Director: Rupert Julian Producer: Carl Laemmle Screenplay: Raymond Schrock, Elliot J Clawson, based on the novel by Gaston Leroux Cinematography: Charles Van Enger Editor: Gilmore Walker Technical Director: A H Hall | Lon Chaney (Eric, the Phantom) Mary Philbin (Christine Daae) Norman Kerry (Vicomte Raoul de Chagny) Arthur Edmund Carewe (Ledoux) Gibson Gowland (Simon Buquet) John St. Polis (Comte Philip de Chagny) Snitz Edwards (Florine Papillon) Mary Fabian (Carlotta) |
FESTIVALS:
2006 Wellington
2010 Greece
2011 Leeds
2013 Traverse City (USA)
2013 Vilnius (Lithuania)
Beneath the splendid riches of the Paris Opera House lie ancient catacombs with a dark and forbidden secret. These vast underground rooms and hidden passages were once used as torture chambers to satisfy the blood lust of a crazed population. Rumors abound that the Opera Ghost lives there still, vowing vengeance on the human race. When film director Rupert Julian was presented with the script for The Phantom of the Opera, he declared simply: “Lon Chaney, or it can’t be done!” For the film, “the man of a thousand faces” transformed himself into his most recognizable character. Using chemicals to dilate his pupils, cotton and celluloid discs to heighten his cheekbones, fanged teeth to create a horrific grin and wires to pull his nose upwards, Chaney became the menacing Phantom who lurks in Box 5 of the Opera – and in the dark cellars below. This spine-tingling, macabre masterpiece can now be viewed in all its grand guignol glory. Using the finest restored 35mm print of the 1929 reissue, and materials from archives around the world, and employing the latest in digital technology, Photoplay Productions created a stunning video master. The Photoplay team was also able to restore the stunning Technicolor bal masque sequence and has painstakingly re-created the Handschiegl color process used in the famous “Apollo’s Lyre” scene on the roof of the Opera.
– Gary Tooze, DVD Beaver.
Erik the Phantom’s miserable history seems to change with each new telling: in Gaston Leroux’s original novel (first published in 1910), he was born a freak, worked in a travelling circus and helped in the construction of the Opera building; in the present version he is an escapee from Devil’s Island who spent the Second Revolution imprisoned in a torture chamber on the Opera site; the 1943 remake saw him as the composer of a great concerto, embittered and disfigured after a clash with his publisher and a bottle of acid; in Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise he is a rock composer whose soul and music is sold to a Mephistophelian impresario and whose face is squashed in a record press. But no matter what the embellishments of different screenwriters, Leroux’s basic story remains a thumpingly good one: its events echo Greek myths and fairytales (Raoul descends into the underworld to rescue his loved one; Christine is Beauty ensnared by a Beast); its environment is both realistic and fantastic (like Quasimodo’s Notre Dame, the Opera is a familiar public building, but underneath it are nightmarish labyrinths).
After Universal’s success with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Leroux’s novel was an obvious choice for a spectacle of matching size, and the result far outdistances Hunchback in visual power; contemporary audiences had the added benefit of Technicolor for some scenes (such as the masked ball). Erik the Phantom proves to be among the simplest and best of Chaney’s thousand faces, although almost half the film goes by before he is fully revealed. At first, the Phantom is only a menacing shadow, flung against a stone wall backstage, momentarily framed inside the Mouth of Hell, causing the chorus girls to scuttle away in fright. Then he materialises before Christine as a cloaked figure with a mask, the mouthpiece flapping like a fish’s gills when he speaks. Finally, Christine tears the contraption away: we see a skewered nose with distended nostrils, craggy teeth barely encompassed by fleshless lips, hollow eyes, hollower cheeks with cheekbones almost poking through the wizened skin.
[A hundred] years later, the shock of the unmasking is undiminished. The interiors of the Paris Opera provide the drama with a rather conventional backdrop, and the camera, as in Hunchback, doesn’t always find the best position to catch the enormous sets: the Grand Stairway, faithfully reproduced, is so grand that the cameraman seems to lean back half a mile to get it all in frame (though it provides a superb setting for the appearances of Erik’s Red Death during the masked ball); while with the descent of the chandelier, the camera seems too close for any sense of perspective to emerge.
Backstage, however, a bizarre mood of mystery hangs over the ill-lit jumble of props, pulleys, drapes and stairways, and the mood deepens as Erik and Christine descend to the underground, by horse and by gondola, until the Phantom’s lair is reached — a plushly furnished suite crammed with oddities. Erik’s bedroom, shielded by curtains, boasts an open coffin guarded by stout candles; Christine’s room — she timorously discovers — has a little row of shoes lying in wait, splendiferous dresses, a mirror engraved with her own name.
The Phantom aside, Rupert Julian [a New Zealander] is best known as the man who took up Merry-go-Round where Stroheim left off; coincidentally, this film also suffered production wrangles, being completed by Edward Sedgwick after Chaney and Julian fell out. Whether for this reason or not, The Phantom does suffer from bad patches and lacunae: Snitz Edwards’ Florin Papillon seems destined to provide a ration of light relief, yet isn’t seen after the opening scenes; Norman Kelly’s Raoul is a peculiarly lacklustre lover, and his quest for Christine, with Ledoux of the Secret Police, becomes unintentionally comic as the two stand in darkness tossing apprehensive glances at each other. But nothing can destroy the movie’s general success, both then and now.
