Now we get to a movie I've seen before.
My first viewing of THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA was a memorable one. The Oregon Symphony was playing live accompaniment to this silent classic on the big screen one Halloween night back when I was in high school, so my parents were kind enough to buy me a ticket and take me to the Schnitz to see it go down.
A few years before, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical had gone through Portland. I didn't get to see it at the time (I saw it years later in Toronto) but I was familiar with the story from my childhood monster books and fascinated with the musical. That summer my family traveled to Europe, including Paris, so we made sure to stop by the Opera House. We didn't go on an official tour, but we did wander around a little, and came across Box 5, famous as the box the Phantom haunted. Just our luck, a couple employees happened to be in the area and let us in. We didn't get to see much of the auditorium because they were in the middle of a lighting test, so it was very dark, but I can say I got to stand in the Phantom's box, box 5.
Watching this film so closely back to back with THE HUNCHBACK OF NOTRE DAME is interesting. They have a ton of similarities. Both of them are about tragic, deformed characters who dwell in Parisian landmarks and fall in love with beautiful women who will never love them. Both films star Lon Chaney as the grotesque lead, and both films co-star Norman Kerry as the boring romantic competition. There's even a scene towards the end of PHANTOM in which the title character is feeling an angry mob on the streets of Paris and passes right by the very same cathedral set from HUNCHBACK.
I think PHANTOM is the stronger of the two films, though maybe not by much. It wastes less time dwelling on the side characters, of whom there are less to waste time on. The Phantom is on screen a lot more than the Hunchback, and drives a lot more of the action. The Hunchback is a more sympathetic character since he's mostly misunderstood and not exactly the evil genius that the Phantom is, but the Phantom's outright villainy is more interesting to watch. The makeup is also better: here, Chaney's face appears a little more flesh and less set in stone. It looks less like a mask and more like a real face. The one thing that Hunchback has over Phantom is the glorious Notre Dame set itself. The Paris Opera House set comes close, but doesn't quite reach the majesty of the cathedral from the previous film.
The most famous scene in the film is the one where Christine, the young opera singer who the Phantom has been secretly mentoring and falling in love with, tears the Phantom's mask off and reveals his hideous face. The scene can still shock, even though it's so famous that you know it's coming before you even start the movie rolling.
An equally effective scene occurs a few minutes later when the Phantom crashes a masquerade ball. The masquerade ball sequence is shot in a primitive form of Technicolor, so it stands out from the rest of the black and white and/or tinted footage, especially thanks to the Phantom's scarlet-red costume offset with a skull mask almost as hideous as his actual face.
I made mention of the Phantom's villainy earlier. To be sure, he's selfish, psychotic, and murderous. But, he has lived a life of exile due to his deformities and some of his lines hint at a history of abuse that is never quite fleshed out. So, like all good villains, you can feel a little sorry for him. The most touching scene, I thought, was right near the end of the film.
An angry mob (with torches, of course) has cornered the Phantom on the banks of the Seine. They're approaching from all sides. The Phantom suddenly holds up a clenched fist and threatenes the crowd. The crowd backs off. What is the deranged genius holding this time, the crowd wonders? The audience wonders, too. We've seen him pull all manner of booby traps and tricks, so we wonder what this last one will be.
He opens his fist to reveal -- nothing. The Phantom's last trick is just that. A trick. A desperate bluff. And, seeing they're safe, the crowd descends on him ruthlessly.
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