a faster-paced story than an atmospheric horror film. And guess what? It still works.

This film is about a man who is the victim of an acid attack after murdering someone and goes then to hide underneath the Paris Opera. After a story of revenge ensues, he sets his eyes on the beautiful opera singer, Christine DuBois. Once he has set his eyes on her, he begins to rampage across the opera, striking fear into people through the murder of Christine's competitors in order to 'help' her to stardom. Whilst this was taking place, Raoul hatches a plan for Liszt to play the phantom's song in the opera in order to lure him in. But he doesn't realise that something is about to take a turn for the absolute worst.

The film itself is a masterpiece, it has a brilliant script and the fact that the tension is super intense at certain points of chase creates an honestly heart-racing crime film rather than a horror. A refreshing new taste to the legend of the man beneath the Paris Opera. The one thing I did love were the chase scenes because they felt very real and tense. The fact we saw characters hanging off curtains and the ins and outs of the small alleyways of the Paris Operas as low as the cellars and as high as the ceilings, it definitely shows the giant set that they had to work with. It was filmed brilliantly to make it look even bigger as well. All of this filmmaking just adds to the fact that this film focuses more on the criminal aspect.

As I have said about "The Invisible Man" film by Universal Pictures, Claude Rains is an amazing actor. Claude Rains portrays the phantom named Eric. He is a brilliant actor and his script was amazing to work with in order for him to provide his best work. Claude Rains is known for his ability to play these almost scarily good criminals with a very machiavellian side to him - the characters he plays are often complex, psychologically disturbed and has some sort of traumatic incident in their recent past that ostracises them from the community and presents them as this frightening and almost skin-crawling person who stalks the streets or the place which they inhabit. In my opinion, Claude Rains practically perfected this character whilst also giving them a redeeming quality in which we feel like it is not entirely their own fault. It is a very complex and difficult character to understand and Rains was brilliant and making their stories seem very much a reality and a possibility.

In conclusion, I feel like there were many sides to this film which made it a huge success and there were many things that made it more of a crime noir adaptation of the modern classic novel. I admit that I have seen this film quite a few times and it took me some time to write the review since I wanted to know what I enjoyed the most since I could find no real faults with the film. I enjoyed the comic relief at the end involving Raoul and the Policeman as well because it made a light-hearted ending in which we can see that things are truly resolved. This is obviously important to the audience at the time wanting to see a happy ending but it is also appropriate for the Pre-Code era in which it was based upon and so, even though there are a number of inaccuracies from the book I can honestly say I can appreciate the changes. It just worked.