Word: phantoms
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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First released some ten years ago as a horror film with Lon Chaney displaying his acid-distorted profile, "Phantom of the Opera" has had its face lifted, this time the gruesome details being definitely in a minor role. The new technicolor production's efforts are centered on the operatic background and on a cleverly handled romance, rather than depending on sheer horror to draw, the flocks to the box-office. The result is a thoroughly enjoyable picture, thanks to well proportioned bits of music, color, comedy, horror, and yes, even romance...
Paris operas, with their over lavish settings, are ideal meat for the color camera and although Nelson Eddy never was too appealing as an actor, he can roll that bartone of his. Claude Rains, of "Casablanca" fame, portrays the third violinist, and incidentally, the masked phantom. Eddy and the gondrame officer, Edward Barrier, put on a rather amusing and seemingly original Alphonse and Gaston performance at the mere presence of the budding opera star, Susanna Foster...
...Phantom of the Opera (Universal) contains more opera than phantom, more trills than thrills. In this it differs from the original Phantom, which Universal produced in the shock-absorbing '20s as a shivery vehicle for the late multiform Lon Chaney. The 1943 Phantom is bantam-sized Claude Rains, who attempts to terrify by sheer force of character, scar tissue and Technicolor. Scuttling about in a robin's-egg blue mask, Cinemactor Rains scares nobody but his fellow cinemactors...
...operatic Understudy Christine Dubois (Susanna Foster). She seems fated to go on understudying indefinitely until befriended by Enrique Claudin (Claude Rains). For Christine, Claudin has a vast but secret passion. Fired from the orchestra, a pan of acid is thrown at him, starts him on his exhilarating career as Phantom...
...maid, saws a huge chandelier from its chain during the performance of an opera in which Christine's rival is singing. The hard-pressed Surete (French FBI) ultimately has to call on Composer Franz Liszt (German Shakespearian Actor Fritz Leiber) to aid them in bagging the cagey Phantom...