THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
08/08/14 -- Vol. 33, No. 6, Whole Number 1818
Co-Editor: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
Co-Editor: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
Maninasuitasauri (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Tweeting Con Reports (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Phantoms of the Opera: A Survey of Adaptations (Part 2)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Google Robot, Space X Falcon 9, and Space Drive (comments
by Greg Frederick)
This Week's Reading (THE BELEAGUERED CITY: THE VICKSBURG
CAMPAIGN) (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
==================================================================
TOPIC: Maninasuitasauri (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
In Japanese monster movies a quadruped is a creature that walks on
its hands and knees. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Tweeting Con Reports (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
People are tweeting their con reports these days, with sequential
tweets. I calculated I would need about 1000 tweets to use Twitter
for my last Worldcon report. [-ecl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Phantoms of the Opera: A Survey of Adaptations (Part 2)
(comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I am continuing on with my article on the various dramatic
adaptation of Gaston Leroux's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA.
1943 Claude Rains
This was the first version of The Phantom of the Opera that I ever
saw and it remains my favorite. I also believe that it is the most
entertaining film version of the story. In spite of the fact that
Erich Taylor's greatly re-written story bears only minor
similarities to the original story, this seems to be the pre-Lloyd-
Webber version of the story that was most popular. I have come to
call this version of the Phantom the "Erich Taylor" version. By the
"Taylor Phantom" I mean the relatively normal composer whose music
is stolen and in the course of his rage his face is burned, rather
than having had a face that was deformed from birth. Erich Taylor
adapted the novel to a screenplay for this version and probably
invented this often-repeated plot variation. The Herbert Lom and
Maximilian Schell versions of The Phantom of the Opera as well as
the homage The Phantom of the Paradise are not based on the book to
any noticeable degree but rather are remakes of the Taylor version
of the story.
The Taylor Phantom is essentially different from the Leroux Phantom
in that his anger is sharper and generally more focused. Rather
than being angry at the world in general, Taylor Phantoms usually
have the person who wronged them as a particular object of their
anger. The Taylor Phantom is less misanthropic since he has been
wronged by a smaller set of people. In fact in this version Erique
Claudin, as the Phantom is named here, is actually a misguided
altruist. His only motive is to do all he can to confer success on
the young singer from his village in Provençe. Also he derives
his power not from having helped design the opera house but because
he has stolen a master key.
One of the ironies--and for once irony does not strengthen the
story--is that most of Erique's efforts were paying off. Had he
only waited he never would have been disfigured. We are shown that
his music has been discovered by Franz Liszt only moments before
his rage in which he murders Pleyel and has his face burned. There
seemed to be a general theme in Universal Films around this time
that social injustice was being corrected, albeit slowly. In the
remake of The Hunchback of Notre Dame made four years earlier we
were also told that society is changing and getting better.
Injustices like the ones shown in the film would soon become
impossible thanks to new inventions like the printing press. I
seriously doubt that Victor Hugo, the author of Hunchback, would
have found that theme in his own misanthropic novel. Oddly in
Phantom as in Hunchback the force for society improving is played
by Fritz Leiber, Sr. In Hunchback he played a benevolent king and
in Phantom he plays Liszt, who has recognized Erique's genius.
Also, in keeping with the positive message, we are told that
Erique's suffering and madness will be forgotten but his music will
live on. In fact, it is likely that Erique's music would be
remembered because of not in spite of the notoriety. Note that
Antonio Salieri's music was remembered by only a select few until a
popular play linked him with the death of Mozart.
While being inaccurate to the novel this version does not have a
bad script at all. This is true in spite of a bit too much comic
relief and not enough of the drama or horror it is intended to
relieve us from. Surprisingly enough this version is even topical
today. Erique is, after all, a terrorist and there is a discussion
of whether his terrorism should be given in to or resisted. The
question is inherent in most versions of the story, but it is given
most discussion here of any version. Still this version has the
sort of light story wartime audiences would have craved. There is
no romantic triangle of Christine caught between the Phantom and
her lover--Erique is too nice for that. But there is a triangle of
Christine caught between Anatole the baritone and Raoul the police
inspector. Christine is also caught between romance in general and
her career. And finally Anatole is caught between Christine, whom
he wants, and Madame Biancarolli, who wants him.
The entire film was aimed at wartime audiences' desire for escape.
It was given a big budget production with splashy Technicolor and
lots of intricate operatic production numbers. While these numbers
may have been an inaccurate representation of what opera is really
like, they are entertaining. And while the sets of the catacombs
beneath the opera were more impressive in the Chaney version, here
they occasionally appear to be just paintings and less than totally
convincing. Still, even here the color serves the film very well.
