The Phantom of the Opera (1924) (Silent Film Classic)
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Movie Reviews of The Phantom of the Opera (1924) (Silent Film Classic)
Movie Review: The First Phantom: Lon Cheney..A Collector's Piece
Summary: 5 Stars
This is a collector's piece indeed. The original silent film version, released in 1925, starring Lon Cheney and Mary Philbin. On DVD, we are treated to a restored version that looks as fresh and powerful as when audiences first saw the Phantom. Undoubtedly, this is Lon Cheney's greatest performance. The character of the Phantom, drawn from the 1911 novel by French writer Gaston Leroux, is a tragic, haunting figure. Though monstrously deformed, he has a human heart and feels things passionately and sensitively. He was born with a demonic face and to escape a dire fate in the circus or a lynch mob, he was forced to go into hiding underneath the Paris Opera House. There below was a labyrinth of chambers and sewers and a large lake. He trains a young soprano and makes her a star, to the cost of the life and career of La Carlotta, the reigning diva at the same opera house. When Raol, a wealthy Vicomte, falls for Christine, a love triangle ensues. It is clear Christine loves Raol but is already "stuck" and "enslaved" by the mysterious Phantom, who is also obcessed and in love with her. The Phantom captures her but Raol boldly rescues her. This film took some licence with the original novel, altering it so it can be "Hollywood" material at the time in the 20's. The Phantom is "reduced" into becoming an escaped mental asylum patient and a man who practices black magic. These changes have always annoyed me but it can be overlooked when one considers how wonderfully and dramatically Lon Cheney portrays the Phantom. He is haunting, creepy, pathetic, tragic, powerful, emotive. Underneath all that make-up, he was after all a man. Lon Cheney will never be forgotten. He was the greatest dramatic actor of the silent film era.
He had, of course, many incredible roles under his belt. He was famous for his many "transformations" and "mutilations" in larger than life characters, especially provoking horror, dread and fear. He was known as the Man Of A Thousand Faces. Other than his Phantom, his Quasimodo of Hunchback Of Notre Dame is a powerful and moving performance. Lon Cheney could not only play these fantastic creatures of supernatural quality, but he was able to do so in the most human way. He emoted in a human way, crying, raging, FEELING, and audiences were even able to sympathize with him and feel pity as strongly as they felt fear or repulsion. I have always felt the most powerful scenes involved the Phantom and his surroundings. Note how in this version, it starts off as a mentor/student relationship with Chrstine. Christine Daee has essentially given her mind blindly to him, sold her soul to him in order to enjoy unparalleled success at the Opera. Mary Philbin comes off as the heroine of a romantic novel with very little complexity. She is almost reduced to the level of "damsel in distress" or Beauty to Phantom's Beast. She obeys the Phantom's wishes and keeps her career a priority, becoming a slave to her art but all this changes when Raol comes to the scene. She decides she'd rather escape and marry Raol. This breaks the Phantom's heart, not only as her tutor but as a man who loves her as well. The Phantom as the Red Death at the Masquerade is a great, lavish scene and must have been expensive to pull off at the time. It's still heartbreaking how he hears Christine and Raol decide to elope and feels betrayed. The ending, in which a crowd of angry Parisians beat him and throw him to the Seine River is also very sad.
There will never be a portrayal of the Phantom as uniquely powerful as Lon Cheney. He is magic, haunting, frightening, sad and he is and always will be the Phantom of the Opera. This is how it all started- a cinematic performance from a brilliant actor using the best technology and effects of Hollywood at the time. It would later be the role of Claude Rains and other actors including Charles Dance in a 1991 tv series. Of course, the most popular version is the Broadway musical of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The 2004-2005 movie, still in theatres, starrying Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum is also of great importance. It has enhanced Lloyd Webber's musical and truly romanticized the story. While Lon Cheney emphasized the frightening aspects, Gerard Butler focuses on the romance.
Movie Review: Will the Real Phantom of the Opera Please Stand Up?
