I'm not certain how many horror movies I'm going to be blogging about in October, just because I haven't examined the schedule closely enough to see what's on my DVR that's also airing in October to do posts on, or which horror films are worth blogging about in general more than the stuff that's in my queue of movies to post about. So since a horror film has made it to the top of my queue, I'm not going to wait until October to mention it: the 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera.
Claude Rains plays the phantom here, although as the movie opens he's decidedly not the phantom, but still looking as elegant as Claude Rains always did. Rains plays Erique Claudin, and at the start of the movie he's one of the violinists in the orchestra at the Paris Opera House. But the conductor can tell that one of the violinists is off, and he's pretty certain it's Erique. So after the show, the conductor calls Erique into the office to play for him. Eric plays a simple tune of his own composition, something that's easy to play. The conductor isn't fooled, and on learning that Erique has some sort of neurologic issue affecting his hands, forces Erique into a pension.
It's a modest pension, but the conductor knows that Erique lives modestly and his savings combined with the pension should provide a comfortable enough requirement. What the conductor doesn't know is that Erique has been stupid, thinking with his little head instead of his big one. Christine Dubois (Susanna Foster) is an understudy to the lead in the opera, and Erique has fallen head over heels in love with her. She doesn't know this, however, and already has two other suitors, the opera's baritone Garron (Nelson Eddy), and police inspector Daubert (Edgar Barrier). In fact, Erique has spent all his money anonymously paying for music lessons for Christine so she can make it as the lead soloist.
Erique doesn't have any money to pay the rent, but he has been working on a concerto that he hopes can be published. The publisher he submitted it to, Pleyel (not the piano maker), tells he hasn't gotten around to it, but then in the background Erique hears the concerto being played. So he naturally assumes Pleyel is trying to steal it, copyright law not being so strong in those days, and doesn't realize that Franz Liszt has shown up and taken a look at the new concerto. (You may recall from other movies that Liszt was a champion of young composers.) Erique gets in a dispute with Pleyel, and in the resulting fracas a tray of printer's etching acid gets thrown in his face, badly disfiguring him. So this is how he became the Phantom.
Now a wanted man and with little money and a horrible face, Erique retreats under the Paris Opera House, and sets about figuring ways to get revenge on the people who wronged him as well as getting Christine her chance to be the lead soloist. He drugs the actual female lead, and this brings the police in. And wouldn't you know it, but Daubert is the detective on the case! Erique makes more threats (amazingly, nobody recognizes his handwriting), and the threats become increasingly violent. However, the Code won't allow Erique to get away with murder, and the story was always intended to be tragic anyway, at least for the Phantom.
As I watched this version of Phantom of the Opera, it seemed to me rather different from how I recalled the Lon Chaney silent version, which I'll admit I haven't seen in quite a few years. Reading up on it, Universal made quite a few changes to Gaston Leroux's original story, a lot more than the 1925 film version did. Universal also sprung for Technicolor on this version, having access to the lovely three-strip Technicolor process that they didn't in 1925, when only the two-strip process that didn't produce such lifelike or vivid colors was around. Technicolor is a great choice here, as the color is beautiful and the cinematography is quite good. The acting, however, apart from Rains, is mediocre, a lot because the story puts more emphasis on opera singing than on opera acting.
But while this 1943 version of Phantom of the Opera is a bit of a mixed bag, for the most part it's a more than adequate production that's definitely worth watching.
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