1h 32min || 27 August 1943 | Color
Director: Arthur Lubin
Stars: Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster, Claude Rains
Genres: Drama | Horror | Music | Romance | Thriller
Soundtracks lists 4 opera sequences. Only 1 is from an extant opera, the others were written for the film using symphonic music in public domain. In addition to being a thrifty studio, Universal had trouble clearing the rights to use existing operas either because their right-holder was in Europe, or because they wanted to clear the rights for distribution in Europe (or both).
It may be me today, but I found this dull. I'm not a fan of horror, so I don't know how it stacks up against horror of that time, but surely it falls flat today.
My thought in buying this: I like Nelson Eddy, I like Claude Rains, I like opera. Somehow it doesn't accumulate into liking the film.
Glad to have heard SF hit G above high C. Pretty sure she did it in one of the other films I watched with her: The Hard-Boiled Canary ('41) or Star Spangled Rhythm ('42). It's freakish, inhuman.
The featurette and the commentary track didn't help me appreciate the film, but are the source of my 1st paragraph (and naming that high note). They go into the history of film adaptations of the Gaston Leroux novel, including versions that were never made. (Deanna Durbin with Charles Laughton as the Phantom, for example.) This film (and its supplements) does not help me understand the fascination for the story (17 other versions listed on IMDb.)
I rather liked the ending, where neither suitor gets the girl, her backstage admirers do.
Universal, dir. Lubin; 6