Summary: 5 Stars
At a moment when the film version of the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera is hitting the screen, some viewers may be interested in taking a look at the movie that started it all. Whether or not this DVD set put out by Milestone is really the "Ultimate Edition" Phantom of the Opera I do not claim to know, but it will certainly do until something better comes along. The set consists of a pair of DVDs that offer two versions of the picture. According to the commentary, the 1925 version only survives in a 16mm print held by the UCLA Film and Television Archive, and this is offered on the second disk.
However, after the arrival of sound, in 1929, Universal decided to put out an "improved" reissue of one of its biggest silent hits, with some new footage, and a synchronized music and effects track. Surprisingly, in spite of occasional, rather clumsily interpolated sections of asynchronous dialogue in which voices sometimes supplement the intertitles and sometimes repeat them, the reissue is mainly an improvement. And the Milestone set, by offering both the original release and the reissue, gives viewers a rare opportunity to compare the earlier and later versions of one of most famous American productions of the silent era.
Fortunately, a 35mm copy of the reissue, struck from a negative made in 1930 for the international market, was preserved by the late James Card, the curator of the Eastman House. It is this version, restored by Photoplay Productions, replete with the original tinting and enhanced by restored color sequences, which forms the pi?ce de r?sistance of this "Ultimate" Phantom of the Opera. The DVD even offers a pair of soundtracks-the original one from 1930 and a fancier stereo one, with music composed by Carl Davis and performed by the City of Prague Philharmonic. The picture quality of this version, effectively reproduced by the digital processing, will certainly come as a surprise to anyone who has only seen dupey, third or later generation copies of silent classics like The Phantom of the Opera. Especially worth looking at more than once is the sequence of the masked opera ball. With the color restored, this is clearly one of the high points in the early history of horror films.
It would be misleading to call The Phantom of the Opera a great motion picture. Universal was always a rather tacky studio, and the production values of the movie are inferior to those of pictures being made by MGM and Paramount, although some shots of Erik's subterranean realm have a genuine magic. Moreover, the performers are uniformly mediocre, with one spectacular exception. And Phantom of the Opera remains an impressive viewing experience today just because of that one exception: Lon Chaney's superb interpretation of the role of Erik, the phantom of the title. If Helen of Troy's was the face that launched a thousand ships, Lon Chaney's was the face that launched a hit movie, in addition to a couple of remakes, various Phantom wannabes, and, more recently, the Broadway hit.
The first Phantom was putatively directed by a hack named Rupert Julian, who is otherwise remembered for having finished up Merry Go Round after Universal fired Erich von Stroheim. As Scott MacQueen's excellent commentary to the 1929 reissue makes clear, however, Chaney-who could not stand Julian-must have had a considerable influence upon the finished movie. It is only an exercise in frustration to speculate what might have resulted had Chaney been able to collaborate with the gifted and sympathetic Tod Browning, who had just directed him in the perversely entertaining thriller The Unholy Three.
To present day spectators accustomed to scenes of carnage realistically depicted to the last drop of gore, Chaney's makeup will seem only modestly frightening, but that is hardly the point. Chaney invests his role with a carnal intensity screen performers rarely succeeded in doing after sound came in. A shot of his fingers suspended in midair, tentatively gesticulating before he touches the unwitting Christine carries just as much electricity as the famous moment when she undoes his mask and reveals his mutilated face.
More importantly, Chaney gives us a grandiose Romantic villain cut from the same cloth as Byron's Manfred or Charles Robert Maturin's Melmoth. Erik is a great artist and wounded soul-although the movie, unlike Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel, never gets around to explaining why-but also a diabolical madman, who thinks nothing of killing anyone who tries to stand in his way. In a monumental work, The Romantic Agony, Mario Praz showed how this typically Romantic figure filtered into popular literature during the nineteenth century, but Erik was anachronistic in 1910, and even more so in 1925.
