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The Phantom of the Opera Zone INTRODUCTION Gaston Leroux's novel Le fantôme de l'opera / The Phantom of the Opera is a classic fusion of romance and horror, a wonderfully written and utterly compelling read that should be sampled at least once by any self-respecting genre fan. So why has it not managed to translate to the screen well since the silent era? The earliest surviving screen version of the tale (a German version from 1916 seems to be lost) is the 1925 version starring Lon Chaney. By default, it's the best of the bunch - it's also a fabulous film in its own right, showcasing Chaney's extraordinary talents to the full and boasting some hugely impressive set design. For modern audiences - and I'm indebted to EOFFTV contributor David Hanks for this observation - the great shock moment, the Phantom's unmasking, has been diluted somewhat by over-exposure but the film as a whole remains a classic. But since then, what have we had to match it? Of the most widely seen versions, the 1943 adaptation casts Nelson Eddy as the love interest so is more opera than Phantom, dull despite the amount of time, money and talent expended on the sets. The great Terence Fisher couldn't do much with the material either, fumbling his 1962 Hammer version to the extent that some blame it for his temporary exile from the company. A TV version in 1983 starring Maximilian Schell, Jane Seymour and Michael York came and went without making even the slightest impact, so bland was its rendition of the tale. The story defeated even the great Italian horror master Dario Argento, whose opulent Il fantasma dell'opera (1998) is by far and away the worst film of his career, an embarrassing mess that almost defies belief. Along the way there have been some oddball variations, some good, others less so. Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise (1974) is a camped-up, rock version patently inspired by the success of the Rocky Horror Show, though beating the film version, The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) to the screen by several months. Dwight H. Little's dreadful 1989 version (which tried out time travel and gore to see if it helped in pepping up the plot; it didn't) seemed to inspire a clutch of like minded projects, including Phantom of the Mall: Eric's Revenge (1989) which transposed the story to a shopping centre, and a glut of hardcore porn versions. Perhaps the most interesting versions may turn out to be the two Chinese versions, both titled Ye ban ge sheng, from 1937 and 1962. Sight unseen at EOFFTV Towers, what little we know of them makes them sound fascinating, particularly the 1937 version. At the time of writing (the tail end of November 2004), Joel Schumacher's long-in-gestation big screen version of the successful stage musical is about to be released, though as it's based on Andrew Lloyd Webber rather than Gaston Laroux it's not likely to be the definitive adaptation, no matter what its other qualities may be. Of all the great literary horror stories, The Phantom of the Opera
is the one least well served by other media. Film-makers rarely get
the balance right, either playing up the romance or ramping up the horror,
both to the detriment of the other - and it's both elements that make
the book such a powerful read. Time will tell if the situation will
ever change though given the huge success that the Schumacher film is
destined to be, we could be waiting some time before anyone tries another
large scale version. FILMOGRAPHY * = television 1916 1925 The Phantom
of the Opera 1937 1943 1954 1960 El fantasma
de la opereta 1962 Ye ban ge
sheng 1974 1983 1988 1989 Phantom
of the Mall: Eric's Revenge The Phantom
of the Opera Phantom X (1989) 1990 The
Phantom of the Opera 1991 1992 1995 1998 2000 2004
Last Updated: 1 January, 2009
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