The Phantom of the Opera (1962 film)

Infobox Film
name = The Phantom of the Opera


image_size =
caption = Film poster
director = Terence Fisher
producer = Anthony Hinds
Basil Keys
writer = John Elder
based on the novel by Gaston Leroux
starring = Herbert Lom
Heather Sears
Edward de Souza
Michael Gough
music = Edwin Astley
cinematography = Arthur Grant
editing = Alfred Cox
distributor = J. Arthur Rank Film Distributors
released = 25 June 1962
runtime = 84 minutes
country = UK
language = English
budget =
gross =
amg_id = 1:120067
imdb_id = 0056347 "The Phantom of the Opera" is a 1962 British film based on the novel by Gaston Leroux. The film was made by Hammer Film Productions.

Plot

The film opens in Victorian London on a December night in 1900.

The first night of the season at the London Opera House finds the opening of a new opera by Lord Ambrose D'Arcy (Michael Gough), a wealthy and pompous man, who is annoyed and scornful when the opera manager Lattimer (Thorley Walters) informs him the theater has not been completely sold out. No one will sit in a certain box because it is haunted.

Backstage, despite the soothing efforts of the opera's producer, Harry Hunter (Edward de Souza), everyone, including the show's star, Maria, is nervous and upset as if a sinister force was at work. The climax comes during Maria's first aria, when a side of the scenery rips apart to reveal the body of a hanged stage hand. In a panic, the curtain is rung down, and Maria refuses to sing again.

With the show postponed, Harry frantically auditions new singers. He finds a promising young star in Christine Charles (Heather Sears), one of the chorus girls. D'Arcy lecherously approves of the selection, and invites Christine to dinner.

In her dressing room after the audition, Christine is warned against D'Arcy by a phantom voice. At dinner, D'Arcy attempts to seduce her, but as they are about to leave to his apartment, she is saved by Harry. The angered impresario dismisses her from her new role, and when Harry refuses to accept a more willing but less talented singer, he is also dismissed.

Visiting Christine at her boarding house, Harry finds some old manuscripts which he recognizes as a rough draft of the opera he has been producing. Questioning Christine's landlady Mrs. Tucker, he learns that it was written by a former boarder by the name of Professor Petrie, who had been killed in a fire at a printers that was to print his music.

Making further inquiries, he learns that the man didn't actually perish in the fire, but was splashed with Nitric Acid while apparently trying to extinguish the blaze, had run away in agony and was drowned in the River Thames. This is confirmed by the police, but the body was never recovered.

That night, confronted in her bedroom by a dwarf (Ian Wilson), Christine faints from fright and is carried off. She returns to consciousness, deep in the cellars of the opera house, to see a man wearing a hideous one-eyed mask, playing a huge pipe organ-- The Phantom of the Opera (Herbert Lom). He tells the frightened girl that he will teach her to sing properly, and rehearses her with fanatical insistence until she collapses from exhaustion.

Meanwhile, Harry, reinstated as the opera producer, is worried about Christine's disappearance. Pondering the story of the mysterious Professor, he checks the river where he had last been seen. At that same moment, he hears the echo of Christine's voice emanating from a storm drain, and soon finds himself following the voice through one of London's water-filled sewers. The faint sound of the organ playing draws him down a tunnel where the dwarf attacks him with a knife. Harry subdues him, and finds himself facing the missing Professor as he rehearses Christine.

In a flashback, the elderly Phantom relates how, five years before, as a poor and starving composer, he had been forced to sell all of his music, including the opera, to Lord Ambrose for a pitifully small fee with the thought that his being published would bring him recognition. When he discovered that D'Arcy was having the music published under his own name, Petrie became enraged and broke into the printers to destroy the plates.

In burning sheet music that had already been printed, Petrie unwittingly started a fire, then accidentally splashed acid on his face and hands in an effort to put it out, thinking it was water. In terrible agony, he ran out, jumped into the river, and was swept by the current into the underground drain, where he was rescued and cared for by the dwarf, whose passion was music and who existed in the cellars underneath the opera house. The Phantom predicts a great operatic future for Christine, and Harry agrees to allow him time to complete her voice coaching.

When the opera is presented several weeks later, Lord D'Arcy is confronted in his office by the Phantom and runs out screaming into the night when he rips off his mask and sees his terrifying face. As the curtain rises, with Christine in the lead role, the Phantom watches eagerly in the "haunted" box. Her performance brings him to tears as he hears his music finally presented.

Listening enraptured to the music, the dwarf is discovered in the catwalks by a stage-hand, and in the chase, he jumps onto a huge chandelier poised high above the stage over Christine. As the rope begins to break from the weight, the Phantom spots the danger and leaps from his box to the stage, throwing the girl safely from harm. The Phantom of the Opera is impaled by the chandelier before the eyes of the horror-stricken audience.

Background

*The romantic lead (Harry Hunter) was written for Cary Grant, who had expressed his interest in doing a Hammer horror film. At the time it was common for American actors to be imported as guest stars in British films. He was not, as is often supposed, slated to play the Phantom himself. (This is the version reported by producer Anthony Hinds in Wayne Kinsey's "Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years")
*Scotland Yard police inspectors (played by Liam Redmond and John Maddison) looking for the Phantom were part of additional footage filmed for the American TV showing. Hammer had nothing to do with it. "Kiss of the Vampire" (retitled "Kiss of Evil") and "The Evil of Frankenstein" also had American-shot footage added to their television showings as well. This was a common practice when it was thought that parts of the film were too "intense". These scenes were edited out and more acceptable scenes replaced them or extended the running time.
*All of the flashback scenes showing how Professor Petrie became the Phantom were filmed with "Dutch angles," meaning the camera was noticeably tilted to give an unreal, off-kilter effect - a time-honored filmic method of representing either a memory or a dream.
*The film was shot at Bray Studios.
*Herbert Lom's performance is often praised by critics, and Mike Sutton from the webpage Dvdtimes.com had this to say about Lom's performance: "Herbert Lom's performance as the sad, deformed Petrie is a triumph in every respect. Using exquisitely subtle body language and managing, somehow, to make the expressions in his single eye tell a whole story of pain and frustration, Lom is unforgettable. It may be heretical to say this but when I think of the Phantom of the Opera, it is Lom who comes immediately to mind."

Cast

*Herbert Lom as The Phantom/Professor Petrie
*Heather Sears as Christine Charles
*Edward de Souza as Harry Hunter
*Michael Gough as Ambrose D'Arcy
*Thorley Walters as Lattimer
*Ian Wilson as The dwarf
*Renee Houston as Mrs. Tucker
*Harold Goodwin as Bill

References

Kinsey, Wayne A., "Hammer Films: The Bray Studio Years", (Reynolds & Hearn, 2002)

External links

*tcmdb title|id=86598|title=The Phantom of the Opera