A modest and quiet middle-aged violinist, Eric Claudine denies himself everything and spends all his savings to secretly sponsor the singing lessons of young Christine Dubois, for whom he has a secret passion. She is unaware of this and pays no attention to the musician, she already has two suitors – the opera tenor Anatole Garron and Raoul D’Aubert, Inspector Sûreté.

Driven to despair, Eric commits the murder of a music publisher, but as a result his face becomes disfigured by acid. Now his life’s goal is to destroy everyone around Christine…

4k movies reviews
In the remake of the classic Phantom of the Opera with Lon Chaney there is almost nothing left of both the silent film and the original novel by Gaston Leroux. The ghost here is not a genius from birth, but a humble violinist who has had acid thrown in his face by the man who stole his talented work.

It has been said of this film that it has little Ghost and a lot of opera. This is indeed true. The film stars real opera singers, who performed many famous arias on the screen, including – our, Russian.

The film attracts attention, first of all, by the fact that, unlike other adaptations of Leroux’s novel, it contains a great deal of humor. The humor is of a very high quality, and I especially liked the way Christine wittily and gracefully gets rid of her annoying admirers, forcing them to become friends in the end. The music, the humor, the bright colors – all of this overshadows the tragic story of violinist Eric Claudine; the main plot is revealed in a very blurry way. It is not at all clear why Claudine was so protective of Christine – after all, we don’t see a single hint on screen that he was in love with her.

(In fact, according to the first version of the script, Eric was Christine’s father, but the movie didn’t show that.)

In the end, it turns out that the makers of the picture just didn’t decide on a genre. And yet, this bright, musical film, while telling a tragic story, gravitates more towards the comedy genre. And the comedy, it seems to me, could have been brilliant, for all time – if the tragedy of the Phantom had been replaced, as, incidentally, in some humorous theatrical adaptations of the novel, by his, for example, megalomania.

But, despite the fact that it is far from the best adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera, the film is beautiful to watch and leaves a very good impression.

Info Blu-ray
Video
Codec: HEVC / H.265 (90.6 Mb/s)
Resolution: Native 4K (2160p)
HDR: HDR10
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1

Audio
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono (48kHz, 24-bit)
English: Dolby Digital 5.1
English: Dolby Digital 2.0
French: DTS Mono
German: DTS Mono
Italian: DTS Mono

Subtitles
English SDH, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish.