OVP: Phantom of the Opera (1943)

Film: Phantom of the Opera (1943)

Stars: Claude Rains, Nelson Eddy, Susanna Foster, Edgar Barrier

Director: Arthur Lubin

Oscar History: 4 nominations/2 wins (Best Sound Mixing, Art Direction*, Cinematography*, Scoring)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

This month we are devoting all of our classic film reviews to Golden Age Horror films that I saw for the first time this year.  If you want to take a look at past titles (from this and other seasons of this series), look at the bottom of the page for links.

The Universal Monster canon, in its original run, largely went from 1931 with Dracula through the mid-1950's with Creature from the Black Lagoon.  I have been saying all month that we're finishing off the series, and to a degree we are-we're seeing all of the films that are connected to the classic monsters in a significant, tangible way, but we're not hitting every Universal monster movie with a vampire or a werewolf-that'd be impossible.  This is best illustrated not by our film today, which is almost always considered part of the "Universal Monster canon," and indeed it's the last "origin" film about one of their horror figures during this era, but by the fact that Universal didn't start with horror in 1931.  They had been doing it for years earlier, their most successful films being with Lon Chaney, Sr., whose wizardry with screen makeup is legendary and gained him the nickname "man of a thousand faces."  His most successful creation was as The Phantom of the Opera, a story that has been told through the decades repeatedly on screen & stage.  Today we're going to get to one of those iterations, and the only one that ever won an Academy Award.

(Spoilers Ahead) You know the story of Christine Dubois (Foster), a young soprano who has a mysterious benefactor who turns out to be (surprise!) the Phantom of the Opera (Rains) by heart even if you weren't a little gay boy humming along to the OBC version of "Masquerade" in your room.  But if you've somehow been living under a rock, we actually get more backstory here than we usually do, with us learning that the Phantom, who eventually haunts the opera and starts killing people in the Paris Opera house, is Erique Claudin, a broke violinist whose shaking hands have made it impossible for him to perform anymore, who in a jealous rage after his concerto is stolen from him, is disfigured by a vat of acid, and lives in the shadows of the Paris Opera, on the run from the law.  During a scene where he drops the chandelier (we get the chandelier drop, don't you worry), he runs off with Christine, but they don't escape together-the Phantom is crushed by falling rocks, and Christine gets away with all of his voice lessons, money, and her newfound fame (while the Phantom is dead).

If you think that description sounds cheeky, it's meant to be.  Phantom is a great guilty pleasure musical for me-I love it unabashedly, and know every song by heart.  But I'm also aware that there's a silliness to it, and this movie leans in on that motif hard.  For starters, there's basically two Raoul's (the actual one played by Barrier, as well as a hammy baritone played by Nelson Eddy), and both are unnecessary.  Foster is also as thrilling as dried paint as Christine, a character who is difficult to bring to life even for the best actors.  Rains is the best of the cast (duh), but he underplays Erique so much in the first half of the film that he feels like a weird 180 into being an actual "monster" in the second half of the picture.

The film, as I mentioned above, won two Oscars and an additional two nominations.  Of the four, the best is Art Direction, which is gorgeous.  We don't get the moody ambience we usually get from the Phantom's catacombs, but the recreations of the Paris Opera House are meticulous & well-designed, the chandelier is appropriately gaudy, and the additional drawing rooms paint the screen well.  The cinematography is beautiful (Technicolor in the 1940's often was), but it isn't as creative as I would've expected from an actual winner of this trophy, and I left less-impressed by this nomination than Oscar was.  The Scoring is ehh (it's hard not to compare pretty much anything that isn't Andrew Lloyd Webber favorably here), and the sound is okay (nothing great, though considering the dearth of nominees that Oscar nominated so far that I've seen, it's probably going to come out in the top half).  All-in-all, the Art Direction is the ticket for me, and the rest are just AMPAS being enamored with a classic cinematic tale that feels lifeless despite its inherent thrills.

