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| Phantom Of The Paradise |
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  (7/10)
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Runtime: 92 m |
| Public Rating: 8.95 (20 votes) |
Director: Brian De Palma |
MPAA Rating:  |
| Genre: Comedy/Horror/Musical |
Year: 1974 |
| Writer(s): Brian De Palma |
| Reviewed by: Vadim Rizov |
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Considered by many to be one of De Palma's best films, Phantom Of The Paradise is a lunatic technical exercise, making up in energy and zeal what it loses in an under-sized budget. Its place in the De Palma canon is debatable; all I know is that it's better than the first film of his I saw, Mission To Mars. Because De Palma doesn't believe in restraint, this isn't just a cautionary re-working of The Phantom Of The Opera as a fable about the corrupting powers of rock-n-roll fame; no, it's nothing less than a movie about Satan, complete with Christ symbolism. In its last third, the film goes completely insane and loses all sense of proportion. Up to that point, it's a fun film, a self-reflexive time capsule with many laughs.
The story concerns Winslow Leach, a talented singer-songwriter who's unnatractive personally. Spotted by mega-producer Swan (Paul Williams, best known for writing the theme for "The Love Boat"), he's quickly duped into handing over the labor of his love, a "pop cantata" (read: rock opera), not coincidentally about Faust. When he finally catches on to Swan's treachery and attempts to do something about it, the cops arrest him for some cocaine planted on him by Swan. In jail, he hears one of his songs, having been cheapened (in his view) by Swan's band, The Juicy Fruits. He escapes from jail to sabotage the record factory, but things go horribly wrong, and the deformed Winslow jumps into the lake. When he re-appears, he's intent on wreaking vengeance, but Swan convinces him that they can work together to improve his work. Unfortunately, deception once more awaits Winslow.
The joy's in the details. Everybody can tell how this story will turn out (tragically), but how we get there is an entirely different matter. De Palma isn't interested so much in a revenge story as a portrait of the pop music landscape, circa 1974. In one unfogettable scene, Swan sits at the center of a giant table that looks like a gold record. He's auditioning new musical groups to perform Faust; the lights go up on the left, and we see, say, a stubbly singer-songwriter. After listening for a few seconds, Swan dims the lights, and turns slightly in his chair. Next is a trio of disco chicks with Afros, and so on. Every one of them is lampooned, down to the heavy metal group that gets selected, lead by the flamboyantly gay Beef (Gerrit Graham).
The film also delivers a strong anti-drug message: when Winslow's love, Phoenix (Jessica Harper) sells her soul to the devil, she starts smoking pot. Uh-oh. In fact, the movie's interests are all over the place, though never less than engaging. When we're not hearing very dated 70s pop, De Palma puts on a vigorous string quartet, frequently as an ironic audio counterpoint. It's a very funny film, and one could easily argue that the film's dated quality was one that De Palma deliberately strove for; that those elements which appear cliched to us were used ironically, and that De Palma knew that they were tripe (like the constant longing shots of Jessica Harper that appear to Winslow as he composes). The opening musical number, a crude performance by The Juicy Fruits of "Goodbye Eddie Goodbye," during which one of the performers jumps onto a femal audience member, punches her boyfriend, and steal her bra. It's a counterpoint to the other, more typical of the time period, musical numbers.
At the end of the film, De Palma finally loses control. He falls to the temptation of many a promising filmmaker - Making A Big Statement through overstatement and heavy-handed symbolism. Apparently, Winslow is now some sort of Christ figure, and with Paul Williams appearing in a completely out of place bronze mask, the film collapses in on itself, the frothy technique work-out now a "disturbing" "social commentary." Still, that's not enough to stop most of the film from being incredibly fun.
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