Swan's Way

PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE

Directed and Written by BRIAN DE PALMA

As its title implies, Phantom of the Paradise is a contemporary version of The Phantom of the Opera. This time the maimed and maddened musician, haunting the theater whose owner has stolen his composition, has been transformed into a pop composer. His plagiarist in Brian De Palma's film has become an evil, omnipotent promoter of rock music named Swan. The theater the Phantom haunts is no longer an opera house but a rock palace on the order of the old Fillmore. Phoenix (Jessica Harper), the woman he hopelessly loves, is now an aspiring pop singer. The organ the Phantom used to pound away on down in the sub-subbasement has become an electronic synthesizer.

But Phantom of the Paradise is much more than a bundle of neat, often amusing analogies. De Palma has something richer--and more relevant--in mind than parodying a theatrical property he knows is too old and, in its way, too good for mere camp treatment. He has borrowed the plot as a vehicle to satirize the whole corrupt, pretentious and self-important world of pop culture.

Dorian's Wrinkles. The work filched from the modern Phantom (William Finley) is a rock-cantata retelling of the Faust legend. In order to hear it properly performed, the Phantom, as well as his dream singer, must strike similar bargains with Swan, juicily played by Paul Williams, who also composed the film's good score. Swan in turn owes his power to an earlier Faustian deal of his own, a pact that borrows a few wrinkles from Dorian Gray's compact. This repetition reduces contemporary middlebrow mythomania to absurd shambles.

Not only does De Palma send up every known form of rock, from hard to glitter, but just about every other pop style this side of Glenn Miller. He pays homage to such movie masters as Alfred Hitchcock and Raoul Walsh by echoing a couple of their most famous scenes. Like Truffaut, he borrows hoary cinematic devices--the wipe, the iris and the optical montage--only to mix them with currently fashionable gimmicks like the split screen. De Palma's axiom is that in popular culture, today's wow is tomorrow's cliche and the next day's nostalgic treasure. The corollary is that our opinions in these matters are more often the product of cynical manipulators like Swan than of genuinely informed intelligence.

Indeed De Palma is particularly tough on the youths who invite people like Swan to swindle them. They are observed to grow as hysterical over a talentless transvestite swinger named Beef (played in the film's gaudiest comic turn by Gerrit Graham) as they do over the pure loveliness of Phoenix's voice. A wedding onstage turns them on, but so does an assassination. "That's entertainment!" Swan cries, and no one challenges his all-purpose definition of the term. The terrible possibility exists that he is right--that nowadays all turn-ons are equally transitory and equally false.

The movie will be something of a downer for rock cultists who find that the real objects of De Palma's scornful (and occasionally too anarchical) satire are themselves and their false gods. Others will find Phantom of the Paradise a crazy, savage film--iconoclastic and truly liberating. sbRichard Schickel

With reporting by RICHARD SCHICKEL

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