The remake with Claude Rains in 1943 already depicted Erik more as a character to be pitied than feared, and the Webber super production turned Leroux's belated, but disturbing Romantic fable into a piece of super slush that might well be titled The Phantom of the Soap Opera. Chaney's genius was to be able to synthesize both sides of Erik's character: he does stir our pity-particularly when a street mob finishes him off at the end-but at the same time he frightens and even repels us. And Chaney stamped his personality on the role as much as Lugosi did on Count Dracula or Karloff on the Frankenstein monster.
This is one of the most outstanding DVD editions of a silent film classic I have ever seen; only some of the Criterion releases can touch it. Apart from the features already mentioned, the set also contains interviews, trailers, and a stills gallery. Now if only TCM would do something comparable for Flesh and the Devil, or Paramount for The Wedding March or The Last Command.
Movie Review: The Ultimate Lon Chaney Version...
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the best version of Lon Chaney's The Phantom of the Opera I've seen. Before the DVD, I'd only viewed a VHS copy which I purchased in the "ten dollars or less" bin. If that is the only way you've seen the movie, you MUST WATCH THE DVD. For instance, there was considerable use of primitive Technicolor in this film; much of the movie is b&w, but during the masked-ball sequence, the Phantom makes quite an entrance as Red Death. Some of the color has proven irreparable, but the restorers have digitally colorized some sequences to try to recapture the original feel of the film.
The DVD set includes two discs - the 1925 version and the 1929 version. To really appreciate the movie, YOU MUST WATCH WITH THE AUDIO COMMENTARY TRACK! We find out all the trouble (and there was a lot of it) that went into this movie. For instance, the director (Rupert Julien) had no talent! The studio kept botching the project, which is why there are umpteen different versions. The commentator points out all of Julien's mistakes and the differences between the different versions. As originally conceived, the movie was supposed to be ALMOST exactly like the book (which is why the Persian is in it). Then, the geniuses in the studio wanted it altered and a version was shot which was NOTHING LIKE the book - this version was a comedy about Raoul. Then, the different versions were pulled together. The Persian was changed to a police inspector who wears an Astrakhan cap and eye makeup for no reason. The Rat Catcher is still there, but unexplained. Tragically, Erik's backstory (as in ALL versions) is ruined: he becomes merely an escapee from Devil's Island. However, only this version and the Andrew Lloyd Weber version have a Phantom who was born disfigured and not the victim of acid-in-the-face.
What is amazing - listening to the commentary - is just how good the movie turned out to be. It remained somewhat faithful to the book, retaining the best set pieces - the secret passages, box 5, the underground lake, the lair, the torture chamber, the horse, the masked ball, and (of course) the chandelier. We are told that the true auteurs of this movie are the set designer and Lon Chaney himself. This is Chaney's best performance and best makeup. He really looks like the Phantom is described in the book. He also designed his own mask with a whisk of linen at the bottom to show when he speaks. Chaney supposedly directed his sequences himself, which seems likely because they are - by far - the best parts of the film. Regardless of its shortcomings, the unmasking of the Phantom remains one of the greatest moments in silent cinema.
Movie Review: silent but still good
Summary: 5 Stars
as you all know this is the first phantom movie and i think it's the best even though it is silent which i have no problem with.Lon Chaney stars as the phantom in this one and i think he does a good job as the phantom.i like this one more than franenstien and dracula.now to get to the movie.it is about a girl named christne and her two lovers raoul and the phantom.p.s.
lon chaney's make up in the end is scary
Movie Review: No, it's not perfect,
Summary: 5 Stars
but it's close. Sure it has some little flaws, overly melodramatic moments and plot holes, but the Phamtom remains an absolute landmark in films. Chaney's make-up is still absolutely unsurpassed, 80 years after the fact -- astonishing when you consider all the technology and make-up we have today vs. Lon's "tackle box." And Chaney's performance is also mesmerizing, one of his very best. The unmasking scene, no matter how many times you've seen it, still jolts you not once but twice; once for ourselves, then through Christine. This has, long ago, gone beyond just a movie; it's beyond essential; something that must be experienced. Quite simply, anyone who doesn't have a copy of this in their own collection cannot, truthfully in any way, be called a movie fan, or someone who genuinely appreciates film.