The Phantom of the Opera **** (2004, Gerard Butler, Emmy Rossum, Patrick Wilson, Minnie Driver) – Classic Movie Review 3453

Gerard Butler makes a success of his surprise casting as the Phantom in Joel Schumacher’s opulent 2004 filming of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s musical version of the 1911 novel Le Fantöme de l’Opéra by Gaston Leroux. It’s more or less entirely a singing role – Butler speaks only 14 of his lines – and he makes tuneful, authoritative work of it.

Emmy Rossum, only 18, is sweet and vocally strong as Christine, the young soprano who becomes the obsession of the disfigured musical genius who lives beneath the Paris Opéra House, and Minnie Driver is hilarious in a camp support turn as the impossible opera diva Carlotta. Driver said that for her diva-like Italian accent, she copied an old neighbour when she lived in Venice as a child.

Faced with the daunting task of bringing the classic stage musical to the big screen for the first time, Schumacher proves the right director for it, doing a grand job, especially on the re-creation of the thrilling masked ball sequence from the Lon Chaney Snr 1925 silent classic (which was beautifully filmed in two-tone Technicolor). He gets the mood and tone, and the musical spirit just right, making a very smooth transfer to the movies, but then the material is very filmic.

At the end of the Masquerade scene, Raoul (Patrick Wilson) enters a circular chamber full of mirrors, referring to the original novel, in which the Phantom used the mirrored chamber as a torture chamber to drive victims insane.

Also in the cast are Miranda Richardson, Ciarán Hinds, Simon Callow, Victor McGuire Jennifer Ellison, Murray Melvin, Kevin R McNally and James Fleet.

As well as being a tuneful, emotional experience, it’s a marvellous looking movie. There were three Oscar nominations – for Best Achievement in Cinematography (John Mathieson), Best Achievement in Art Direction for Anthony Pratt (art director) and Celia Bobak (set decorator) and Best Original Song for Learn To Be Lonely written for the film by Andrew Lloyd Webber (composer) and Charles Hart (lyricist). The song was Golden Globe nominated and so was Rossum. Lloyd Webber composed 15 minutes of new music for the film.

Butler’s white half-mask Phantom prop sold for £6,450 on eBay – though, which one?, as the production went through 18 masks, mostly because they got fingerprints on them.

The chandelier weighed 2.2 tons, cost $1.3 million, was 17 feet high and 13.2 feet wide, and was hung with more than 20,000 full-cut Swarovski crystal pendants. It was produced by Tisserant in Paris, taking four months to make and five days to assemble in the studio. It had a double for riskier scenes and there was also a third chandelier, equipped with electricity and lighting for the opening scene.

The Broadway production opened at the Majestic Theater on January 2 1988 and is the longest running show on Broadway. It was nominated for ten 1988 Tony Awards and won seven.

It is the only movie of the novel not a horror film, as were the The Phantom of the Opera (1925), Phantom of the Opera (1943), The Phantom of the Opera (1962), The Phantom of the Opera (1989), The Phantom of the Opera (1990) and The Phantom of the Opera (1998) versions.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3453

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/