The Phantom of the Opera
Short description
In nineteenth-century Paris, a young soprano named Christine becomes the focus of a hidden musical genius who lurks in the depths of the Opera House. The masked figure, disfigured and feared by the company, tutors her in secret and engineers her rise to leading roles while terrorizing the management. Christine's childhood friend Raoul, now a wealthy patron, reenters her life, and the Phantom's jealousy turns dangerous for both of them.
Joel Schumacher directed this adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber's long-running stage musical, which itself draws on Gaston Leroux's novel. Schumacher wrote the screenplay with Lloyd Webber and Charles Hart; Lloyd Webber also produced through his Really Useful Group, alongside Warner Bros. The film was the seventeenth of the twenty-one features Schumacher directed, arriving after Veronica Guerin in 2003 and before The Number 23 in 2007. Gerard Butler plays the Phantom, with Emmy Rossum as Christine, Patrick Wilson as Raoul, Miranda Richardson as Madame Giry, Minnie Driver as Carlotta and Ciarán Hinds as Firmin, among a large credited cast and crew.
Released in December 2004, the production carried a budget of 70 million dollars and took about 155 million dollars worldwide. Audiences generally responded well: on IMDb it holds 7.2 out of 10 from roughly 138,000 votes, and on TMDB 7.3 from a much smaller sample. That sits well above the critics' rating of 5.2 from 166 reviews.
What's left behind the scenes
- John Travolta and Antonio Banderas both auditioned for the role of the Phantom. The latter even took vocal lessons specifically for the part.
- Keira Knightley was one of the contenders for the role of Christine Daaé. Among the other applicants were Charlotte Church, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Martina McCahon, Jessica Simpson, Andrea Corr, and Anne Hathaway. Katie Holmes almost landed the role of Christine, but the director considered her too "old" for it.
- The project was ready to launch as early as 1990, and at that time, Michael Crawford and Sarah Brightman were to be its main stars (they were the ones who played the lead roles on stage). However, shortly before work began on the project, Andrew Lloyd Webber divorced Sarah Brightman, and the project was shelved.
- Among the candidates for the director's chair were Indian filmmaker Shekhar Kapur and John Woo.
- Over the long thirteen years that the film was in development, quite a few notable figures felt involved in the project, albeit not for a long period. Only one candidate was approved from the very beginning – director Joel Schumacher. The author of 'The Phantom of the Opera', Andrew Lloyd Webber, invited Joel after seeing the film 'The Lost Boys'.
- It took around 4 hours each day to apply makeup to Gerard Butler, the lead actor.
- The final scene of the film took a whole week to shoot.
- In April 2004, the audience attending the play of the same name in London was asked to stay after the performance and record sound effects for the film.
- Joel Schumacher invited Gerard Butler to the project after seeing the actor in "Dracula 2000".
- Neither Gerard Butler nor Emmy Rossum had seen the musical before receiving their roles. Joel Schumacher also hadn't seen the theatrical version.
- Specifically for the film, Weber wrote about 15 minutes of new music. He also invested $6 million of his own funds into the film's production.
- Weber did not participate in the casting, his only condition being that the actors sing in their own voices.
- A chandelier (weighing 2.2 tons) was specially made for the filming of this movie.
- During the main aria, “The Phantom of the Opera,” the boat moved along special rails located underwater.
- Sets were specially built to audition actors for roles in the upcoming film. The actors even had to wear costumes.
- Hugh Jackman auditioned for the role of the Phantom.
- Schumacher suggested considering Colin Farrell, but abandoned the idea after becoming convinced of the actor's complete inability to sing.
- Filming took place in the United Kingdom from September 2003 to January 2004.
- All the actors sing in the film themselves—with the exception of Minnie Driver. She is a professional jazz singer, but to have Carlotta sing soprano, Margaret Preece, a professional opera singer, was brought in. Incidentally, she also appeared in the film—as the companion in the Il Muto scene.
- Carlotta speaks with an Italian accent – Minnie Driver lived in Venice as a child and borrowed the accent from an Italian neighbor.
- The film's makeup artist, Jenny Shircore, developed the Phantom's disfigurement design based on a case of congenital pathology she once witnessed.
- The white half-mask worn by Gerard Butler as the Phantom was sold at an eBay auction for £6,350.
- Director Joel Schumacher wanted to achieve realism, so in the fire scene, the theater's sets were actually burned to the ground.
- Throughout the film, the Phantom utters only 14 lines. The rest is vocals.
- In the episode when Christine makes her debut on the theater stage, her costume is different from the original musical—that is, it is not a costume for the opera 'Hannibal.' Her dress, jewelry, and hairstyle are copies of the portrait of Empress Elizabeth by Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1865).
- During the masquerade, Raoul chases the Phantom and ends up in a mirror room. It's not in the original musical, but the mirror room is present in Leroux's original novel.
- The film is based on Gaston Leroux's novel "The Phantom of the Opera" (Le Fantôme de l'Opéra, 1910).
- Minnie Driver (Carlotta) performed only one song in her own voice – "Learn to be lonely".
- At the beginning of the film, in the auction scene (as in the musical), the lot number for the chandelier is 666, the biblical "number of the beast" mentioned in the "Book of Revelation" (the "Apocalypse").
- The beginning of the film, the photograph of old Paris that then transforms into black-and-white film footage, is a reference to Baz Luhrmann's film musical "Moulin Rouge!" (2001).
- In the musical, the chandelier falls at the end of the first act. But in the film adaptation, this event is moved to the end of the movie. This plot device was later incorporated into the Las Vegas version of the musical. Because the chandelier now falls in the 'wrong place,' the lyrics had to be slightly altered: Monsieur Firmin in the musical at the Masquerade raises a toast 'to the new chandelier,' while in the film this line was replaced with 'to the friends that are here.'
- When the Phantom first leads Christine to his lair, they walk through a corridor where human hands protrude from the walls, holding burning candelabras. This is a quote from Jean Cocteau's film 'Beauty and the Beast' (1946).
Similar movies
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
