TRANSFORMATION OF ROMANTIC MOTIFS IN J. SCHUMACHER’S MUSICAL FILM THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA

Abstract

The article analyses how J. Schumacher’s musical film The Phantom of the Opera (2004), based on A. L. Webber’s musical, revises some elements of the artistic and aesthetic system of Romanticism. Since the musical was based on the novel of the same name (1910) by a French Romantic writer Gaston Leroux, this multi-step reinterpretation allows one to observe a special perspective of the "end of a century" – to track how the postmodern film adaptation reflects the artistic and aesthetic shifts of the late 18th – early 19th century (when Romanticism emerged) and late 19th – early 20th century (Neo-Romanticism). At the same time, in J. Schumacher’s musical film, the forms of art associated with special artistic and aesthetic aspirations (theatre at the beginning of the 19th century, cinema at the beginning of the 20th century) define certain stylistic dominants and become markers of time, its revolutionary and catastrophic changes, as well as moral and aesthetic constants.
 While the Romantic concept of the man and art is subject to reduction and profanation in G. Leroux’s epigonic novel, the context of postmodern film narration makes it possible both to enrich it with the artistic achievements of a two-century artistic evolution and simplify it to a universal formula. The artistic whole of the musical film The Phantom of the Opera reproduces the motifs peculiar to the brilliant authors of European and American Romanticism (G. G. Byron, E. T. A. Hoffman, V. Hugo, E. A. Poe) and epitomizes the ideals of humanism that reach their maximum in Christianity-inspired Classical Realism of the 19th century. The film neutralizes such traditionally associated with Romanticism oppositions as those of the ideal and reality or the artist and the general public. Art and life interact, creating a prerequisite for mutual understanding, harmonization, and escaping the tragic contradictions of being. This interaction enables reality to open up new opportunities, and art turns out to be the place of salvation and restoration of love-based relationships among people.