Schumacher’s Phantom of the Opera Mourns a Time When Movie Musicals Dared to be Extravagant
After being bombarded with the recent Wicked press tour where director Jon M. Chu insisted on the requirement of color-desaturated sets in order to represent “real places,” you’d be forgiven if you forgot that musicals were once something visually wondrous to behold. The term ‘movie musical’ once conjured images of spectacle and grandeur—think Bob Fosse’s mesmerizing choreography and direction in Sweet Charity or the vibrant set pieces of West Side Story (another film that was unceremoniously muted in tones of tan and grey in a bafflingly dull 2021 remake). In each instance, the magic of the stage shows were carried over onto the screen to make for exciting cinematic events. Movie musicals were once made to dazzle audiences and sweep them away into fantasy lands of heightened emotion, and Joel Schumacher’s 2004 film adaptation The Phantom of the Opera is a prime example.
Based on Andrew Lloyd Webber’s highly successful stage musical of the same name, a story that has been told on film ever since the 1925 version starring Lon Chaney, the film tells the story of a disfigured musical genius (Gerard Butler) who lives in the walls of the Paris Opera House. Known only as the Phantom, he lurks in the shadows and watches over its inhabitants before becoming infatuated with Christine Daaé (Emmy Rossum), a talented young soprano. Besotted with her childhood friend, the Viscount Raoul de Chagny (Patrick Wilson), Christine believes that she is being coached by a ghost sent to watch over her by her dead father, a ghost that she refers to as the Angel of Music. In reality it is the Phantom, whose obsession with Christine only deepens every time he hears her sing.
The Phantom demands that Christine must always be cast as the lead in the theatre’s productions and becomes increasingly more violent when his wishes are ignored. As his obsession grows, his actions become more erratic—he creates a mannequin of Christine adorned in a wedding dress and poses as the spirit of her dead father in order to win her affections. It is a gothic romance that is doomed to end in tragedy, and when it does, the film embraces the theatricality of the stage production to deliver its final blows.
Schumacher’s goal was to capture the magnificence of Webber’s stage production, which uses more than 200 candles, 230 costumes, and 10 fog and smoke machines on stage to immerse audiences in the magic of the Opera Populaire. In order to translate such opulence for the screen, one would have to show great reverence for the theatre, and Schumacher’s sumptuous film is theatrical in every sense of the word. The film opens in dreary black and white before the illumination of the infamous chandelier injects life and color onto the screen. As soon as the chandelier is lifted back into its original position where it hangs over the theatre, a storm is somehow kicked up inside the room as the plush seats of the Opera House are returned to their original shade of crimson, the statues decorating the walls painted gold once more. We are taken back in time to Paris, 1870, when the tragedy of the Phantom marred this once palatial setting. It’s a striking introduction to the story that immediately places the film in conversation with the dramatics of the stage musical.
The sensual, gothic atmosphere of Schumacher’s Phantom is built through intentional lighting, score and (unfairly derided) direction. In the theatre, the light from the candles on the chandelier bounce off of every crystal and paint everything lying beneath in shades of dazzling gold. Christine’s cherub-like face is rendered even more angelic under the halo of the chandelier’s light, and when her hand first touches that of the Phantom’s, the tension of the scene is cut by a striking chord on the organ. Touch is a sacred thing in this story—it is what has been deprived of the Phantom and what he so desperately craves. Every time he is touched by Christine, his extreme reactions are underscored by the organ-led score. It’s as unsettling as it is seductive, and made all the more tangible by the chemistry between Rossum and Butler as Christine fights the magnetic pull she feels towards the Phantom.
As the theatre burns above them and an angry mob gathers to hunt down the Phantom, he traps Christine in his “dungeons of black despair” and promises to kill Raoul if she refuses to marry him. The scene is lit by the romantic glow of candlelight, the ebb and flow of the water beneath their feet reflecting in the Phantom’s teary eyes. He embraces the role of the villain that everyone has cast him in, and as he does so, his face is once again hidden by the shadows, only the disfigured half distinguishable under the candlelight. It’s a scene that balances sentimentality with horror by playing with lighting to enhance the story (the kind of trick that directors like Chu seem unwilling to now replicate). Rather than showing disdain for the tools afforded to a filmmaker, Schumacher embraces the extravagance of the story by adapting its theatricality in a way that makes it equally as arresting on screen as it is on stage.
Schumacher uses the constraints of cinema to his advantage by elegantly adapting the choreography of the stage show to work within the restricted space of a film set. The camera moves with every swish of the Phantom’s cape and often floats above Christine as though we are the Phantom himself watching over her every move. For much of the film’s first act, carefully planned blocking allows for the Phantom’s figure to remain hidden or obscured by the props of the theatre until his face is revealed by Christine herself. Schumacher leans into the camp theatrics of the stage play—the actors are dolled up to the nines in 19th century regalia, and that iconic moment when the chandelier comes crashing down in the theatre is captured in slow motion, the grandness made even more terrifying as it shatters to pieces, igniting the tragic fire of the Opera House. Schumacher balances the ridiculous elements of theatre-making with an unwavering belief in the seriousness at the heart of the story and renders it cinematic.
At the time of its release, critics ridiculed Schumacher for his over-the-top, melodramatic direction, but after suffering the monotony of recent musical adaptations, one can’t help but mourn a time when filmmakers weren’t afraid to let loose on a big movie musical. Now 20 years after the film’s release, the thought of a musical being purposeful in its use of lighting and staging feels like a distant memory. The drab, visually underwhelming cinematography and color grading of something like Chu’s adaptation of the once vibrant Wicked makes it hard to believe these films were ever a site of pure imagination. In his pursuit of so-called “realistic filmmaking,” Chu has forgotten that realism need not impede on visual spectacle—the very magic of a movie musical lies in its ability to bring the larger-than-life extravagance of theatre onto the screen.
As far as musical iconography goes, The Phantom of the Opera is perhaps one of the most instantly recognizable musicals ever made. The contrast of the Phantom’s iconic ivory mask against the shadows of the theatre and a single red rose cast against the grayscale of a world without Christine is simple yet effective imagery that captures the tragedy at the heart of the story. It’s the perfect example of how a filmmaker can harness the tools of filmmaking to create a film that is as visually stimulating and narratively compelling as its stage counterpart. The Phantom of the Opera takes the very real, very human experiences of heartbreak and loss and casts them in a fantastical setting made to rouse emotion. Schumacher’s dedication to telling this story in all its excessive, romantic glory resulted in the creation of characters so convincing in their tragedy and relatable in their heartbreak that when you enter a theatre and feel a chill pass down your spine, it doesn’t feel too ridiculous to imagine the Angel of Music still lurking in the shadows, waiting for his next muse to arrive. The Phantom of the Opera is proof that you don’t need to sacrifice the visual wonder or spectacle of a film in order to reflect reality. After seeing how Schumacher was able to connect to audiences despite the so-called “gaudy” set design and “kitschy” direction of his film, every musical that refuses to show a similar level of enthusiasm for storytelling just feels lazy in comparison.
Nadira Begum is a freelance film critic and culture writer based in the UK. To see her talk endlessly about film, TV, and her love of vampires, you can follow her on Twitter (@nadirawrites) or Instagram (@iamnadirabegum).