Phantom of the opera

[Alice 26]

I have just brought the new Phantom Of The Opera DVD and i really enjoy the actual story but i do not understand the bits in black and white very well,

eg. Why does he go back to the Opera house and buy the musical monkey box?

Can anyone explain it to me?                   

[Octavius]

Flash forward/back plot synopsis

A wealthy wheelchair-bound senior attends an auction in a derelict Paris theatre, 1919.  He is accompanied by a chauffeur and a nurse.  He exchanges acknowledging looks with an elderly dignified woman.  They each bid on a music box in the shape of a monkey clapping cymbals.  The man outbids the woman.  The man returns to his limousine with the music box, nods to the woman, and drives off.  His limousine stops at an intersection and he watches a couple discussing wedding rings on display in a shop window.  For a brief moment, he sees a different couple kissing.  The limousine proceeds out of Paris and turns up the long lane of a cemetery.  The old man sees a deer running alongside the limousine.  When his wheelchair nears a grave, the old man insists on standing and shakily carrying the music box to his dead wife�s monument. He places the music box on the stone.  He notices something else on the monument: a single rose garlanded with a black ribbon.

A fourth flashback begins with the portrait of Madame Giry as a young girl.  She attends a traveling circus and sees an act known as �The Devil�s Child.�  The child�s master beats him and knocks his doll, a cymbal-playing monkey, out of his hands.  At the end of the act, the devil�s child attacks and strangles his abusive master.  Young Giry helps the child escape from the police hunt, takes him to the opera house, and hides him in the caves below.  She maintains a relationship with him over the years, and regards him as a genius.  When Christine shows an interest in singing, Madame Giry arranges for the Phantom to give her singing lessons.

I think the sequence is more about memory, it was the monkey box that led him to Mdm Giry, which led to Chrisitine etc... (contd)

[Octavius]

Overall plot synopsis
A young opera ing�nue is torn between a rekindled romance with a childhood sweetheart and loyalty to a man she knows only as �the angel of music,� a teacher she believes has been sent to her by her dead father.  Set in a Paris opera house in 1870, with flashbacks and flashforwards, the story tests the girl with a choice between fairytale romance and a chance to make the music of the night.

[flaming]

I was very young when I saw the original film  - even then quite an old film - with Claude Rains as The Phantom;  it might be very dated now - but I did enjoy it.   Also,I got more enjoyment from the Michael Crawford/Sarah Brightman stage show than I did from the latest film.  I felt that it was miscast.  I'd be interested to know what others thought (if they had made comparisons).

[steevee]

I saw the film around Christmas at our local cinema, and thought it was excellent. Also the stage show in Bristol. I did feel that the part of the Phantom in the film was miscast and needed somebody with a stronger and more commanding voice, and felt most of the singing had been dubbed by other performers. But according to the documentary on the DVD all the cast members sang their own parts. The graveyard sequence was brilliantly done. All in all an excellent film.