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Phantom of the Opera Movie Review

Phantom of the Opera is a 1943 romantic musical horror film directed by Arthur Lubin and starring Claude Rains in the main role. It is a very weak, frustrating adaptation.

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“I’ve seen samples of your compositions before.

Perhaps some employee threw it into the waste basket where it belongs“

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An acid-scarred composer rises from the Paris sewers to boost his favorite opera understudy’s career. First of all, I am a huge fan of the 1925 Lon Chaney version. I adore that absolute classic of a film. Maybe it isn’t fair of me to compare the two as they are ultimately so different, but I was so disappointed with this adaptation as it lacks the punch of the original.

The first one was a pure horror movie, very scary for its time. This one, however, totally jettisons the horror elements in favor of the romantic and musical ones. Needless to say, it did not quite work. It is a movie that is thoroughly well made, but it lacks the intrigue of the original, which is why it is far from memorable and exciting for modern viewers.

Yes, the opera is in the title of the very story that this movie adapts, but did we need to have a full on opera musical picture? I don’t think so. The result is this very dated take on a famous story that lost its appeal for today’s audiences. The opera numbers sounded too similar to each other and the majority of the runtime being devoted to those numbers was really not a good filmmaking choice.

This Phantom of the Opera does benefit from a very strong performance from the usually great Claude Rains. He is excellent and very strong here in the only memorable performance in the film as all the other actors and actresses felt inferior and forgettable.

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The movie got four Oscar nominations and two wins for production design and color cinematography. And it does look great. It is polished, colorful and particularly terrific in its sets and costumes. But all that visual grandeur could not disguise the weakness of the plot and the slowness of the pacing that framed this movie to its time period too much.

1943’s Phantom of the Opera is an inferior adaptation to the classic 1925 Lon Chaney version. Its sets and costumes are terrific and Claude Rains is excellent in the main role, but all the other actors aren’t as memorable, the movie’s slow in pace and the decision to focus so heavily on the musical elements and jettison the horror roots of the story really backfired.

My Rating – 3