Past Horror Month Reviews (Listed Chronologically): The Golem, The Phantom of the Opera, Dracula, Frankenstein, Freaks, The Mummy, The Old Dark House, The Invisible Man, The Black Cat, The Bride of Frankenstein, Mad Love, The Raven, Werewolf of London, Dracula's Daughter, Son of Frankenstein, The Invisible Man Returns, The Mummy's Hand, The Invisible Woman, The Wolf Man, Cat People, The Ghost of Frankenstein, Invisible Agent, The Mummy's Tomb, Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man, The House of Frankenstein, House of Dracula, Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein, Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man, It Came from Outer Space, Creature from the Black Lagoon, Revenge of the Creature, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, The Blob, The Masque of the Red Death

OVP: Naughty Marietta (1935)

Film: Naughty Marietta (1935)
Stars: Jeanette MacDonald, Nelson Eddy, Frank Morgan, Elsa Lanchester
Directors (according to IMDB they are uncredited): Robert Z. Leonard & W.S. van Dyke
Oscar History: 2 nods/1 win (Best Picture, Best Sound Recording*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Ahh, sweet mystery of life I've found you...growing up, my Grandpa's favorite actress was Jeanette MacDonald, and my mother was not a fan.  I never actually had seen one of her movies, but Grandpa presumably liked the wholesome aspects of Ms. MacDonald's films, and my mother thought that they were a bit saccharine.  Many years later, I decided tonight was the perfect night to give her a shot (not coincidentally, but I did chase the RNC with a bunch of famously GOP actors and their films: Loretta Young, June Allyson, Gary Cooper, along with MacDonald and her partner Nelson Eddy-who said I can't handle a lot of Republicans?).  This was partially because I desperately need room in the TiVo for tomorrow's 4.5 hour taping of Greed, and also because I have a bevy of MacDonald films filling up my TiVo, but I digress. I decided of all of the films that Naughty Marietta, a Best Picture nominee (my 277th) would be the perfect choice.

Like I said-I was wrestling with saccharine and wholesome going into the film, and I came away feeling both, and that may be a good thing.  For starters, MacDonald can act, which was something I was a bit nervous about, as I'd heard not great things (her onscreen costar we'll get to in a moment, but he lived up to, or down to, the hype).  She's very beautiful, and her lyric soprano could steal every woodland creature away from Snow White.  She also has a Jean Arthur spunk about her that I liked, and while her saintliness could hypothetically get grading, I never found myself saying "move it along," to her while she was onscreen.  Additionally, I rather loved her interactions on the boat, and her comic timing was solid.  In fact, aside from the fact that she was clearly a girl of the 1930's and not the 1700's, I have nothing bad to say about her.  Not a Garbo style thespian, but definitely a star.

The plot of the film, on the other hand, is a bit weak even for a musical (which notoriously have flimsy plots, let's be honest).  She's a French princess on the run from a wedding to a man she doesn't love, so she impersonates one of her servants and boards a boat to New Orleans full of women that are going to get married to men that they've never met (clearly, she didn't read the pamphlet).  Once she arrives in the New World, she comes across a handsome army captain (Eddy) whom she falls in love with, despite his macho and egotistical ways.  I could fill you in on the rest of the film, but you already know what's going to happen-the fun is in the music and the undeniable chemistry that MacDonald brings to all of her onscreen partners, including Eddy.  Eddy is a brilliant baritone, but when he's attempting to act, he brings a woodiness that's undeniable.  He's got a connection with MacDonald, but it's clear she's doing the heavy-lifting, and I'm excited to see her in a film like San Francisco, where she's paired with a charmer like Clark Gable as her screen partner.  The film also boasts two terribly fun supporting performances-Frank Morgan, the Wizard of Oz himself, as the Governor of the New Orleans colony, and a bumbling fool of a man he is, as well as Elsa Lanchester as his domineering, comedically sharp wife.  The music is sensational, and very operatic (to be fair, the film is based on an operetta by Victor Herbert), and the most famous number, "Ahh, Sweet Mystery of Life, I've Found You,"is a show-stopper.  It's plain to see why this film won a Best Sound Recording Oscar-the cast are soaring in their respective choral pieces, and the two leads fill the entire screen beautifully with each serenade.  While it doesn't bring the technical virtuosity that, say, Top Hat did in the Best Picture category, it's still a fun way to spend a Sunday night.

And in hopes of spurring conversation, have you seen Naughty Marietta?  Are you a fan of MacDonald's and/or Nelson Eddy's?  Do you have a favorite Best Picture nominee of 1935?  And, putting your own politics aside, do you ever find yourself becoming a fan of entertainers of the opposite party?