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Phantom of the Opera Customer Reviews (1 - 3 of 25 Reviews)

NO LONGER A PHANTOM!!
I SAW THIS MOVIE AS A CHILD ON TV MANY YEARS AGO WHEN TELEVISION PROGRAMMING INCLUDED CLASSIC MOVIES ON A DAILY BASIS. IT IS ONE OF MY FAVORITES. ALTHOUGH THE FILM DOES NOT INCLUDE A TRUE ACCOUNT OF THE CHARACTER CHRISTINE, AND HER RELATIONSHIP WITH THAT OF THE ACTOR, CLAUDE RAINS, AS IT IS PORTRAYED IN THE BOOK; I AM STILL GLAD THAT I FINALLY HAVE COPY OF THIS MOVIE. I AM A LOVER OF "LONG HAIRED" MUSIC, AND I WATCH THIS MOVIE OVER AND OVER AGAIN, JUST TO SEE THE OPERA SEQUENCES. THE SPECIAL FEATURES ARE A DEFINITE ADDED TREAT. THANKS!!

Love quadrangle in the 40's
Classic tale, told with a dated look, likeable but also empty.

What's more amazing is the life story of "Susanna Foster" (Christine Dubois), loved by three ardent men and adored by hundreds in this fiction, and living a downhill life in real life.
It's interesting for opera buffs like myself to see a bit of the "backstage" of the renowned Paris Opera, the jealousies, miseries and intrigues. The best phrase, by far, is the one put into the mouth of "Liszt": "So many crimes have been committed in the name of music, we may well make one to prevent one" (but better said). There's also a joke that's actually fun made by the music director, at least the audience agreed with me when we saw it.

The characters are made in cardboard, as fake as the scenery. "Vereheres" is a case in point.
Specially what Neil Doyle from U.S.A. points out in IMDB: "silly routines as they compete for the hand of Foster".
As Gary F. Taylor "GFT" (Biloxi, MS USA) writes in Amazon: "The Phantom had gone musical. (...) But in terms of actual story interest, the film is only so-so". It has a "sanitized" tone, surely explained by it being made during the war. I also agree to his: "pace is slow, sometimes to the point of clunkiness".

The only acting I liked was the one of Claude Rains. Find his complete quote in IMDB: "Often we'd secretly like to do the very things we discipline ourselves against..".
He's got very beautiful (albeit mad) lines while he's taking Christine to the Opera's catacombs. But they get muddled into the whole pastiche...
Music is very good, specially if you've heard the operas before. I liked the scene with Oneguin a lot, found it fun and refreshing.
As many reviewers write, there's no horror, just a musical. And the phantom is NEVER seductive, unless you can call a destructive mad wreck of a human being so.

Funnily enough, the main characters have chic French surnames (Dubois, D'Aubert), which leads me to confirm that at least some Americans think French equals chic. Whereas the "baddies" are Italian "Signor Ferretti", and the mischievous Biancarolli. "Italian means mafia" for Hollywood? The stereotype is long lived...

The jokes are tart, the heroines wear too much makeup, and the villain never really convinces as a menace. The ending is fine, truly!

After watching this, I don't feel sorry for having missed the 2004 remake by Schumacher, nor paying a dime and spent valuable time in London to watch the L. Weber musical.
Well, Joel has made some the worse films ever, ie "Bad company"... And Lloyd Webber... Woody Allen says it all in a subtle second of his masterful "Match Point".

I guess it's good to watch films like this or the superior King Kong (1933) with the helpful aide of an art house critic, who can enlighten the uninitiated -like me- to things like the gothic element underlying the rococo exterior. Or the romantic idea of beauty leading to suffering.
While it doesn't achieve cult status, it's a nice addenda to any "Phantom completist", as another reviewer puts it.

Overall, much less than anticipated. "Beauty and the beast" but without the emotion that the old Kong can yield.


a little more phantom,a little less opera might have made this one good
with over half the running time taken up with opera songs this is really a musical instead of a horror movie. if you like opera you may find something here you like,but if chills are what you want, SKIP IT!!!!!!!

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