DePalma Watch: Phantom of the Paradise (1974)

Watched:  11/16/2025

Format:  Amazon

Viewing:  Second

Director:  Brian DePalma

There's a lot going on in Phantom of the Paradise (1974).  

Here's a pie-chart as shared by The Dug about half-way through the movie (we'd thrown together a last-minute watch party).

And then without about ten minutes left:

it helps to know that "giraffe" is code for "no, thank you" 

This seems right.  

It's a rock'n'roll odyssey put out at the height of the music industry's debaucherous post-60's embracing of glitz and glamour and hard drugs.  It's hard not to see the movie as helping push boundaries with formats for music (gestures broadly at Jim Steinman) and as reflecting what was going on out there in the pre-punk days.  

The story borrows from Faust, barely from Phantom of the Opera, Dorian Gray and nods to German Expressionism.  But it's also a musical propelled by a Paul Williams-penned soundtrack.  It's more or less a young filmmaker going nuts and having fun putting *ideas* up on screen, as well as homage.  

DePalma has fun with lens and shot selection, set design, and a star in William Finley who is not afraid to disappear into his over-the-top character with silver teeth and an oddball headcovering that leaves one wild eye rolling inside the mask.  The movie was filmed a few places, but I learned that the theater that plays "The Paradise" is the Majestic Theatre of Dallas, Texas.  So it's very possible extras from Logan's Run are also in the audience here.  

As I opined, Phantom of the Paradise is somewhat like Showgirls in that it is actually very successful at doing what it set out to do.  Whether you like what it's doing is unrelated.  Looking at the reception bits on Wikipedia, arguably most of the reviewers kind of missed DePalma's goals, which happens as the new generation comes along.  He wasn't *spoofing* anything.  That's some snobbery left over from the tweedy take on what we should have in movies and not quite keeping up with what the USC guys were bringing to the table as fans of movies, not cultural gatekeepers.  DePalma is using pieces of pop culture and culture to simply tell a modern rock fable.  And doing it with a wink as he's doing it - knowing how over the top and absurd it is.  It's mostly a study in seeing what you can get away with.  

We're taking a journey, man.  A journey that starts with a nostalgia act, The Juicy Fruits doing that 1970's thing of playing a sort of Greaser version of a doo-wop act that would bring is Sha-Na-Na, moves into a Beach Boys pastiche.  Paul Williams' soundtrack has some pretty good tracks as the film progresses, but who gets songs and when doesn't really match the usual format of a musical.  Swan (Williams) never has a solo explaining himself.  We kind of subvert Phoenix's (Jessica Harper) song and it's not much of an "I Want" song.  It's more... just songs.  And I wasn't able to dig in enough to the lyrics during my two viewings to hear what they had to say.  But I did listen to the soundtrack on its own, and it's very Paul Williams and listenable.

Do I like this movie?  Well, yeah.  I kind of think I do.  In the way I always like it when a movie swings for the fences and wants to do its own thing.  Maybe it winds up being a bit off-putting as there are no heroes in this movie, exactly - even our wholesome female star/ Christine stand-in gets immediately compromised when success and possible celebrity is thrust upon her.  And Winslow (our Phantom) is kind of weird and hard to cheer for, so you're just sort of watching things happen.

Does it make much sense and is it hard to follow on a first viewing?  I don't know, but it is more fun when you know what's coming.