(spoilers, sexual references)
Like most movies made by people who don't speak the language of their actors - the acting is terrible. He was clearly going for a superlative Victorian style, which would have included larger than life performances - but the actors don't nail it - it just comes off as hammy, mainly due to the dubbing.
Like most italian movies (this is in english, but clearly made in Italy with Italian crew, etc), it looks like the dubbing is terrible (even though it is in synch) because the voice performances, recorded later, bear little resemblance to the tone of the visual performances.
The film stock also makes everything look like a tele-movie. The actors never gel with their backgrounds, and the camera is usually too close, which results in everything looking like rehearsals for a movie, just not quite cinematic. Unnecessary bursts of sex and violence are Argento's contributon to this story, which are ironically the two elements most out of place in it. By the way, i'm at a loss as to why anyone would hire Julian Sands after Boxing Helena.
But Argento's biggest crime was doing away with the device Its probably because no actor today would be able to harness their ego and agree to being a mysterious figure who only eventually appears, sort of like Orson Welles' Harry Lime in The Third Man. That's the treatment Rupert Julian gave the Phantom in 1925, and it'll never be topped. The Phantom first appears as a shadow, then only as a mysterious voice, then as a hand, then a profile, then as a masked creature, till finally the climactic moment when he is unmasked! All that's gone in Argento's version: we see Julian Sands' face in the first five minutes! The prime interest in the original story was the mystery of the phantom - he's a phantom! Phantoms are mysterious: they disappear and reappear. This Phantom is about as subtle as a porno, which at least is appropriate for the context of THIS movie.
Highlights: the first murder scene, with some guys on a pulley down a shaft fixing some walls, is quite wonderful. The best thing in the movie. There is also an automatic rat catcher that is quite fun (the rat catchers are good characters), and Asia Argento is a good leading lady (though perhaps not as beautiful as the Christine we all imagine). The whole rat subplot is unique to this version: Argento has devised a history for the Phantom which suggests he was raised by rats! The real highlights, though, are the laughing-at-corn ones: watching Asia Argento miming to opera music: its unintentionally hilarious. She's clearly had some lessons about how opera singers look when they sing, but not nearly enough! A sex scene later on: only an Italian would think of this: they're setting up a gothic romance, which to an Italian means "porno," so when Christine and the Phantom get to copulating, he flips her ass-up and rides her like a pony. Its only a two-second grab, but so laughably wrong it deserves mention.
Clifford's Tips: Please don't bother with this. I hear Argento made some wonderful shockers earlier in his career, but this is not one of them.
Like most movies made by people who don't speak the language of their actors - the acting is terrible. He was clearly going for a superlative Victorian style, which would have included larger than life performances - but the actors don't nail it - it just comes off as hammy, mainly due to the dubbing.
Like most italian movies (this is in english, but clearly made in Italy with Italian crew, etc), it looks like the dubbing is terrible (even though it is in synch) because the voice performances, recorded later, bear little resemblance to the tone of the visual performances.
The film stock also makes everything look like a tele-movie. The actors never gel with their backgrounds, and the camera is usually too close, which results in everything looking like rehearsals for a movie, just not quite cinematic. Unnecessary bursts of sex and violence are Argento's contributon to this story, which are ironically the two elements most out of place in it. By the way, i'm at a loss as to why anyone would hire Julian Sands after Boxing Helena.
But Argento's biggest crime was doing away with the device Its probably because no actor today would be able to harness their ego and agree to being a mysterious figure who only eventually appears, sort of like Orson Welles' Harry Lime in The Third Man. That's the treatment Rupert Julian gave the Phantom in 1925, and it'll never be topped. The Phantom first appears as a shadow, then only as a mysterious voice, then as a hand, then a profile, then as a masked creature, till finally the climactic moment when he is unmasked! All that's gone in Argento's version: we see Julian Sands' face in the first five minutes! The prime interest in the original story was the mystery of the phantom - he's a phantom! Phantoms are mysterious: they disappear and reappear. This Phantom is about as subtle as a porno, which at least is appropriate for the context of THIS movie.
Highlights: the first murder scene, with some guys on a pulley down a shaft fixing some walls, is quite wonderful. The best thing in the movie. There is also an automatic rat catcher that is quite fun (the rat catchers are good characters), and Asia Argento is a good leading lady (though perhaps not as beautiful as the Christine we all imagine). The whole rat subplot is unique to this version: Argento has devised a history for the Phantom which suggests he was raised by rats! The real highlights, though, are the laughing-at-corn ones: watching Asia Argento miming to opera music: its unintentionally hilarious. She's clearly had some lessons about how opera singers look when they sing, but not nearly enough! A sex scene later on: only an Italian would think of this: they're setting up a gothic romance, which to an Italian means "porno," so when Christine and the Phantom get to copulating, he flips her ass-up and rides her like a pony. Its only a two-second grab, but so laughably wrong it deserves mention.
Clifford's Tips: Please don't bother with this. I hear Argento made some wonderful shockers earlier in his career, but this is not one of them.