#7 ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’/’Love Never Dies’

Movie night date – 03/04/19. Post date – 05/04/19.

As said, it’s certainly a relevant one to me…but at the same time not? I’ll explain in my reviews. Musicals! I love ’em…generally speaking; I haven’t heard one I haven’t liked at least and the aim of all musical actors and actresses is to be in this one at some point, if not be The Phantom or Christine theirselves. So I couldn’t pass up the opportunity when Blenheim Musical Theatre said they were doing it. Just saying; this one will be worth it. You should go see it. Shameless plugging aside, for the film I hadn’t seen I watched the oldest film I think I have ever seen. The 1925’s silent film ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’ by  Rupert Julian, followed by the…uh, generally unliked sequel of ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’; ‘Love Never Dies’, a 2012 stage film of the musical by Brett Sullivan and Simon Phillips.

The Phantom Of The Opera – 1925 -Rupert Julian – 93 mins

So this movie was one of the ones I had seen in my ‘The Great Book Of Movie Monsters’ I got out from the library. So that’s where I first heard it, but in high school…Man did I love musicals and none more than ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’. Loved it to death! So now being apart of a production of it and doing a shameless plug, I wanted to watch this movie and holy damn did it unpack a lot of things. This is gonna be one of interesting facts. The most interesting I just found out that Rupert Julian the director was in fact a New Zealander. So huh! Go us!

Being apart of the production really made me look at differences and ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’ is full of them. I read the book during high school but cannot for the life of me remember many things from it, but the film is definitely based on the book. When making the musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber took his from the book more so than the movie but I can see some core things from it. An obvious inspiration from the movie was the line “Behold! She is singing to bring down the chandelier!” which is worded differently in the book. The ending also is much darker in the movie. Spoilers for anyone who hasn’t heard or seen the musical or film but the Phantom doesn’t get chased by the towns people and get cornered at the river side, get the absolute crap kicked out of him, then to be chucked in the river…man, that would be a hell of a musical. Another subtle difference in film to musical is in the film the Phantom whose real name is Erik is an escaped criminally insane prisoner from Devil’s Island, not an escaped travelling show freak.

I never realised the film is public domain since Universal didn’t renew its copyright in 1953. It’s a solid film for a publicly free movie. Also fun movie fact; not the first movie of ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’. The first one has become a film lost to time named ‘Das Phantom der Oper’ made in Germany in 1915. No media of this film exists and only the bare basics are known like cast and run time. The use of tinted colours of the otherwise black and white film is very effective, such as green when the scene is mysterious, or blue at night. As my first old style silent film to be watched, I found some of the reading of handwritten notes hard to read, but I am running that down to a generational difference. Or I’m just stupid…one or the other! The actual typeface text was easy enough to read and plenty of time to read so I enjoyed that fact I didn’t have to rush read. While different to the musical in many ways, this movie is still very good and I would recommend it. Is it the oldest one on the list? It’s older than ‘Metropolis’, but there is an even older French movie on my list named ‘A Trip To The Moon’ from 1902! Damn man, just damn!

Love Never Dies – 2012 -Brett Sullivan and Simon Phillips – 122 mins

Ah the sequel…the one everyone loves to hate. Unpopular opinion; I like it. I mean, I would like it more as a stand alone musical that wasn’t anything to do with ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’ as I love it for the songs more than the story, but I still like it. While some aspects of the story of the movie seems a little forced in my opinion, I can live with that as that is reasonably similar to…you guessed it, the book source material.

While not written by the original author of ‘Le Fantôme de l’Opéra’,  Gaston Leroux, this novel was written in 1999 as a ‘What happens next?’ kinda book. This one I haven’t read, but when my mother won the concept album of ‘Love Never Dies’, we listened to it together and had to look up the synopsis to follow some points. The musical is…difficult. As I have said, I like the music but the story is very meh. I hear people like the film version over the London version. I will say I like some lyrical changes from this film, like changing verses where it would be a repeat on the concept album. The thing is; I prefer the music from the concept album. The stories are sharply different to me at least on rewatching it. I watched it again with my family when my sister got it on disc. I liked it back then. Nowdays…eh, not so much but its the only filming of the show we have so I can’t compare it. The only comparison is the stage show trailers on Youtube, and I may be biased to the London one anyway. I prefer Ramin Karimloo’s voicing and acting of The Phantom from the Concept and London album than Ben Lewis in this Melbourne film. In contrast however, I felt Sierra Boggess of the concept album is very screechy so I prefer the Christine of the Melbourne cast; Anna O’Byrne. Having said that, they changed Christines from Concept to London final cast. Music nerd in me coming out. I’ll stop on that side of things now.

For all my harsh biased judgements on the film, the stage set was gorgeous. They used the turning stage incredibly well, they had moving bridges and caught the setting of Coney Island in 1910s America very well. The movie is still a solid movie; I just love my specific versions of musicals too much and remain forever faithful to the concept album . As I said before though, if the musical had been made as a seperate story unrelated to ‘The Phantom Of The Opera’, I would probably love it more. The obvious callbacks were obvious to someone who knows the original. I don’t know; I think I would just like it seperate.

Closing Thoughts

Another week gone… and do I have ideas for next weeks movie? Boy do I! I’m going back to an earlier recommendation of a new film and now gonna probably watch a movie I talked about recently as my favourite. Will they be similar? As far as I know, no but I’ve been surprised before. Hope you’re all enjoying the new format. It’s been fun to toy around with. Leave a comment on here or the Facebook page if you have anything you’d like to see or feedback on the blog and as always…

Hope you’re having a wonderful day and keep smiling.