The Face, Part 8

#2

I have just watched Christine pull the mask from the face of the Phantom of the Opera, the 1943 version, starring Claude Rains as the Phantom. My parents took me to see that movie in 1946 or perhaps 1947. We were away from home staying in a house I did not know.

That night I woke in the dark house and saw the phantom in his high hat watching my sleep, his cape held open as he made ready to swoop into my room and take me away to his home in the sewer. I could hardly breathe and dared not move, so great was my fear, but I knew my only safety lay sleeping in the next bedroom. Finally, I slid my feet to the floor and ran to my parents' room, shaking and sobbing out my fears as my mother gathered me into her bed.

Next morning she showed me the phantom by daylight. He was outside my bedroom door, no mistaking that, but was not real. His cape was the dark wood partition between the living and dining rooms, his hat the grooved post that reached the ceiling. No need to be afraid of that or of the dark, she assured me.

But the fear I felt from that movie has stayed in my memory. And that face, scarred and burned, destroyed by the acid that was thrown at it, has also stayed in memory all my life. I was actually afraid to see it again these 60-some years later.

But now that I have seen it again, I can say quite easily that by today’s horror standards, that face is nothing.

And, by the way, Claude Rains insisted that the ugliness, the scarring, be tempered until it looked frightening but not overwhelmingly so. He did not want to be labeled as a horror actor. Still, it was horror enough, or so I thought as a child.

But that is not the point.

The point, and the attempt to answer the questions, has to do with this: Considering that the Phantom seemed a decent person--and a gifted musician--before the acid was thrown in his face and became a murderer after, you might conclude that destroying his face destroyed him and his soul. It can’t be that simple, of course, but there has to be some connection.

I'm not sure what the writer or movie maker wanted us to think. Perhaps that there are reasons behind what murderous people do. Perhaps that there truly is a connection between how we look and what we allow ourselves to do. But not all criminals are ugly, you know.

By the way, I have been to the Paris Opera House, where the story takes place, but not to the sewers beneath.