Review: Phantom of the Opera (1943)

When Universal announced that it was going to remake their 1925 classic, Phantom of the Opera--something the studio had wanted to do since the advent of sound--Lon Chaney Jr. very much wanted to follow in his father's footsteps and lobbied to play the role his father had made famous. Universal, however, never seriously considered Chaney Jr. for the part and gave it to suave, elegant Claude Rains instead, while Chaney continued to be the studio's resident monster man, reprising his star-making character in Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man and playing the less-than-suave, not-so-elegant Count Alucard (that's "Dracula" spelled backwards--get it?) in Son of Dracula.

That's a shame, though. Chaney could have done no harm in this remake of Phantom, which is much more concerned with the spectacle of Opera than it is with thrills and chills, and Rains' presence in Son of Dracula would have substantially improved was a respectable horror picture, but hopelessly crippled by the casting of Chaney as the sophisticated, menacing vampire. But Rains had substantial physical grace and a wonderful voice (as demonstrated in The Invisible Man ten years earlier), both of which serve him well in this role, where his face is hidden for much of the back half of the movie.

Unlike the original Phantom, which introduced us to the Phantom after he's already disfigured, out of his mind and living in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House, the remake introduces Erique as a violin player at the Opera, crippled by arthritis and forced into retirement. He loves the new singer, Christine (Susanna Foster), from afar, even though she's being romanced by baritone Anatole (Nelson Eddy) and policeman Raoul (Edgar Barrier). Erique writes his own concerto, which he hopes Christine will sing some day, but sells it to pay for her singing lessons without her knowledge. (Her singing teacher is played by Leo Carillo, who would go on to play Pancho opposite Duncan Renaldo as the Cisco Kid on the big and small screens.) Through a misunderstanding, though, Erique thinks his music is being stolen by the printer producing the manuscript. This upsets him just a bit, and he throttles the printer, only to get acid splashed in his face.

Erique takes refuge in beneath the Opera House and starts doing all the stuff you'd expect a good Phantom to do: Making threats, killing people, dropping chandeliers on audiences, kidnapping Christine, etc. His unmasking is held off until the end of the picture, and it can't help but disappoint, even though Jack Pierce's makeup for Rains's face is realistic and shocking--it just can't compare to Chaney's.

That's the overall problem with this Phantom remake--it's not anywhere near as scary, mostly because it doesn't try to be. Since Chaney's performance was still so well remembered, the remake focuses much more attention on the opera performances, which are lavish and make excellent use of the vocal talents of Eddy and Foster. The sets look great, too, even if they're recycled from other Universal pictures, especially horror films like Murders in the Rue Morgue, Dracula and even the original Phantom. And while most of Universal's monster movies in the 1940s were cheaply shot black and white B-pictures, the Technicolor photography and big production numbers of Phantom make it as different from those other films as lunchtime is from midnight.

Unfortunately, better production values don't necessarily translate into more thrills, and while this Technicolor Phantom is a wonder to look at, it's never very scary, despite all the efforts of Rains, who turns in a good performance as a genuinely nice man driven mad by physical pain and romantic obsession.

Even so, this new Phantom did very well at the box office and won a couple of Oscars (for color cinematography and art direction), so Universal planned a sequel. But Rains didn't want to play the role again and Eddy wasn't available, so the studio rewrote the script and shot it as the suggestively titled The Climax, with Foster again playing a young up-and-coming singer and Boris Karloff taking over the role of the obsessed killer.