26. The Phantom of the Opera (1925)

Directed by Rupert Julian (also Lon Chaney in a couple of parts)

Synopsis

Come on, you know the story. It's Phantom of the Opera, and it is quite faithful to the novel. There's this Phantom guy in the Paris Opera who falls in love with a young opera singer who is herself in love with a guy called Raoul. The Phantom kidnaps her, Raoul tries to save her with the help of the secret police. Meanwhile the rabble is roused by one of the workers at the Opera, Phantom gets killed by the rabble while trying to escape. Singer marries Raoul. It's shit, really.

Review

The Phantom of the Opera! In Magnificent Technicolor! Well, five minutes of it at least. There is colour going on during the ball scene, which is quite a novel thing for the films I've been reviewing. It's used more as a gimmick than as a useful artistic tool, but it lets you see Lon Chaney prancing around danced as the Red Death from the Poe story.

This is quite a crappy film honestly. Rupert Julian does fuck all with his camera, it's just stationary all the time, the acting is terrible except by Lon Chaney who is the big star here. There are redeeming factors to it, like the Technicolor scene, or the amazing sets or even the innovative use of opera arias during their respective scenes on stage. Giving you an almost ilusion of talkie, which it ain't and it won't be stealing Jazz Singer's thunder anytime soon, it also has amazing makeup particularly in the quite ugly face of the revealed Phantom.

This makes this version of the Phantom the best one put to screen. It at least has some redeeming features and more importantly is missing an Andrew Lloyd Weber soundtrack. Praise the Lord! Hallelujah! So, yeah it's better than the other crap versions of it. That isn't saying much.

So, poor direction, poor acting, good sets, good technical innovation, even though it serves no good purpose, makes this an all-round poor film. The pacing is also a bit slow, and when you compare it to a Murnau, a Lang, an Eisenstein or a Keaton it is just poor cinema in the context of the time. Watch it for Lon Chaney and the Technicolor scene, forget about the rest. If you really need to buy it you can get it at Amazon UK or US.

Final Grade

4/10

Trivia

The film can be downloaded from the Internet Archive

From Wiki

Universal Studios' soundstage #23, where the movie was filmed, is said to be haunted. Some people believe that Lon Chaney, Sr.'s ghost haunts the soundstage.

* A long standing urban legend has that the Opera House set from the 1925 film has never been torn down and still stands, and is used today. This is partially true. On Set 28 part of the opera house set continues to stand to the side where it was used some 8 decades ago, although time has taken its toll so it is no longer used. Another urban legend says that the set remains because when workers have attempted to take it down in the past there have been fatal accidents, said to be caused by the ghost of Lon Chaney.

When the film was originally released, all of the opera scenes of Faust, as well as the "Bal Masque" scene were in an early, two-color form of Technicolor. Only the latter survives in color. Contrary to the popular rumor instigated by Phillip J. Riley's 1999 book, "MagicImage: The Phantom of the Opera" (Magic Image, 1999), the famous unmasking scene was not shot in Technicolor (Riley's book is a good picture reference, but is riddled with errors). In one scene, the Phantom's cape on the rooftop of the opera was colored red using the Handschiegl Color Process. This effect has been replicated in Photoplay Production/Kevin Brownlow's 1996 restoration by computer colorization. As with most films of the time, black and white footage was tinted various colors to give moods. These included amber for interiors, blue for night scenes, green for mysterious moods, red for fire and sunshine (yellow) for daylight exteriors.