Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

ShangLuda Admirable film.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

Haven Kaycee It is encouraging that the film ends so strongly.Otherwise, it wouldn't have been a particularly memorable film

MartinHafer "The Phantom of Paris" is a thoroughly enjoyable film that is, if you think about it, really stupid. The writing obviously is the weak point in this movie, as John Gilbert is excellent and is only hindered by a silly plot.When the film begins, the great magician/escape artist Chéri-Bibi (Gilbert) is performing one of his great stunts. He then goes to his girlfriend's home. Cecile loves him but her father isn't so impressed by him. But, since Cecile obviously is not going to marry the Marquis Du Touchais, he decides to change his will. He previously was going to leave his fortune to the man...and it was assumed he'd marry Cecile. But the father makes a HUGE mistake...he tells the Marquis and soon the father is murdered...and the Marquis and his skanky lady friend pin the murder on Bibi. Soon, Bibi is in prison and awaiting execution.So far, the film is really good. But after Bibi escapes the film kind of falls apart and becomes silly. He hides out in a friend's basement for several years until he learns that the Marquis is dying---and so he rushes off to confront the scoundrel. The Marquis is so sick he admits he set up Bibi...but then dies before there are any witnesses. So (and boy does it get dumb here), Bibi decides to impersonate the Marquis...and claim that he was kidnapped by Bibi and he returns home six months later!! And, inexplicably, all the folks who knew the Marquis suddenly think he IS the Marquis!!! Makes sense? Nah...but the film is entertaining despite being stupid....but stupid it certainly is. And, if you think about it, the film is a bit like the later TV series, "The Fugitive"...but a cheesier version of course!

Hitchcoc Cheri-Bibi is the title character of a Gaston Leroux novel (he of the Phantom of the Opera). The character is the greatest escape artist in Europe (ala Houdini). He has come from the bottom up and has interest in a girl from the upper crust who is engaged to an incredible boor. The rich father denies permission for them to marry and he makes the mistake of saying that they will marry even if he is dead. Well, of course, someone shoots the father. What we have is quite a good setup, but eventually it is strained to the limit. Bibi is arrested and in prison for four years and faces execution at the Guillotine. He escapes and seeks revenge. He finally gets the murderer to admit his deed on his death bed, but circumstances make it worthless. He then assumes the identity of the guy. Due to some surgery, he takes on the role of the evil husband, hiding in plain sight. The fact that no one recognizes him, including his former lover, is too much for me. It's an entertaining tale and has a satisfactory conclusion, but that one element takes too much suspension of disbelief.

ducdebrabant This turned out to be a nifty little flick. Not too surprising, since Leatrice Fountain's book on Gilbert said it was popular with both critics and audiences, though not with big enough audiences to help Gilbert much, since attendance was way down after the Crash. Based on a novel ("Cheri-Bibi") by Gaston Leroux, the author of "The Phantom of the Opera," it concerns a celebrated escape artist who is framed for the murder of his beloved's father by the man who intends to marry her for her money. Later on, having escaped from prison, he tries to clear himself by impersonating (with the help of plastic surgery) the real killer. Gilbert is very good indeed, and the far-fetched story goes down easily. There is a certain continental formality to the goings-on, and he gets to be most debonair. It's surprisingly easy to accept that everybody else buys the impersonation, since Gilbert is quite good at mimicking the carriage and mannerisms of Ian Keith, who plays the real Marquis Du Touchais in the early scenes. Leila Hyams is a lovely girl and a competent actress, but she's one of those actresses of the period (like Ann Harding) who are always perfect ladies and don't haunt the memory much. What Hyams is able to do, however, in both this and "Way for a Sailor," is seem worth it. She's the kind of intelligent, modest, upright and attractive woman a man would go to lengths to make his wife. And she benefits a lot from the decision to use Rene Hubert as the costumer. The gowns and furs and hats in this movie are the very last word in chic, and several of them were probably talked about quite a lot by women who saw the film. One jacket Hyams wears has a narrow ermine collar and huge, turned-back ermine cuffs lined with sable and trailing sable tassels. A supporting character wears another two-toned fur later on. Players like Lewis Stone (as a principled but sympathetic detective nemesis) and C. Aubrey Smith (as the murdered man) don't disappoint either. This is literally a dark film, rarely going outdoors and almost never in sunlight. There's a great deal of evocative chiaroscuro used to further the Gothic mood. The director John S. Robertson was unfamiliar to me. He turns out to have had a much longer career in silents (he directed his last sound film in 1935), but he's perfectly competent in the talkies medium. The dialogue is by Edwin Justus Mayer, and there's just the right amount of it. Robertson has some excellent credits, including directing Pickford in "Tess of the Storm Country," Garbo in "The Single Standard" and John Barrymore in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." Nobody ever mentions a "phantom of Paris" in the movie (though Cheri-Bibi does elude the law very effectively most of the time). The title was undoubtedly to call attention to the fact that the author of the story was Leroux.

Michael_Elliott Phantom of Paris, The (1931) *** (out of 4) Well-made, if far-fetched, drama from MGM has John Gilbert playing Cheri-Bibi, a famous escape artist who plans on marrying a rich woman (Leila Hyams) even though her father (C. Aubrey Smith) is against it. The father is killed after an argument with Cheri, which causes a detective (Lewis Stone) to arrest him. Facing death in the matter of hours Cheri escapes from prison to prove his innocence. It's rumored that this film was originally meant for Lon Chaney, which if true would be interesting since it's also rumored that Chaney turned down THE SHOW, which then went to Gilbert. Whatever the truth is, this remains a pretty solid "B" movie that has some great acting and a pretty good story. I'm sure many might go into a title like this expecting some type of horror picture but it's pretty much a straight drama with some pretty tense scenes. I think the film takes a turn for the worse in the final fifteen-minutes when Gilbert takes the identity of the man he believes did the real killer. The two didn't look like one another but even if they did manage to fake people their different voices would have certainly given them away. Gilbert turns in another winning performance and what's so nice here is how incredibly charming he is. The early scenes with him doing the magic tricks had him "acting" to large crowds and I thought the charm came through just like you'd expect a real magician to do. Being Gilbert we also get a love story, which has the actor delivering soft lines and doing a nice job with it. Hyams is much better here than she was in her previous film (WAY OF A SAILOR) with Gilbert. The two come across like a real couple and have some pretty good scenes together. Lewis Stone turns in a fine supporting performance as does Jean Hersholt, Natalie Moorhead and Ian Keith. Smith only appears at the start of the film but he too adds nice support. This film was adapted from a novel by Gaston Leroux and for the most part it's pretty successful. I'm sure the original story had more magic but I guess you can only expect so much from a film like this. The 72-minute running time flies by without too many slow spots and in the end it's yet another film to prove that Gilbert did have a voice and he knew how to use it.