このレッスンの実行方法

レッスン３は6つのセクションから構成されています。各セッションでは、以下の順番で授業を受けてください。
(1) ビデオレクチャー（動画）を見てください。 (2) レクチャーのテキストを読んでください。(3) 動画（Phantom of the Opera excerpt #1（セクション１の場合））を見てください各セクションで上記のステップ（1）から（3）を繰り返してください。

Part I  After the huge success of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Carl Laemmle and Irving Thalberg set out to repeat their success. The formula was clear; take a famous novel with a grotesque main characte, have Lon Chaney star as that character, and spend a lot of money on the production. They chose The Phantom of the Opera and the film was to be an even greater success than The Hunchback of Notre Dame. The Phantom of the Opera was Universal’s most successful film of the 1920s. The Phantom of the Opera would become a model for the many horror films Universal Studios would produce later in the 1930s. Although The Hunchback of Notre Dame had been an important and successful film and Quasimodo was certainly one of Chaney’s greatest characters, it was not really a horror film. The film lacks those elements of horror which The Phantom of The Opera so clearly has. Although the term “horror film” had not even been invented yet, audiences went to The Phantom of the Opera to be terrified, shocked and filled with dread by Lon Chaney. He did not disappoint them.

Part II  The Phantom is classic Chaney. One moment he horrifies us and in the next he evokes our pity. Just as we think he might actually kill Christine, he turns away and starts to weep. He is weeping because she has seen his deformity. Other films which were based on the same novel change the story in a very significant way. In these other films Erik is a handsome young composer whose rival steals his music and then throws acid in his face leaving him horribly disfigured. But, the 1925 film follows the novel. In the novel Erik was born deformed just as Quasimodo was. Erik’s parents abandon him and he grows up institutionalized. He would have been given food and clothing and even an education, but can you imagine anyone picking him up and hugging or kissing him? His own natural parents rejected him because of his deformities. Erik spent his entire childhood without the love and human touch that is essential for normal human development. We can understand why a child denied all human touch would grow up to despise humanity. Like Quasimodo, Erik’s appearance has cut him off from the rest of mankind, but unlike Quasimodo Erik is not mentally handicapped. Far from it, Erik is both a musical and criminal genius. He lurks in the deepest and darkest place he can find, the old dungeons beneath the Paris Opera, but when he sees Christine and hears her sing he is moved by her. Really, it is probably only his desperate loneliness and need for love that makes him believe that if Christine will love him, he can stop being the Phantom. He believes that if she loves him he will be “cured”. 

Part III  Christine and Raul find each other and as they are about to have a private talk, Erik appears at the party as the “Red Death”. That is not only a remarkable costume, but it really is red…in a black and white movie. Before the technology of filming in color was available some films were hand painted to add color. This was an incredibly labor-intensive process, but as you can see the effect could be very dramatic. But it is Chaney’s performance that is most remarkable. His body language and gestures communicate perfectly. We see that Christine’s lover, Raul, is tall and handsome and a brave young man …and incredibly stupid! Because, when Raul hears Erik’s voice he says “I know that voice” and removes his own mask revealing himself to Erik who looks directly at him sees him standing next to Christine. His hand gesture is chilling. Raul wants to stay and fight Erik, but this would be a very unwise thing to do since the Phantom is like a ninja, a master of many weapons and tricks, his favorite of which is the strangler’s cord. Instead, Christine takes Raul to the roof of the Opera. Let’s continue watching.

Part IV  Christine tells Raul that she has seen Erik’s face and that he is a loathsome monster (あたしすごいかわいそう！). Not only has she broken her promise not to see Raul, but Christine also has a clever plan to betray Erik by first performing as the star of the Paris Opera and then escaping to England with Raul. The only problem with this plan is that Erik has heard every word of it. In the next two excerpts her plans don’t go quite as she expected.

Part V  Once again Christine finds herself in Erik’s underground lair and this time he has no intention of ever letting her escape. Remember what Erik wants and why: he wants Christine to love him because he believes that if he is loved he can stop being the Phantom, stop being evil. He even says that it is the evil inside him that has made his face ghastly. Of course he has it exactly wrong. It is the fact that he was born deformed that made other people reject him and it is this rejection that has made him become the Phantom. Sometimes he seems to understand this and sometimes he doesn’t. But what he truly believes is that if Christine will love him he can stop being evil. This is interesting from both a psychological and a philosophical perspective. Something psychologists and philosophers disagree about is the question of whether individuals are ultimately responsible for their own actions. The philosophers believe individuals might choose to be evil but that this is always a choice. On the other hand, the psychologists would say that sometimes people cannot be held responsible for their actions because they are insane. Erik certainly does many evil things. He kills many people in the film, but is he responsible for his actions? It is a question we will return to many times as we watch other horror films.

Part VI  Just one note about the production: did you notice that Erik runs right past Notre Dame Cathedral! The set was still standing in 1925 and Universal figured “motainai” and so Erik runs past the cathedral as he makes his way down to the Seine river. Actually, the Opera Garnier and Notre Dame are quite far from each other, but you wouldn’t know that unless you knew Paris. Of course the first time I saw Paris I had to see both these places since they appear in these famous horror films.

When the mob catches Erik they violently beat him and drown him. But, we get a sense that Erik was already doomed when Christine rejected him for the last time. He had no hope for her love and thus no hope for the transformation he believed her love could bring him. He was doomed. Just as any sort of true romance between Quasimodo and Esmerelda would have been impossible in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, so too was any romance between Erik and Christine in The Phantom of the Opera. In both films the “monster” was doomed because the woman he loved could never return that love. That is classic Chaney. Although Quasimodo and Erik are opposites in many ways; one good, the other evil, Quasimodo dying while protecting Esmerelda, Erik dying while trying to kidnap Christine, there is still a sort of basic rule about what happens to the monsters in these films. The monster dies in the end.

This concludes lecture #3