Olde Review: Phantom of the Paradise

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a bit of a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts. 

 

Phantom of the Paradise (Brian De Palma, 1974) Too few people know about Brian De Palma's Phantom of the Paradise. Too few people know about Brian DePalma. He is one of the best of the young, young crop of film-makers—the under-30 branch*—and he is quite taken with great directors of the past and their great movies. And so, very often, he will borrow a scene from these directors.

Foremost among the borrowees is Alfred Hitchcock. In fact, De Palma has made two films almost totally Hitchcockian: 1973's Sisters,** and this year's Obsession.*** Phantom of the Paradise came between them, and although it lacks the total Hitchcock commitment, and the many beauties that commitment brought about in Obsession, The Phantom is an altogether enjoyable musical-comedy/horror-satire about the rock industry (kinda whets your interest, doesn't it?) It takes the old "Phantom of the Opera" story into the 20th Century glitter-rock scene, as a young man (William Finley) disappointed in love and betrayed by a rock entrepreneur named Swan (Paul Williams)****, finds himself deformed and deranged, haunting Swan's Paradise Rock Emporium.

Swan is played by Paul Williams, and before you make some expectorating noises, I should say he is properly sinister and comic in the role. He also wrote the songs for the film's exemplary score, which covers a variety of rock-styles, none of which sinks to his regular lonely-introspection fare.

William Finley, who played a mad doctor in Sisters plays the deranged "Phantom," and Jessica Harper,***** who with Diane Keaton participated in the send-up of Bergman's Persona in Woody Allen's Love and Death (see how all these films tie together?), portrays a young and naive innocent who wants to be a "star(!!)" As Obsession borrowed from almost all its ideas from different Hitchcock films, Phantom borrows a lot of plots from success-stories of the past, and incidental scenes from The Godfather, White Heat, and Psycho. But De Palma manages to make this pastiche of film totally his own and in a perverse way, totally enjoyable. Go see it. You may just become a Brian De Palma fan.******

Next weekend, The ASUW film series devotes itself to "The Thriller" as interpreted by such cinema staples as W.S. Van Dyke, Bernardo Bertolucci, Roman Polanski, and Lina Wertmuller.*******  

Broadcast on KCMU-FM on November 5th and 6th, 1975

Man, I was a big Brian De Palma fan back in those day. Fortunately, he rarely disappointed with his movies. Oh, there are the duds in his CV--The Fury, Home Movies (which he did with a class he was teaching), Wise Guys, The Bonfire of the Vanities (compromised by studio and De Palman cold-feet), and he would grow out of his "Hitchcock" obsession of the 1970's, and just sneak some of the Master's craft into his pictures (like Dressed to Kill, Blow Out, Body Double, Mission: Impossible, Femme Fatale, and Snake Eyes). He is still a fine film-maker, who pushes the envelope as far as subject matter and technique. His most recent film--Redacted--was a raging film against the Iraq War that scared its distributor into quietly burying it in theaters (it opened locally at The Crest, usually the last stop before video). As of this writing, his next film is a long-in-the-works prequel to his very popular version of The Untouchables--written by playwright David Rabe this time, instead of playwright David Mamet.

But enough about De Palma! What about Phantom of the Paradise? I have fond memories of it, and was impressed with the soundtrack—Williams did some wicked parodies of song-styles that scored satiric points as well as the film. It was inevitable that someone would take the era of Glam Rock and mix it with Gothic Horror. 

Across the pond, Richard Sherman's Rocky Horror Show opened on stage in June 1973, and it's not inconceivable that De Palma might have heard of it. But Phantom is rooted in "Faust" and "The Phantom of the Opera," while "Rocky Horror" takes its cue from the RKO horror films and Frankenstein, and, more importantly, The Bride of Frankenstein. The fact that both came out on the tails of the "Glam" era were the big influences, with Rocky being its step-child, and Phantom using it for texture—and Phantom is more concerned with the phony excesses of the music biz, while Rocky embraces them.

One could make the case that Phantom was influenced by Rocky Horror, but the timing's way off—Rocky Horror wasn't that huge a hit at the time of Phantom's creation (right after De Palma directed Carrie) and wouldn't be filmed until a year later. So, though they have the same roots, any resemblance is a very specious one.

* DePalma is now 67.

** After Psycho.

*** After Vertigo.

****No, really, he's good. Very good. So are the songs he composed for the film.

*****For awhile, Jessica Harper seemed to be in every good movie that came out, and a few bad ones, too. She's still acting, but she's doing more singing and writing for kids. Her last movie role to date was in Spielberg's Minority Report.

