Why Phantom of the Paradise remains a timeless masterpiece

Brian De Palma's cult film celebrates its 50th anniversary.

Released for Halloween on October 31, 1974 in the United States, Phantom of the Paradise is now celebrating its 50th anniversary (in France it arrived in theaters on February 25, 1975). On the occasion of its restoration for its 40th anniversary, we deciphered the timeless cult film of Brian DePalma. Flashback.

By Damien Leblanc

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It's a great satire of the culture industry

From his voice-over prologue, Phantom of the Paradise anchors its story at the heart of the music industry by portraying Swan, a successful producer who experienced “his first gold record at 14”. A producer whose cynicism we quickly discover when he steals the music of the young composer Winslow Leach and sends the latter to prison. The satire is direct and assumed, since the record company owned by Swan is called “Death Records”a funereal name which emphasizes the brutality with which show business destroys the work of artists.

Mutilating the work and the flesh of the creators and feeding on their energy, Swan parades the singers in succession. The film thus explores various musical trends (good old rockabily, surf music, glam rock), showing to what extent Swan is a trendsetter who quickly tires of the artists with whom he collaborates.

Strongly inspired by Phil Spector, legendary producer of the Ronettes and the Righteous Brothers who had a string of successes in the early 1960s and whose production techniques influenced the Beatles and the Beach Boys, Swan has a dictatorial and megalomaniacal character. The terms of the contracts he makes artists sign turn out to be so crude that they become comical: “The assignor cedes to the assignee and his associates the right to do with him what they want, to govern him, to send him, to transport him, whether it be his body, soul, blood or his property.”

Through the satire of the music industry, Brian de Palma delivered in a roundabout way a virulent criticism of the Hollywood industry. Traumatized in 1970 by his experience with the Warner studio on the set of Get to Know Your Rabbit (Watch out for the rabbit) where he was deprived of all autonomy and had no right to review the finished product, the American filmmaker knew perfectly well what feelings animate an artist dispossessed of his creation when he wrote, alone, the screenplay for Phantom of the Paradise.

“They take something good and original and exploit it to make as much money as possible”he explains about his film. When Swan filters through devices the sound of Winslow Leach's lost voice, the metaphor is not only musical and the sequence reminds us that the industry has the power to kill the voices of artists before reconstituting a version of them. denatured.

It's a total spectacle

At once a rock opera, a horror film, a comedy and a fantastic story, Phantom of the Paradise mixes literary, musical and cinematographic references while miraculously retaining a unique identity. Because the supercharged staging of Brian De Palma (whose use of split-screen sometimes joins different film genres in the same shot) manages to elevate recycling to the rank of art even though the film denounces the commercial plundering of works artistic.

For literary influences, we find the myth of Faustthe framework of Phantom of the Opera (the novel by Gaston Leroux in which a ghost overcome with love haunts the basements of the Opéra Garnier) and the plot of Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. Various plans for their part refer to Red slippers by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger (for Swan's habit of attending auditions hidden behind a mirror), to The Thirst for Evil by Orson Welles (during the sequence shot where the ghost places a time bomb in the trunk of a car) or Psychosis by Alfred Hitchcock (the shower scene is repeated in humorous mode), thus mixing the pleasure of the quote and the desire to bring together several sources of images.

Culminating during a long concert sequence where a number of aesthetic and emotional registers merge, the film simultaneously offers a total spectacle and a critique of the world of spectacle, skillfully playing on its contradictions. The composer of the film's splendid music, Paul Williams, plays the role of the evil Swan when he was originally supposed to lend his features to the ingenuous Winslow Leach. Both creator of the original soundtrack and incarnation of the one who perverts creation, Williams symbolizes the reversible and mutating aspect of Phantom of the Paradise, work which multiplies the comings and goings between life and death, between cinema and music, between comedy and drama.

It is an inexhaustible source of influences

Drawing its energy from multiple references, Phantom of the Paradise in turn influenced various artists. Several sources agree that George Lucas, a great friend of Brian De Palma in the 1970s, was inspired by the character of the ghost, his luminous mask and his voice distorted by a black box to create the look of Darth Vader in Star Warsreleased in 1977, three years later Phantom of the Paradise.

In fact, Darth Vader's famous jerky breathing recalls the heavy breathing that we hear during the subjective view sequence where Winslow comes to seize his mask in the corridors of Paradise to forge a new identity. Other artists inspired by Phantom of the Paradise : Daft Punk, who are said to have seen the film dozens of times when they were teenagers. According to Paul Williams, who worked with Daft Punk on two tracks from the album Random Access Memories (released in 2013), the French duo's look – leather jackets and silver masks – pays direct homage to that of the ghost and his desire to hide his face to concentrate entirely on his creation.

Furthermore, the animated film Interstella 5555: The 5story of the 5ecret 5tar 5ystem (2003), designed by Daft Punk and Leiji Matsumoto, recalled the narrative of Phantom of the Paradise by showing how an evil producer kidnaps a group of extraterrestrial musicians to exploit their songs and distort their work. Another French tribute to De Palma’s film: the clip I feel for you (2001) by Bob Sinclar, which uses Swan's casting methods:

It's a visionary film

Pushing the mise en abyme to its limits, Brian De Palma authorized himself with Phantom of the Paradise a reflection on the nature of video recording, which according to him generates misleading images. A video tape is thus responsible in the film for preserving images of eternal youth, linking the fate of several characters to the survival of this tape. In 2005, Brian De Palma returned to the visionary aspect of the scenario: “Today, what happens in the film has become reality. We see people living on television, they only exist on television and not beyond. If you're not on television, you don't exist. »

Featured in Phantom of the Paradise as the final stage of the sensational spectacle, the assassination project live on television – inspired by the filmed assassination of Kennedy in 1963 – reflects the same distrust towards the television image, recalling that De Palma's previous film, Blood sisters (1973) opened with a vulgar game show that flattered the public's base instincts. Obsessed by the control screens which allow him to keep a demiurgic eye on the whole of Paradise, the character of Swan took on the air of a reality TV producer in 1974.

The composer Paul Williams also recognizes the critical dimension of Phantom of the Paradise : “With the Vietnam War, news became entertainment. We are no longer able to distinguish entertainment from human tragedy. »& In the final sequence, death actually becomes inseparable from entertainment since the spectators at Paradise never stop dancing frantically. The credits song, The Hell of ltthen comes to remind us of the ambiguities of a world where the show never stops.

It's a heartbreaking love story

Between the quest for ideals, criticism of the industry and bloody murders, Phantom of the Paradise do not forget the love through the relationship between the singer Phoenix (played by Jessica Harper, who we found in 1977 headlining Suspiria) and Winslow Leach (William Finley, faithful actor of Brian De Palma). The two characters meet very little, but it is enough for them to sing an extract from the cantata composed by Winslow on a staircase for the alchemy to work.

The relationship between these two beings will never be consummated, preferring to incarnate in an immaterial way through creation alone. After his accident, Winslow realizes that Phoenix could become his ” voice “ to him and the young woman represents his only reason to survive and continue to create. This impossible romance between a composer and a singer comes into its own on the Paradise stage during the performance of the title Old Souls by Phoenix. The stage becomes the only place where loving passion can be embodied and artistic utopia come true.

Emblem of this invisible love between Phoenix and Winslow, Old Souls is described by Paul Williams as the “favorite song” throughout his career: “I reveal my way of thinking about life. A great love is born before us and continues to exist after us.” Evoking feelings that persist through time and people, Old Souls sublimes the relationship between Winslow and Phoenix, condemned to failure on this earth but who has a date with eternity.