Ironically, while Claude Rains is nobody's idea of an athletic
actor, here he comes off as a dynamic swashbuckler. Through much of
the film we see him only as a shadow with a big fedora and a grand
sweeping cape. That, in fact, is how he is pictured in the ads.
When we see him masked he had a dramatic gray mask and wavy hair
like Liberace. As a matter of taste, I would say that while the
unmasking scene is less dramatic than in the Chaney version (though
the acid scars are probably fairly realistic), the chandelier
sequence is the most dramatically successful of any film version of
the story. It is as suspenseful as any scene Hitchcock ever
directed. With scenes like that I can forgive the rather overly
dramatic last scene we see below the opera house with Erique's
violin and the mask artfully placed on it. The picture looks like
something from a perfume ad.
The Lon Chaney version is the greatest artistic success, but to my
taste this is the film version that is the most enjoyably
watchable.
1962 Herbert Lom
Of all the versions of The Phantom of the Opera that I watched in
order to write this article, this one was the biggest revelation to
me. This was a film I enjoyed a great deal as a teenager. I am a
fan of Hammer Films of Britain and what they meant to the horror
film. And this is reasonably good as a Hammer film goes. But as a
version of The Phantom of the Opera it really is just awful.
There is no indication in the film that anyone involved has read
the novel or even knew that there was
a novel. The credits say that the screenplay is by John Elder
"based on a composition by Gaston Leroux." It seems unclear whether
it was a novel, a story, a screenplay or something else. That is a
quite justifiable ambiguity since this film was not based on the
novel at all but on the Taylor Phantom. There is no evidence that
anyone connected with the film saw even the Chaney version.
The film is full of embarrassing moments. The Phantom slaps
Christine when she is not willing to put enough effort into her
music, but his hand misses her by several inches, yet there is a
resounding slap on the soundtrack. Michael Gough, who had been a
credit to other Hammer productions, really chews up the scenery as
the lecherous opera house owner and supposed composer. Rather than
evoking any real emotion in the screenplay we are simply told how
powerful the mystery is. One of the managers of the opera seems to
have a speech impediment that makes him end each sentence with an
exclamation point. "Parts of London are a lost world! We can never
know what caverns and dungeons and labyrinths rest beneath us! Or
what madmen and monsters inhabit them!" "Something evil is in this
theater!" "Is it because any other explanation is just too
incredible?!"
In fact, what is in the theater is a real letdown. Generally what
makes the Phantom interesting is his combination of genius, pathos,
and ruthless power. He is a Jekyll and Hyde figure. In this
rendition they have split the Jekyll and Hyde into two characters,
a good self who is the wronged composer, and the bad self who is a
nameless knife-wielding hunchback. The result is that neither
character has much depth or much interest value. Nor do the
characters make much sense. Petrie is a starving composer who must
sell his music for a pittance. He apparently has never taught. Yet
after a while in a sewer he has become a great music teacher. But
for a couple of slaps, he seems to be a gentle sort. The actual
murders are committed by the crazed hunchback for who knows what
motive. At no point do we see Petrie tell the hunchback to commit
murders.
The film does real violence to the story, making at least an effort
to fit in all the standard scenes, but in a weird combination.
Screenwriter John Elder gets to the end of the film and apparently
realizes that standard scenes like the unmasking and the falling
chandelier are not present. Christine Charles has been too demure
and respectful and--let's face it--mousy to unmask the Phantom
herself and Petrie is too nice a guy to drop a chandelier on
anybody. Elder combines the two scenes in the Phantom seeing the
chandelier falling on Christine, he pauses to rip off his mask for
no really good reason, leaps to save Christine and is himself
crushed by the chandelier. Also uncharacteristic of Hammer or of
versions of The Phantom of the Opera, the chief villain remains
totally unscathed. Presumably he will eventually lose his
reputation if Harry, the hero, chooses to tell the world about the
plagiarism, but earlier Harry had indicated that he probably would
not do so.
Speaking of script problems, Elder wrote the screenplay to have us
hear generous portions of a great and popular new opera. Then in
the production somebody actually had to write these production
scenes. Can you imagine poor Edwin Astley, who wrote the music,
being confronted with the task of having to compose convincing
portions of a popular opera? If he could write great opera, would
he be writing for B films? What he gave them was a thoroughly
unpleasant and truly awful piece of imitation opera that the
audience supposedly just loves. Even the character Harry is
exaggerating when he faintly calls it "a good tune."