 ****** Just don't go see Bonfire of the Vanities after it...

******* Those would be The Thin Man, Chinatown, and The Conformist. The Vertmüller film was Love and Anarchy, which I'll re-post once we get October Hallowe'en out of our systems.

The View from 2023: No more asterisks (I really over-did it on this one), but let's update a few things that were in the original and in the re-review. DePalma is now 83. He has two movies currently in development, but not that Untouchables Prequel—which was titled Capone Rising, it is in development Hell. Jessica Harper (bless her heart) is still acting.

My Favorite Year

I felt so bad about trashing the Peter O'Toole movie Lord Jim—I think O'Toole is "the finest man who ever breathed"—that I went scouring for an old review of another of his movies, and I found the one where he played a fictional version of Errol Flynn (featured Tuesday). Ya know, you watch a lot of movies and coincidences just happen...

My Favorite Year (Richard Benjamin, 1982) Surely one of the best jobs during the early 1950's was being a writer for "Your Show of Shows,"* broadcast live Saturday nights on NBC. Starring Sid Caesar, Imogene Coca, Carl Reiner and Howard Morris, the writing staff contained such wits as Reiner, Mel Tolkin, Larry Gelbart, Danny Simon, his odd couple brother Neil Simon, Lucille Kallen, and Mel Brooks.** The work environment was so fondly remembered it has consistently been used as comedic inspiration. First, Reiner used it as the work environment for "The Dick Van Dyke Show." Neil Simon wrote the stage-play "Laughter on the 23rd Floor."*** And Brooks took the kernel of a script by Dennis Palumbo about a going-to-seed celebrity and his "minder" and morphed it into his remembrance of "Your Show of Shows," My Favorite Year.**** Brooks served as neither writer, nor director, but as Executive Producer, he completely re-imagined the film as this sunny, hilarious remembrance, dripping with nostalgia, of being a cocky kid in New York in the '50's working for a hit comedy show. 

"King" Kaiser (Joseph Bologna) is the high-strung, neurotic star of a network variety show, and one week it falls to writer's assistant Benjy Stone (Mark Linn-Baker) to "manage" movie star Alan Swann (Peter O'Toole) through the rehearsals and broadcast. Two problems: Swann's a perennial lush, and he's never acted before a "live" audience. Fortunately, Benjy is Swann's biggest fan and forgives a lot of bad behavior, but Swann's "bad boy" behavior, insecurities and inebriation keep throwing up barriers.

O'Toole was initially hesitant to take on the role of the Errol Flynn-like Swann (he was convinced by an odd coincidence--the date of Swann's death inscribed on a tombstone--in a scene cut from the film--was also O'Toole's birthday. He was, again, nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for his performance. Richard Benjamin solidified his transition from actor to director with this film, which also featured Jessica Harper as the apple of Benjy's eye, Bill Macy, Anne De Salvo and Basil Hoffman as the show's writers, legendary composer Adolph Green as a producer, Lainie Kazan as Benjy's mother, Cameron Mitchell as a mobster unhappy with his portrayal on the show, and even former "Show of Shows" performer Selma Diamond in a small role. 

But the highlight is O'Toole's swashbuckling star. Looking gaunt and rheumy-eyed even when he's not plowed, Swann benefits from O'Toole's charm, crack timing and physical comedy—O'Toole can do a prat-fall and make it look deadly—but the actor makes the drama work as well. Swann's freak-out at being told he's performing "live" ("I'm not an actor! I'm a movie star!!") is both comic and tragic. And he plays off well with a sharp cluster of East Coast character actors. 

The all-pervasive air of nostalgia begins immediately with the opening of Nat King Cole's "Stardust" over animated credits, and continues to the last frame with a joyous semi-sadness. My Favorite Year works on so many levels--as a drama as well as a comedy, as a fond remembrance as well as a fond farewell. And any movie that has a decent role for O'Toole to show how good he is, dramatically or comedically deserves a place on any list of 'favorites." 

* To give you a glimpse of "Your Show of Shows" here's Carl Reiner, Sid Caesar, Howie Morris and Louis Nye performing a sketch called "This Is Your Story." 

