Movie Review: The Phantom of the Opera (1943)

The Phantom of the Opera (1943) directed by Arthur Lubin

In this lavish technicolor remake of their silent classic, Universal Studios went fully operatic in The Phantom of the Opera. The story opens with Erique Claudin (Claude Rains) playing his heart out on the violin in the orchestra pit of the Paris Opera House. He's smitten with Christine Dubois (Susanna Foster), an up and coming soprano whom he barely has the nerve to talk to. He's happy to pay for her voice lessons as an anonymous benefactor. Things come crashing down around him as his left hand starts to stiffen up. The conductor fires him from the opera; the music teacher says he will stop working with Christine; even Erique's landlady will kick him out because of unpaid back rent. Desperate to make some money, Erique takes a concerto he's been working on to a music publisher. The publisher is uninterested, though Franz Liszt (Fritz Leiber) is fascinated with the work and is playing it in another room. Erique hears his own music and goes into a rageful attack on the publisher, assuming he plans to steal the work. The publisher's assistant throws acid on Erique in an attempt to stop the attack. She is too late. Erique has killed the publisher and flees to the sewers in agony.

Christine is blithely unaware of all of this because she is being romantically pursued by the opera's baritone (Nelson Eddy) and a police inspector (Edgar Barrier). She enjoys the attention, not realizing her love triangle is actually a square. Erique takes advantage of the rumored haunting of the opera house and becomes the Phantom everyone whispers about. He sends notes to the opera managers to get Christine the lead role. He even poisons the ingenue for whom Christine is the understudy. Christine does a great job filling in but is kept in her place by the ingenue, who does not want a replacement. Tensions grow as the Phantom makes more plans while the two love interests lay their own traps for the opera ghost.

The movie has a lot of opera performances, taking advantage of the sound and color format that was absent for the Lon Chaney classic. The staging and songs look and sound great though they have little to do with the plot other than that's where the story is set. Rains gives a good performance, displaying the mousiness that turns into predation as his love becomes more bold. He's very sympathetic and comes off more tragic than evil. The dramatic unmasking scene toward the end has a hard time topping (or even getting close to) the iconic moment in the silent version. There's a lot more romantic rivalry between the baritone and the cop which is played effectively for laughs and lightens the mood considerably.

Recommended, though the movie is played more as a melodrama than a horror film.