The film is just chock full of things that should have been done
better while not doing anything very good. But for the Richard
Englund version, it is the worst English-language film of the
story. It is certainly better than the Englund version, but that is
faint praise indeed.
1982 Maximilian Schell
One ordinarily assumes that a made-for-television film will not be
made to the standards of a theatrical film. The 1983 version of The
Phantom of the Opera which starred Maximilian Schell and Jane
Seymour is surprisingly a very watchable if somewhat revisionist
telling of the story. In most ways it is probably superior to the
later made-for-television Charles Dance version made with a higher
budget. In fact this version is one of the better film versions.
This is one of the film versions not really based on the book but
on the Erich Taylor 1943 screenplay with the setting shifted to
Budapest. The Phantom is not born deformed but is disfigured in a
fire brought about by his own rage. In this case his rage is not
over his music but over how badly his wife, an aspiring singer, has
been treated by critics. The critics were employed by the manager
of the opera house after the wife spurned the manager's advances.
The manager need not have bothered, of course. The singing of the
wife, as we hear in the film, really is abominable. The poor
quality of her voice may have been exaggerated so that the viewer
gets the point, but it is an unrealistic touch that any singer this
bad would really get a leading role in an opera. In any case, the
wife is demoralized by a bad review which appeared too soon after
the performance not to have been written beforehand. Depressed, the
wife commits suicide and her husband goes to confront the critic
only to cause the fire that disfigures him.
Four years later the Phantom, whose real name in this version is
Shandor Korvin, hears a young singer, Maria Gianelli, who looks
very much like his dead wife. And the story goes from there. He
does not tell her that he is the Angel of Music but calls himself
Orpheus. That is, I suppose, a literate transformation. Orpheus was
a great music maker who goes underground, much like the Phantom,
though for a very different purpose. Some of the music in the opera
sequences is very nice in this version, but as with the later
Charles Dance version it is poorly matched to the singers' lips.
Some mention should be made of the visual appearance of the
Phantom. Schell's Phantom when unmasked looks much like the
original description in the Leroux book. In fact, of the live
action versions only Chaney's makeup is arguably closer to the
book's description of the skull-like face and no other version
comes even close. In addition, Schell wears a variety of masks and
for once they are as well thought out as his makeup. In the book we
are given no description of the mask at all. One mask Schell wears
is artistically detailed with renderings of facial features and one
looks almost like a plastic version of Schell's own face.
Finally there is the end of the Phantom. This may have been at once
one of the more dramatic and one of the more foolish ends for the
Phantom. It is based not on the book but apparently on the dramatic
film poster for the Herbert Lom version. In that poster the Phantom
is seen hanging on to the flaming chandelier as it plummets into a
screaming audience. It is a very dramatic scene and one which the
film it advertised totally fails to deliver. It is inaccurate to
the Lom version in about five different ways and would have
brightened the Hammer version considerably. The scene pictured in
fact appears almost precisely as depicted, but in this later 1983
version of The Phantom of the Opera. The Phantom stands on the
chandelier and cuts the suspending chain above his head. It is not
apparently an act of suicide, though that is the effect. It appears
to be just a very stupid mistake.
While there is little in this film that Gaston Leroux would
recognize of his own book, it is a decent melodrama, explains the
genius of the Phantom, and is of a quality at least comparable with
any of the theatrical versions. [-mrl]
==================================================================
TOPIC: Google Robot, Space X Falcon 9, and Space Drive (comments by
Greg Frederick)
Below is a link to a new Google robot which was originally
developed as part of Darpa's (Government advanced technology
military division) contest for companies to produce a robot that
can help in emergency events where humans can not go. The Japanese
nuclear plant gas explosions caused by that earthquake in the past
might have been avoided if this type of robot was available then.
The plant was too radioactive for humans to enter. That is why the
US and other governments are trying to create such a robot. This
robot can drive a vehicle, clear a path, use tools, open doors and
even turn off valves.
http://tinyurl.com/void-google-robot
Elon Musk has another success on his hands. After a mission to
launch six satellites into orbit, the Falcon 9 rocket from that
mission was used in an attempt to practice landing the 1st stage
back on the Earth vertically. Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and
Space X just put a video on-line showing that this Falcon 9 rocket
1st stage reentered the Earth's atmosphere and with the rocket
engines re-igniting at least two times, they got the first stage to
stop tumbling and to come down vertically. Then they slowed down
the 1st stage and the landing legs deployed. This was above the
Pacific Ocean so that Falcon just fell over and splashed into the
Ocean. Had this been over land it would have been a good
vertically landing. But later this year since this experiment was
a success they will attempt to land another Falcon 9 rocket on land
vertically. That first stage can then be reconditioned, refueled
and used in another launch. That means Musk can reduce the cost to
launch into space by a factor of 100. See video in link below.