And here's Errol Flynn guesting on TV's "The Colgate Comedy Hour" with Abbott and Costello

** And Woody Allen became a writer for the 60 minute version of the show, "Caesar's Hour." 

*** Coincidentally, when "Laughter on the 23rd Floor" was video-taped for PBS, it was directed by "My Favorite Year" director Richard Benjamin, and featured its star, Mark-Linn Baker. 

**** The original screenplay took place in the early 1900's, and Wyatt Earp was the personage to be "minded."

Olde Review: Love and Death

This was part of a series of reviews of the ASUW Film series back in the '70's. Except for some punctuation, I haven't changed anything from the way it was presented, giving the kid I was back in the '70's a break. Any stray thoughts and updates I've included with the inevitable asterisked post-scripts.

Love and Death (Woody Allen, 1975) Let no one get the idea that I don't like Woody Allen. I really do. There was a time in my life that I was completely absorbed in the Allen "persona." For a time I was even writing term papers in his style (luckily I was a freshman and no one knew the difference). But even though I like Allen a great deal, it doesn't prevent me from not being too enthralled with Love and Death, for there are too many times when Allen forgets that he is making a moving picture, and does a monologue much like the ones he did in his old night-club days. Indeed, there are times, when "Love and Death" becomes merely an illustrated version of his writings in "Getting Even" and "Without Feathers." *

The best Allen movie is still Play it Again, Sam which, coincidentally, is being broadcast by CBS Friday night). Allen wrote it, based on his hit stage play, but Herbert Ross directed it. And one of the reasons that it is more successful is because the Allen "schlemiel" character is rooted to the present time. In "Love and Death," the movie takes place at the time of the Napoleonic Wars and the jokes come easily...too easily. All Allen has to do is put together an anachronistic scene--very easy to do and he still gets the yoks! (Cheerleaders on the battleground, indeed!**) Play it Again, Sam and its current scene forced Allen to come up with genuine funnies, not anachronistic ploys. Sleeper was successful because it worked with our knowledge of the present with our ignorance of the future. Love and Death is less so because it worked our knowledge of the present against our knowledge of the past. The two don't work together.***

Broadcast November 4th and 5th, 1976

Love and Death would prove to be the last of what Allen cheekily labeled "his earlier, funny ones" (in Stadust Memories). At the time this review was written, Allen was polishing the edit of what was at that time called "Anhedonia," which would become the Best Picture Oscar-winning Annie Hall, and Allen would never go back to making his anachronistic "easy-laughs" kind of film, and started taking the craft of making films a lot more seriously. Love and Death was Allen's "Long Goodbye" to that style of sketch-comedy film-making.

Actually, Love and Death was his "transition" film, a bridge between those two styles--for example, how Allen shot a couple things became the joke—his classically framed "lions-roar" that he ripped from Eisenstein's Potemkin, for example. His camera set-ups began to take on the spare look of an Ingmar Bergman film (he also took the Death figure from The Seventh Seal). The script was a mess (as all his early films were)--this time an amalgram of Dostoevsky, Chekhov, Tolstoy and Sleeper, but it was funny stuff, and a lot less episodic than Bananas, or Everything You Wanted to Know about Sex***** One dismisses the craft of comedy in film at one's own peril, because there are enough well-shot comedies that can't eke out a laugh to save their box-office lives. If one is looking at the photography more than enjoying the jokes is that anhedonia? 

The bottom line is, though, "is it funny?"

After Love and Death, Allen began to take the films—and himself—more seriously, burying the schtick and overt clownishness and embedding the jokes in the material, leaving them unsupported by buffoonery; he was getting older and the mugging at some point would look childish. He also stopped hiding behind satire to make his points. Oh, the influences were still there—they are there for every film-maker—he just wouldn't call attention to their sources so nakedly. When one does that, one's work has nothing to hide behind and leaves it open to all sorts of criticisms, charges of pretension, and the usual huffiness of the professional (or non-professional) critic. One can no longer just slip on a banana peel and wink "just kidding..."

So, I was wrong here, but not as wrong as I would be, and Allen would leave the blandly Ross-directed Play it Again, Sam (which is offensive now with its casual "rape" jokes) behind, with such classics as Annie Hall, Manhattan, Hannah and Her Sisters, and Crimes and Misdemeanors, and a lot of gems along the way. Every economically-made five or six films or so, Allen will make a great film. That's a fine batting average in the Biz.

* These are collections of Allen's essays for "The New Yorker."

** I guess I forgot the scene where the hot-dog vendor is yelling "Red Hots!" on the battle-field.

***Crap! Of course, they can work together!

***** But were Afraid to Ask!