Phantom of the Paradise 15

From the archive

This film was last shown on 13 February 2022

Written and directed by Brian de Palma as a loose retelling of The Phantom of the Opera, Phantom of the Paradise stars William Finley as Winslow Leach, a talented songwriter who writes his music for the woman he loves to perform. When his compositions are stolen by a demonic record producer Swan (Paul Williams) to open a new concert hall dubbed “The Paradise”, Leach dons a new appearance and swears revenge. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Score, at the time of its release, Phantom of the Paradise was a Box Office failure, since gaining its cult status through various critical reappraisals and a passionate fandom.

We are also screening our very own BFI Film Academy made film titled Accidental Hero ahead of the film. This was made as part of the BFI Film Academy 2021-2022 course at the Showroom Cinema.

This film is screening as part of the BFI Young Programmers Festival. For more information about the rest of the programme please click here. The Young Programmers Festival was planned and put together by 36 talented 16-19 year olds from this year’s BFI Specialist Programming Course, which runs here at Showroom Cinema each year.

Statement from the Young Programmers:

In searching for the perfect "perfect failures" to showcase in this programme, Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and Jennifer's Body (2009) were two film choices, out of many, which stood out as great examples of films that were critical and commercial failures, in the past and in contemporary cinema. Both of these films developed into cult classics and are insights into the different ways initially maligned films can pick up audiences later on, especially seeing as these films addressed issues of their day in a manner deemed controversial for the time.

Our film season is important to audiences as it explores the ways in which films can evolve away from the critical and commercial responses they received upon release. Modern perspectives and new contexts can bring out different meanings in previously-panned films, with audiences being given the opportunity to reevaluate these films for themselves, as well as new viewers who can see the films, which initial audiences and critics overlooked, for the first time. Through this, our film season encourages audiences to ponder the role of critics in cinema and how the critic can come in conflict with the audience, and, overall, how films themselves can come into conflict with the time they were released in proving furthermore that the film did have an audience ever since the film’s initial release.