http://tinyurl.com/void-falcon-9
Roger Shawyer first unveiled his EmDrive thruster back around 2003
and many scientists laughed at the idea. They and NASA are not
laughing anymore. NASA tested this idea and it works. This
thruster uses microwaves bounding in a special chamber to create
thrust without any fuel. Solar energy could provide the power to
generate the microwaves. The scientists think that quantum
fluctuations are some how creating thrust when the microwaves
bounce inside this chamber. They are not certain exactly how this
works but it does work. They have only created very low levels of
force so far but this is just the beginning. I have read where the
Chinese have taken this idea and already created a propulsion
system for one of their satellites of the future. This could
potential greatly reduce travel times in space. Article is listed
below.
http://tinyurl.com/void-space-drive
[-gf]
==================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE BELEAGUERED CITY: THE VICKSBURG CAMPAIGN DECEMBER 1862 - JULY
1863 by Shelby Foote (ISBN 978-0-679-60170-8) is a 350-page excerpt
from Foote's THE CIVIL WAR, A NARRATIVE: FREDERICKSBURG TO MERIDIAN
(the second volume of Foote's three-volume history of the Civil
War). Grant's efforts to take Vicksburg included seven different
plans that failed before he came up with one that succeeded.
Coincidentally, while I was in the middle of these, we watched a
movie about the Large Hadron Collider in which one physicist, Savas
Dimopoulos, talks about how those theoretical physicists whose
theories were disproven (or at least cast into serious doubt)
should react: "Jumping from failure to failure with undiminished
enthusiasm is the secret to success." Well, I'm not sure Grant's
reactions ever escalated to the point of enthusiasm, but he
certainly had the "get back up on the horse" spirit. This was
first demonstrated at Shiloh, when after the first (disastrous)
day, his friend William Tecumseh Sherman said to him, "We've had
the devil's own day, haven't we?" And all Grant said was, "Yes--
lick 'em tomorrow, though." And he did.
Similarly, none of his seven failures to take Vicksburg (nor his
overly optimistic prediction about the time required for the
eighth, successful assault) convinced Grant to give up. To get a
feeling of what he was up against, here's a summary:
1) Mississippi Central Railroad: Confederates disrupted lines of
communication and supply.
2) Chickasaw Bluffs: The Confederates held the high ground on an
old Indian mound and the Union could not dislodge them.
3) Old Canal: A sudden river rise flooded the area and filled the
canal with sediment.
4) Lake Providence: The channel was so filled with stumps and such
that there were not enough boats that could traverse it and ferry
the men. Confederates also felled large trees to block the passage
even more. (This was true of the next two attempts as well.)
5) Yazoo Pass: This time the problem was above, not below--there
were so many low-hanging trees that the gunboats had everything
above decks destroyed when they went through.
6) Steele Bayou: This combined the problems of the two previous
attempts, *and* the overhanging trees were home to "rats, mice,
cockroaches, snakes, and lizards" as well, which all fell into the
boats when they brushed against the trees. The boats were also
attacked by raccoons and wildcats.
7) New Canal (Duckport Canal): By the time the canal was finished,
the river had fallen so far that the canal was unusable except by
flatboats.
On another topic, a recent article in the "New York Times" talked
about how important coffee was in the Civil War. This was
primarily for its caffeine--generals would see that the men had
their coffee right before a battle--but also as a psychological
boost, which they would get from coffee-like beverages made from
grains or other substances. (Think Postum.) Regarding this, I
note that Foote quotes Grant as saying at one point, "I do not
calculate upon the possibility of supplying the army with full
rations from Grand Gulf. I know it will be impossible with
constructing additional roads. What I do expect, however, is to
get up what rations of hard bread, coffee, and salt we can, and
make the country furnish the balance." So Grant considered it as
basic as hardtack and salt. As for the hardtack, at one point the
troops had been "eating off the land" for three weeks, and were
tired of it. "Turkey and sweet potatoes were fine as a special
treat, it seemed, but such rich food had begun to pall as a regular
thing." They were calling (yelling, in fact) for hardtack, and
Grant obliged. "That night there was hardtack for everyone, along
with beans, and coffee to wash it down." They may not have called
for coffee, but clearly Grant (and Foote) understood it to be
important. [-ecl]
==================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
No matter how correct a mathematical theorem may
appear to be, one ought never to be satisfied
that there was not something imperfect about it
until it also gives the impression of being
beautiful.
--George Boole