Phantom of the Opera (1943)

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Movie
German title Phantom of the opera
Original title Phantom of the Opera
Country of production United States
original language English
Publishing year 1943
length 92 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Arthur Lubin
script Samuel Hoffenstein
production George Waggner
music Edward Ward
camera W. Howard Greene
Hal Mohr
cut Russell Schoengarth
occupation

Phantom of the Opera is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Gaston Leroux from 1943 . The film is the first color film version of the horror novel about the disfigured musical genius. Directed by Arthur Lubin and the title role played by Claude Rains .

action

After twenty years of working as a violinist for the Paris Opera , the musician Erique Claudin is fired because he is no longer able to follow the more complicated violin parts because of his spreading gout . Claudin also threatens to quit his apartment because he cannot pay the rent. As an anonymous benefactor, over the years he invested his salary and all of his savings in the vocal training of the young soprano Christine Dubois.

Claudin's last hope of making money is to sell a great piano concerto that he composed himself. He sends it to the publishing house “Pleyel & Desjardins”. There a serious misunderstanding arises: Pleyel did not want to take any time for Claudin and criticized the concert without even having heard it. Seriously disappointed, Claudin is just about to leave the room when he hears someone playing the main theme of his concert in the next room. Claudin thinks that Pleyel is trying to steal his life's work, whereupon he goes nuts, falls on his neck and strangles him. In a panic, Pleyel's assistant takes an acid bath to etch copper plates and pours it on Claudin's face.

With burns and hunted as a murderer, Claudin flees into the sewers of Paris and ultimately retreats to the vaults under the Paris Opera . From now on, as the “ phantom of the opera ” , he leaves no stone unturned in promoting Christine's career. For example, during a performance he numbs the scheming opera diva Biancarolli by putting a kind of sleeping pill in a cup, from which she has to drink in her stage role immediately before the break. With her failure, Christine has to step in as a representative and can win the hearts of the audience for herself.

When investigating the incident, police inspector Raoul D'Aubert, an old friend and admirer of Christines, initially suspects the baritone Anatole Garron, who is also a friend and mentor of the singer. Garron, however, refers to the possibility of everyone having secretly prepared the cup at the props table. Biancarolli, however, does not believe in her attested "powerlessness", but instead accuses Christine's admirer Garron of wanting to have poisoned her to enable Christine to be deployed. In order to contain the scandal, the directors of the opera decide to negate Christine's appearance in public. In response, Claudin murders Biancarolli and her maid after the next performance.

Police inspector Raoul D'Aubert and the baritone Anatole Garron clash again and again not only in courting for Christine, but also during the investigation. Little by little they get on the track of the real culprit, because soon the next threatening letter arrives in the management of the house: The opera house, which has now been closed, should be reopened and Christine should sing the lead role. Otherwise a catastrophe would occur. Here D'Aubert sees a chance to set a trap for the “phantom”. The request is refused, another singer is used and police officers in disguise are placed between the stage staff. D'Aubert hopes to be able to overpower the perpetrator when attempting an attack.

The consequences of this plan, however, are devastating: During the performance, the phantom saws through a chain link of the eight-ton chandelier above the auditorium , whereupon it falls down into the audience. In the ensuing chaos of fleeing people and the rescue of the dead and injured, he succeeds in kidnapping Christine, who was previously curious but now watching in shock, into the opera's underground passages and tunnels. Claudin pretended to be a policeman disguised in a costume. He claimed his job was to get her to safety.

Since D'Aubert's plan has tragically failed, Garron tries another way to lure the phantom out again. With Franz Liszt at the pianoforte , who is hastily brought to the stage, the entire opera orchestra plays the premiere of Claudin's piano concerto, while Garron and D'Aubert follow his footsteps downwards.

Claudin, who listens to the music, goes to a piano in his basement hiding place and joins the game. Meanwhile he asks Christine to sing to his music. The main theme of the first movement is the adaptation of a popular song from Provence , from which Claudin and Christine both come. Since Christine still doesn't know who is hiding behind the phantom (Claudin finally covers his facial burns with a half mask ), she rips off his mask and sees his mutilated face. Claudin is startled. At this very moment, Garron and D'Aubert rush in, and he wants to attack them with a machete. Inspector D'Aubert fires a warning shot upwards, hitting the porous ceiling of the vault, which loses its statics, collapses and buries Erique Claudin under itself. At the last moment the men and Christine manage to escape from the falling stone blocks.

Awards

  • Oscar for the best equipment
  • Oscar for the best camera
  • Oscar nomination for best music
  • Oscar nomination for best tone

Others

  • Throughout the film there are repeated allusions that Erique Claudin could be Christine's father, this is evident from the way he speaks to her “I have always protected you”, and above all from his concert, which at one Lullaby based that Christine sings over and over again.
  • Due to the great success of Phantom of the Opera , a sequel to the film called The Climax was originally planned , again with Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster and Claude Rains as the Phantom who survived the collapse of the vault, but this was due to problems with the script and the availability of Claude Rains never came about. The year after the Phantom of the Opera , 1944, The Climax was released in cinemas, but has nothing to do with the Phantom. Susanna Foster plays a singer named Angela here, and Boris Karloff is the main actor .
  • At the end of the film there is another tracking shot through the destroyed hiding place of the phantom and shows his mask, which was leaning against his old violin, in the background you can hear the clatter of stones, as if someone were digging, which is a clear indication of this Survival of the phantom is now leaving the opera behind.
  • The film is one of the few adaptations of the material that does without the first article, “the”.
  • The make-up of the phantom comes from Jack Pierce , the make-up artist who also created most of the other universal monsters such as Frankenstein or the Wolf Man .

Reviews

  • An "excellent adaptation by Arthur Lubin, in which the legendary Claude Rains slipped into the role of the phantom." - Prisma
  • "The first and best remake of the classic silent film relies on melodrama and technicolor." - TV feature film
  • "(...) a lot of operatic art at the expense of horror, but excellent color photography (...)." (Rating: 3 stars = very good) - Adolf Heinzlmeier and Berndt Schulz in Lexicon "Films on TV" (extended new edition). Rasch and Röhring, Hamburg 1990, ISBN 3-89136-392-3 , pp. 641-642
  • "Despite excellent music and criminal sobriety an exhausting nerve mill." - 6000 films. Critical notes from the cinema years 1945 to 1958. Handbook V of the Catholic film criticism, 3rd edition, Verlag Haus Altenberg, Düsseldorf 1963, p. 336

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Phantom of the Opera. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed January 26, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  2. ↑ The Phantom of the Opera. In: Prism Online. Retrieved January 26, 2017 .
  3. ↑ The Phantom of the Opera. In: TV Spielfilm.de. Retrieved January 26, 2017 .