allyball-63124 Review of The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera (1962)

Good, but Odly Enough, Not for The Phantom Himself

[7/10 · 15 September 2017]

Have you ever heard of a movie where the title character him/herself is the weakest part of the film? Well, I haven't until I came across this version of Phantom of the Opera. However, before I get to that, let's talk about some good things. I really liked how the story was handled. I really like the mystery aspect of this film. Even though it was easy to put two and two together, it was really good and interesting build up to a really cool flashback scene towards the end of the film. I was also quite fond of the character Harry, who is basically the Raoul character of the story. While I think he could've used some flaws to make him more relatable, this version of the character really does him justice. He actually listens to Christine, he's always there for her, he does proactive things to help her and is just a really sweet guy. Even though he and Christine didn't know each other very long, I thought their romance was really believable, cute and sweet. They aren't the most fascinating characters but they have a believable relationship and were enough to keep me invested in them and the story. Now onto the main flaw with the movie: the Phantom himself. Now I won't say that everything about this character is bad. I actually quite liked his backstory, even if it was a bit too similar to the forties film, and how they handled revealing it. However, the character himself is extremely lacking. First off, his obsession with Christine comes completely out of nowhere. He saw her perform once and then all of a sudden starts stalking her and kidnaps her at one point. It's extremely rushed. Also, the Phantom does something completely unforgivable in my eyes, which I will spoil so navigate away if you don't want that. While the Phantom is forcing Christine to sing for him in his lair, she stops singing for a moment, thinking she can't do it and the Phantom slaps her across the face! I'm not joking, he really does that at the time mark 56:29 of the movie! Yes, the Phantom does many terrible things in every adaptation but that just crosses the line way too far. You know what's odd though? The Phantom and Christine don't have any sort of romantic feelings for each other in this version, which at first glance wasn't a very big loss for me since I usually hate that couple anyways. However, after watching the ending, I realized it actually was a big loss because the Phantom not only sacrifices his life to save hers but she cries at his death. I'm sorry but the only thing between these two was that he stalked her, forced her to do something she clearly didn't want to do and hit her when she didn't until Harry came along and told him to knock it off. If you wanted The Phantom's death to impact Christine, we should've seen what happened between the Phantom and Christine after the Phantom agreed to train her less harshly. I'll admit, the way his death scene was executed did draw a little emotion from me but that scene and the whole end of the movie in general was too rushed for the emotion to build and have any meaning. Overall, this is a good movie but not really for the Phantom himself.