There’s a lot of visual storytelling in this film as well, which is something I really appreciate. His character was not only sympathetic, but he was incredibly intriguing as well. Probably the first half hour of this film is primarily focused on him, and the other characters are only backdrop, coming forward after Claudin’s face is disfigured and he flees to the opera house to hide. The biggest difference between this version and the 2004 version of “Phantom of the Opera” (the one closest to the Broadway production), is that this version spends a decent amount of time letting us get to know Claudin, and turning him into a sympathetic villain. And of course, there is still our phantom, Erique Claudin (Calude Rains, “The Wolf Man”). We still have our lead, Christine (Susanna Foster, “The Climax”), and she’s still caught in a love triangle between two people Anatole Garron (Nelson Eddy,” Song of the Plains”) and Raoul Daubert (Edgar Barrier, “Macbeth (1948)”). Many elements are still the same, of course. Perhaps the thing I like most about this film is that it isn’t exactly the same story we’ve seen played out a thousand times. It’s not only one of the more exciting Universal Monster movies I’ve seen, but it’s also one of the most epic.

It’s an absolutely gorgeous film, and there are plenty of moments in the movie that are quite impressive from a technical standpoint. The sets on the Opera are all beautifully and lavishly constructed and wonderfully shot. Everything is incredibly saturated and light with soft, diffused light. First of all, the transfer for this film has to be one of the best Technicolor transfers from the early forties that I’ve seen. Still, I decided to give it a go, and am I glad I did. I say surprisingly because I was slightly disappointed when I opened my box set to see that the version of the Phantom of the Opera I had received was not the Lon Chaney 1925 version, but the Claude Rains 1943 version, which I’d heard nothing about. This was surprisingly one of my favorites of the Universal Monster movies.

The phantom of the opera movie 1943