THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925)
PHANTOM OF THE OPERA is a missive from the days when virility was measured by a well-oiled mustache. The two new unfortunate owners of the Paris Opera House are the spitting images of Calvin Coolidge and Benjamin Harrison. This is my favorite part of watching silent movies--the window into a past 85 years gone, populated by vigorous, passionate people who are now all surely dead. Even when the film is a fantasy or period piece (like this tale set in the Paris of 1881), these films show you how people used to imagine, what they feared, how they coped with adversity, how they thought about social relationships, and how they dressed.
Among the crown jewels of the silent era is Lon Chaney's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. I assume the plot is familiar to readers after six major films and 24 years of Andrew Lloyd Weber. The Phantom lives in vast hidden subcellars and catacombs beneath the Paris Opera house. Seriously, it takes a horse and a boat to get to his inner lair. He is a musical and mechanical genius who attends the opera in his exclusive box (number 5) and issues ultimatums to the theater owners, all the while festooning his lair with deadly traps. He hides his deformity behind a mask. He seduces a young ingénue named Christine Daaé sight unseen by tutoring her voice and arranging to have her supplant the reigning diva in the current production of Faust. This is fine with Christine as long as it promotes her career, and she brushes off all suitors. But when she finally meets the Phantom in his lair, she turns to Raoul, a viscount, as her protector. Perhaps marriage and leaving the stage is preferable after all to a life spent underground.
But the details of the Phantom's lair, how he has filled it with finery! How well prepared he is to meet the assault of one or two men, yet how unprovided against the mob which must inevitably rise against him, once he has been drawn into raising his own hand. The Phantom can be seen as a classic abuser, whose need to control Christine changes into rage at the thought of seeing her in the arms of another man. But if he is an abuser, he is certainly one of the more interesting ones. In the world summoned by this film all social relationships are about the exercise of power, every one.[*]
This is a well-told story, which holds together amazingly well, considering that the version of the film which is presently available is assembled from three different reshoots, alternate takes, and B camera remnants from multiple directors. Seventeen minutes of the original film were in Technicolor, and a brief middle color sequence still remains, developed 14 years before that more famous transition into color, when Dorothy stepped into Oz. Whoever assembled this version did it with great love, and there is a wonderful orchestral soundtrack recorded in the early 90s, making this film eminently watchable today. Most articles written about PHANTOM focus on the performance of Lon Chaney and his self-designed makeup, which is more powerful in context than it appears in the ubiquitous still pictures. True, Chaney is great, but what struck me more was the overall quality of the film-making.
Universal Classic Horror Blog Series Rating:
4 - For everyone
3 - For horror fans only
2 - For classic horror fans only
1 - For Pete's sake
0 - Paging MST3K
[*] Or, you might choose to view Erik, the Phantom, as an outcast who uses his genius to compensate for his deformity. Despite his accomplishment, when he forgets himself long enough to try to normalize by creating a family, he is rejected again for his appearance and driven temporarily into madness. I have not read the Gaston Leroux novel, but I gather from his lack of stature in the literary establishment that no one ever mistook him for Victor Hugo. Still, like Bram Stoker, he wrote an irresistible story that may never cease being adapted.
Among the crown jewels of the silent era is Lon Chaney's THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA. I assume the plot is familiar to readers after six major films and 24 years of Andrew Lloyd Weber. The Phantom lives in vast hidden subcellars and catacombs beneath the Paris Opera house. Seriously, it takes a horse and a boat to get to his inner lair. He is a musical and mechanical genius who attends the opera in his exclusive box (number 5) and issues ultimatums to the theater owners, all the while festooning his lair with deadly traps. He hides his deformity behind a mask. He seduces a young ingénue named Christine Daaé sight unseen by tutoring her voice and arranging to have her supplant the reigning diva in the current production of Faust. This is fine with Christine as long as it promotes her career, and she brushes off all suitors. But when she finally meets the Phantom in his lair, she turns to Raoul, a viscount, as her protector. Perhaps marriage and leaving the stage is preferable after all to a life spent underground.
But the details of the Phantom's lair, how he has filled it with finery! How well prepared he is to meet the assault of one or two men, yet how unprovided against the mob which must inevitably rise against him, once he has been drawn into raising his own hand. The Phantom can be seen as a classic abuser, whose need to control Christine changes into rage at the thought of seeing her in the arms of another man. But if he is an abuser, he is certainly one of the more interesting ones. In the world summoned by this film all social relationships are about the exercise of power, every one.[*]
This is a well-told story, which holds together amazingly well, considering that the version of the film which is presently available is assembled from three different reshoots, alternate takes, and B camera remnants from multiple directors. Seventeen minutes of the original film were in Technicolor, and a brief middle color sequence still remains, developed 14 years before that more famous transition into color, when Dorothy stepped into Oz. Whoever assembled this version did it with great love, and there is a wonderful orchestral soundtrack recorded in the early 90s, making this film eminently watchable today. Most articles written about PHANTOM focus on the performance of Lon Chaney and his self-designed makeup, which is more powerful in context than it appears in the ubiquitous still pictures. True, Chaney is great, but what struck me more was the overall quality of the film-making.
Universal Classic Horror Blog Series Rating:
4 - For everyone
3 - For horror fans only
2 - For classic horror fans only
1 - For Pete's sake
0 - Paging MST3K
[*] Or, you might choose to view Erik, the Phantom, as an outcast who uses his genius to compensate for his deformity. Despite his accomplishment, when he forgets himself long enough to try to normalize by creating a family, he is rejected again for his appearance and driven temporarily into madness. I have not read the Gaston Leroux novel, but I gather from his lack of stature in the literary establishment that no one ever mistook him for Victor Hugo. Still, like Bram Stoker, he wrote an irresistible story that may never cease being adapted.