The Masquerade -- stage and screen

[igenlode]

I have almost finished my second notebook, and the Phantom has *finally* made his entry in person on the stage of this story -- I suspect this is probably the only fanfic where almost the entirety of the Masquerade chapter is taken up by something completely unrelated to his sudden appearance! Ironically, the one scene that I actually had planned for Chapter Seven, the 'entracte' chapter, was the image of Hertha accidentally overhearing an angst-filled conversation between Raoul and Christine in the grounds at Beauvais, but because the chapter ran so long I didn't actually fit it in; so we learn about it in flashback -- surprise, surprise -- in the course of Hertha's attendance at the masquerade ball, which is Raoul and Christine's first subsequent encounter. Under the circumstances, they're clearly not talking about a secret engagement and Christine isn't wearing Raoul's ring round her neck. (We don't actually know what they do say, because Hertha can't hear it -- all she gets this time is the body language, which is fraught enough to trigger a flashback for my purposes...)

It turns out to be just as well the chapter is mostly concerned with something else, because I hadn't realised the Phantom's part in the Masquerade was quite so short. Yet again, almost everything I originally had planned turns out to be based on the movie version; this story really, really was intended by my subconscious to be a movie-fic. The movie evidently decided to roll the second 'Notes' scene and the Masquerade into one so that the Phantom can deliver all his taunting and 'instructions' to the characters in person; of course, this raises the question of why anyone would stand around and let him do it, which is why they had to show Raoul running off to get his sword at the Phantom's first appearance -- he gets taunted by fans for 'running away', but he would rightfully be even more taunted for just standing there impotently, letting his rival walk all over everyone and seduce Christine away from his side ;-p

But the result is that we don't get an opportunity for the Phantom to taunt Hertha in Raoul's absence, we don't get a scenario where Raoul is torn between the need to protect Christine and the imperative to shield his pregnant and physically vulnerable wife (maybe that can be moved to the 'Don Juan' sequence?), and in fact the Phantom doesn't taunt anyone: he just emerges from the crowd, throws down his score, makes threats about the chandelier and Christine's ring, and vanishes. (The fact that the movie is saving the chandelier scene for later clearly made it imperative that they put *something* else in there, otherwise it would have been a very short appearance indeed!)

Hertha has turned out to be a lot more resentful towards Christine than I'd anticipated, so I need to negotiate her back towards seeing her as the Phantom's prey as opposed to a marriage-wrecker...

Comments

[erimia]

I liked Raoul running to get his sword instead of conveniently having it ready in the movie - it looked like an adorkable and very Raoul moment, though I suppose that it could make a perfect sense that he didn't have the sword on him during the ball.

[igenlode]

Having attempted to write an extended version of that scene myself, I'm pretty sure as a result that the reason why they did it was in order to contrive a reason to get Raoul out of the way ;-p
I mean, I only lengthened it *slightly* -- enough to make it natural dialogue rather than lyrics, with most of the rest being Hertha's thoughts on what she is witnessing -- and that was enough to make the reader start to wonder why nobody was doing anything; I think the original concept was that the Phantom holds them all mesmerised as he walks down the steps, then at the bottom they're watching Christine move, and then he vanishes But in the movie he wanders all around for some time poking at people, and it doesn't make Raoul look very heroic to stand around watching that ;-)

I'm not sure that sequence comes across as "adorkable and very Raoul" (and am not at all sure it was actually meant to convey incompetence!), since we are initially given no idea why Raoul has run off at the first sight of the Phantom, and don't find out until he comes back trying to buckle on his sword. (Incidentally, why wouldn't he just have drawn it, discarded the scabbard, and run back with the bare blade in his hand ready for use? Fiddling around with scabbard and belt is not only a waste of time but pointless ;-p)
I think my own assumption at the time was that Raoul had in fact done the sensible thing and gone to summon help, rather than disappearing off to the cloakroom or wherever in order to challenge the Phantom to single combat in the middle of a ballroom -- or whatever he thought he was going to do!

Up until now I'd always taken it for granted that the sword was associated with Raoul's military costume for the masquerade... since I was well aware on a subconscious level that normal civilised gentlemen in the 19th century didn't walk around carrying swords! But that doesn't actually make sense, since if the sword had come with the uniform then he would have been wearing it; military costume was the one situation in which swords *did* feature during normal social functions (c.f. the etiquette of swords at a wedding!)
Also, he whips out a sword later on to fight the Phantom in the graveyard sequence, so it's clearly supposed to be his personal weapon, and apparently his weapon of choice -- despite the fact that nobody in this era attacked one another with swords except for some quarrelsome politicians and journalists who perpetuated the tradition of the formal duel ;-p

[erimia]

Heh, between the anachronistic fondness for using the sword and anachronistic long hair and anachronistic poet shirts (all right, everyone wears poet shirts in this movie) Wilson's Raoul comes off as a bit of an eccentric aesthete. I'm sure that's not what they intented, though.

[igenlode]

Oh yes, I can definitely see him as one of the posing poets in "Patience" :-D
(Gilbert & Sullivan's satire on the aesthetic movement; sadly most of the jokes get lost today as no-one remembers the fashions that were being made fun of.)

I think they were probably trying to make Raoul into an Errol Flynn-type dashing hero with pirate echoes...