This review was requested by Brian Kapustik. Many thanks to Brian for supporting Post-Credit Coda through our Patreon.
Director: Brian De Palma
Writer: Brian De Palma
Cast: William Finley, Paul Williams, Jessica Harper, Gerrit Graham, George Memmoli
Runtime: 91 mins.
1974
Phantom of the Paradise is as scatterbrained as its Wikipedia genre description: 'a rock musical horror comedy film.' It begins casually enough, with an opening voiceover by none other than "The Twilight Zone" voice actor Rod Serling about the infamy of Swan (Paul Williams). This titanic music producer has a stranglehold on the industry, Serling tells us, one that he wants to enrich with his new music club, The Paradise. That monologue lasts about a minute. Then we are dumped into a whirligig of stimuli as an unseen Swan watches potential musical headliners from the balcony. Swan's current cash cow, Beach Boys throwback band The Juicy Fruits, just won't do for the Grand Opening. He needs something new.
He falls in love with the music of our protagonist Winslow (William Finley), which Winslow explains is a cantata inspired by Faust.* Trouble is, Swan needs the music, not the musician. He screws Winslow out of his intellectual property in a transparently one-sided deal that really should have been obvious to Winslow considering his obsession with Faust.
*We see snippets of Winslow's cantata throughout, as well as other music acts. The Paul Williams-produced soundtrack is exactly right for what the movie is doing.
Our first indication that we're in for something bonkers comes a few minutes in, when hired muscle and talent headhunter Philbin (George Memmoli) turns to the camera and addresses us directly-- as if we ourselves are Swan. In most films a stroke this bold this early would be a statement of intent: expect more of this style to come. Here, neither voiceover nor direct address appear in the rest of the movie because it is busy advancing every other experiment it can think of. Paradise shifts its identity every scene like a quantum particle: we can never pin down exactly where it is, and we don't know how it got there, but it never becomes anything other than itself.
Some of these aggressive stylistic choices don't work at first. I'm thinking of one bit in particular that falls flat, a jarring sped-up revolving door gag that contributes nothing but whiplash. The deranged messiness of the film would seem to indicate a brand new filmmaker, one who haphazardly combines every ingredient he can conceive of, someone excited and undisciplined. All the weirder that this was Brian De Palma's eighth feature after playing in the medium for about a decade and a half. He hadn't quite found his footing in Hollywood yet (that would come two years later with Carrie), so one could see this movie as an 'all in' gambit to make a splash. One could also see this movie as a creator determined to splash around in his creative pool whether it appeals to anybody else or not. We can be sure about one thing: this movie splashes.
The campiness of the first act feels unruly, but the second act breaks from and recontextualizes the first. We start to really appreciate the collection of phenomenal cartoon performances. I've already mentioned Paul Williams, who plays Swan with a sheen of utmost slime. There is no subtlety to be found here. We know the type, and we know we hate the type.
If there is a corrupting force, there must be a corrupted. Surprise surprise, it is a beautiful woman who just wants to sing more than anything in the world. Fortunately for us that woman is Phoenix, and she is played by Jessica Harper of Suspiria and Suspiria fame. No matter how shallow her as-written motivation, no matter how ridiculous her task, Harper makes it as captivating as she can in what is certainly the least fun role of the main trifecta.
And then there's Winslow. William Finley, a regular collaborator of De Palma's, plays him as a ball of nerves and flop sweat. He's the stereotypical nerd to a T, buried behind his glasses, too obsessed with his music to clock any sort of social niceties. We dismiss him early on as a nothing character. That turns out to be a ploy, as the second act escalates his trauma at a breathtaking pace. He transforms into the titular phantom at a breakneck speed thanks to an ironic industrial machinery accident-- though his transformation is not complete until he garbs himself in costume stolen from the Paradise itself.
The Phantom costume is incredible. Leather buckles and cape with a metallic hawkish helmet, it looks indisputably silly. Yet every time the Phantom takes the screen it is riveting. Part of this is the tremendous maskwork by Finley, part of it is the helmet and make-up that make his eyes gigantic with red-rimmed intensity, part of it is the fantastic proto-Vader sound box that allows Winslow to speak once more. The imagery is so successfully iconic that it would inspire the act of a young Daft Punk, who saw Paradise in theaters many times as teenagers.
This bombastic yet acute design sense is not limited to the costumes. The interiors of this film are psychedelic. Cherry red curving hallways, abstract architecture, rooms covered wall to wall with dials meters and knobs. The actors inhabit these sets naturally, all the better to enhance the surrealism. The work of production designer Jack Fisk and costume designer Rosanna Norton sucks us wholesale into this world of greed and passion.
Just when we catch up to the movie's pace, the third act kicks us into the stratosphere. Suddenly this is no longer a film that happens more or less in our reality. We have people speaking to their reflections, onstage murder to rousing applause, immortality without consent, and the literal devil. These elements smash together in the climax, which uses skillful editing to conflate performance with reality.
It begins to click why everyone has been playing stereotypes with motivations that don't even remotely track through the film. The film is hyper-real. We understand the ensemble less as people and more as elemental representations of human forces. The characters are elevated to the state of mythology, as if we are watching the most recent tussle in a war that shoots through all of history: the artist versus the exploiter.
These discordant ingredients that break all the rules still manage to amalgamate into the pure expression of an idea. There's so much going on in Paradise that at the end of the day, the highest accolades have to go to editor Paul Hirsch, who makes something tight, propulsive, and cogent out of what must have been an intimidating assortment of footage. The editor and the director share an orientation towards film: they must make each element come together and sing. I don't know how Hirsch managed to saddle this bucking bronco, but he keeps De Palma's mania from becoming totally alienating. Phantom of the Paradise is a movie that happens to you, one that brings you to a place you've never known. For that gift, some sloppiness can be eagerly forgiven.
4 / 5 BLOBS
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