– Geoff Brown, Monthly Film Bulletin, May 1975.
2006 Wellington
2010 Greece
2011 Leeds
2013 Traverse City (USA)
2013 Vilnius (Lithuania)
Beneath the splendid riches of the Paris Opera House lie ancient catacombs with a dark and forbidden secret. These vast underground rooms and hidden passages were once used as torture chambers to satisfy the blood lust of a crazed population. Rumors abound that the Opera Ghost lives there still, vowing vengeance on the human race. When film director Rupert Julian was presented with the script for The Phantom of the Opera, he declared simply: “Lon Chaney, or it can’t be done!” For the film, “the man of a thousand faces” transformed himself into his most recognizable character. Using chemicals to dilate his pupils, cotton and celluloid discs to heighten his cheekbones, fanged teeth to create a horrific grin and wires to pull his nose upwards, Chaney became the menacing Phantom who lurks in Box 5 of the Opera – and in the dark cellars below. This spine-tingling, macabre masterpiece can now be viewed in all its grand guignol glory. Using the finest restored 35mm print of the 1929 reissue, and materials from archives around the world, and employing the latest in digital technology, Photoplay Productions created a stunning video master. The Photoplay team was also able to restore the stunning Technicolor bal masque sequence and has painstakingly re-created the Handschiegl color process used in the famous “Apollo’s Lyre” scene on the roof of the Opera.
– Gary Tooze, DVD Beaver.
Erik the Phantom’s miserable history seems to change with each new telling: in Gaston Leroux’s original novel (first published in 1910), he was born a freak, worked in a travelling circus and helped in the construction of the Opera building; in the present version he is an escapee from Devil’s Island who spent the Second Revolution imprisoned in a torture chamber on the Opera site; the 1943 remake saw him as the composer of a great concerto, embittered and disfigured after a clash with his publisher and a bottle of acid; in Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise he is a rock composer whose soul and music is sold to a Mephistophelian impresario and whose face is squashed in a record press. But no matter what the embellishments of different screenwriters, Leroux’s basic story remains a thumpingly good one: its events echo Greek myths and fairytales (Raoul descends into the underworld to rescue his loved one; Christine is Beauty ensnared by a Beast); its environment is both realistic and fantastic (like Quasimodo’s Notre Dame, the Opera is a familiar public building, but underneath it are nightmarish labyrinths).
After Universal’s success with The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Leroux’s novel was an obvious choice for a spectacle of matching size, and the result far outdistances Hunchback in visual power; contemporary audiences had the added benefit of Technicolor for some scenes (such as the masked ball). Erik the Phantom proves to be among the simplest and best of Chaney’s thousand faces, although almost half the film goes by before he is fully revealed. At first, the Phantom is only a menacing shadow, flung against a stone wall backstage, momentarily framed inside the Mouth of Hell, causing the chorus girls to scuttle away in fright. Then he materialises before Christine as a cloaked figure with a mask, the mouthpiece flapping like a fish’s gills when he speaks. Finally, Christine tears the contraption away: we see a skewered nose with distended nostrils, craggy teeth barely encompassed by fleshless lips, hollow eyes, hollower cheeks with cheekbones almost poking through the wizened skin.
[A hundred] years later, the shock of the unmasking is undiminished. The interiors of the Paris Opera provide the drama with a rather conventional backdrop, and the camera, as in Hunchback, doesn’t always find the best position to catch the enormous sets: the Grand Stairway, faithfully reproduced, is so grand that the cameraman seems to lean back half a mile to get it all in frame (though it provides a superb setting for the appearances of Erik’s Red Death during the masked ball); while with the descent of the chandelier, the camera seems too close for any sense of perspective to emerge.
Backstage, however, a bizarre mood of mystery hangs over the ill-lit jumble of props, pulleys, drapes and stairways, and the mood deepens as Erik and Christine descend to the underground, by horse and by gondola, until the Phantom’s lair is reached — a plushly furnished suite crammed with oddities. Erik’s bedroom, shielded by curtains, boasts an open coffin guarded by stout candles; Christine’s room — she timorously discovers — has a little row of shoes lying in wait, splendiferous dresses, a mirror engraved with her own name.
The Phantom aside, Rupert Julian [a New Zealander] is best known as the man who took up Merry-go-Round where Stroheim left off; coincidentally, this film also suffered production wrangles, being completed by Edward Sedgwick after Chaney and Julian fell out. Whether for this reason or not, The Phantom does suffer from bad patches and lacunae: Snitz Edwards’ Florin Papillon seems destined to provide a ration of light relief, yet isn’t seen after the opening scenes; Norman Kelly’s Raoul is a peculiarly lacklustre lover, and his quest for Christine, with Ledoux of the Secret Police, becomes unintentionally comic as the two stand in darkness tossing apprehensive glances at each other. But nothing can destroy the movie’s general success, both then and now.
– Geoff Brown, Monthly Film Bulletin, May 1975.