Let's put aside the movies for a sec and talk about books.
Have you ever noticed how similar Gaston Leroux's The Phantom of the Opera and Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame are? Both were written by French dudes, both center around a man so ugly he's often referred to as "a monster." Both "monsters" are in love with a lovely young useless maiden, who is talented in the performing arts department. Both maiden's are in love with simpletons: the philandering Pheobus, and the simple and dull Raoul.
However, Notre Dame has a sense of despair and misery. While Leroux writes as if he's never been sad a day in his life. Where's the beautiful agony that fills most operas? Where is
Erik's pain? (What kind of lame name is Erik?) Where's the edgy angst? Where's the gut wrenching misery?
Erik's pain? (What kind of lame name is Erik?) Where's the edgy angst? Where's the gut wrenching misery?
Oh, it's in Hunchback.
Oh, again! It's also in Michael Crawford! That's right! I said it! There's more feeling in one song from that play (namely, Music of the Night,) than there is in all of Leroux's novel!
I really, really, really hate to say it, but I like the play better. (The play, not that gosh-awful, kill-me-now movie!)
I like your comparison to opera. Had Leroux ever seen an opera!? Uh hello? Drama it up a little. The musical should have been, Phantom of the Musical Theater. And the idiots that made the movie...? Hadn't they seen movies before? Dull.
ReplyDeleteI love Disney's use of dramatic music in Hunchback. (Ignore for a moment A Guy Like You.) The choral stuff rivals Mozart's Requiem, I dare say. I would love to perform the sacred choral movements in this movie.
Hahha! I know, right? They're beautiful. The music in this film, (aside from A Guy Like You, of course,) is hauntingly beautiful.
ReplyDeleteI’m totally with you on your comment on the two phantom storylines (the novel and the play). I had never read the novel until only a couple years ago. I grew up listening to the musical’s original soundtrack later actually saw the it on broadway when I was 12. I remember being so surprised at how different the original novela was from the play after seeing Erik just being introduced as animalistic psychopath who has no comprehension of compassion or a conscience (or any feelings at all before the ending). The play is so much more personal for Erik in the sense of who he really is and not what he looks like. While the novels Erik is only is only shown from one side, a monstrous genius; Webber’s musical gives us a look at Erik from both prospectives, on one side he’s a deformed sideshow escapee who’s ingeniously smart and the other side he’s still human just like you and me who’s tried to fit in with the world but has always been rejected and abused by it permanently scaring him emotionally and we see him consumed in an emotional sea mixed with sadness, dispare, rage, and hatred. He shows that emotion many times in the play which is what really everyone to him so much more than his novel counterpart.
ReplyDelete