The Phantom of the Opera

Analyzing an old silent movie using nowadays standards wouldn't be fair: the medium is too different, the acting performances require a different perspective, and when you watch it you find yourself enjoying the movie much like you would do with a painting. This is especially true for the classic The Phantom of the Opera, a movie that gets you lost in the images more than in the story itself.

Lon Chaney gives a good portrayal of the phantom, yet somewhat different from what was portrayed in later efforts with the same subject: his character comes off more like a cold blooded than a somewhat likeable character. What shines in this movie is the visual impact: the costumes are really nice, and the gothic scenery is perfect. The best scene of them all has to be the Red Death one, appropriately shot in a painting-like color, definitely one of the most beautiful images offered by old cinema.

Sure, the movie is hardly gonna provide any scares by now, and the story has been told many times. However, this is a primary example of how old cinema can still offer a very worthy experience.

Chaney is best known today for two roles: Quasimodo in "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," and Erik in "The Phantom of the Opera." The pair contrast the human response to physical deformity. While Quasimodo searches for kindness and acts to protect his home and loved ones, Erik shuns humanity and in his hatred and isolation becomes truly evil.

Christine Daae (Mary Philbin) is the understudy at the Paris Opera house, an ancient structure built over a network of torture chambers and interconnecting cellars. Rumors abound of a ghost or phantom who stalks the halls, and even rents his own box for the performances. With the help of this mysterious stranger, Daae becomes the lead diva.

Daae, apparently fine with her benefactor's use of extortion and mass murder to help her career, dumps her boyfriend Raoul (Norman Kerry) and follows the masked Phantom into the bowels of the opera house. She is, however, sensitive enough to collapse in a faint at the discovery that her benefactor is the legendary Phantom, and at his profession of love for her.

Awakening, she discovers herself in a lavish bedroom he has prepared for her, with her name engraved on a hand mirror. But upon snatching off the Phantom's mask, she realizes that he isn't Prince Charming after all, but hideously deformed, with a skull-like face.

The Phantom returns her to the opera, telling her that she must never see Raoul again. Upon reflection, however, Christine decides that looks and sanity are more important to her in a lover than she originally thought, and makes plans to meet Raoul at the annual masked ball. Raoul, neither particularly brave or smart, suggests that the two of them hightail it out of town. Christine, not one to run before her chance at the big time, suggests that they flee after the following evening's performance. Erik, of course, is listening in.

At that point Erik drops his nice-guy facade, hangs a stagehand who discovers his trap door, kidnaps Christine and flees into the cellars. He is hotly pursued by Raoul and a Secret Police inspector, who are followed by Raoul's brother, who is followed by angry mob led by the murdered stagehand's brother.

Erik, meanwhile, is trying to convince Christine of his capacity to reform ("No longer like a toad in these foul cellars will I secrete the venom of hatred -- for you shall bring me love!"). Alas, his plans to become a good husband are interrupted by the need to bump off a few of his pursuers, using elaborate boody traps and alarms throughout the dungeons.

The final minute of the movie is perhaps the best, with Erik's final gesture proving that his mental ability far outweighs that of anyone else in the film. He goes out in style, leaving the dim-witted Raoul and his amoral girlfriend to live happily ever after.

The two best things are Chaney's over-the-top performance as Erik and the spectacular sets. Chaney had a way of making any other actors in a film appear flat and lifeless, and this is no exception. The elaborate set of the opera house and the gothic appearance of the dungeons are still impressive, and the tinting and two-strip technicolor in the Bal Masque sequence look great.

"Phantom" is rousing horror/adventure, while "Hunchback" was a touching allegorical film. The latter is better and more serious, but "Phantom" is still some of the most fun it's possible to have before a movie screen.

My goodness...close to fifty years ago I saw this film in the company of its leading lady, Mary Philbin. She was a friend of an unforgettable lady our family had met when we moved from New England to southern California. Our mutual friend was constantly prodding Miss Philbin, who had become quite reclusive after retiring from the screen, to get out and enjoy life. (They took a trip to Europe one summer, for instance.) One evening she persuaded Mary, who was extremely reluctant, by the way, to accompany us to the silent movie theater on Fairfax Ave., not far from Hollywood Blvd. and the site of Grauman's Chinese Theater and other first-run movie palaces, to see a revival of "The Phantom of the Opera." That old theater, not in the least luxurious and quite small, was a virtual shrine for lovers of silent films. Management had obtained a print of this film in acceptable condition, though I don't recall that the Technicolor sequence had been preserved in that print and, on that evening anyway, there was no musical accompaniment.

Mary dreaded the experience of seeing one of her old films amid a mid-Fifties audience, which she feared would find the film a subject of comical curiosity rather than a piece of genuinely enthralling entertainment. We joined the rest of the audience that night in enjoying the experience of seeing the film, however, and Mary was relieved that she had consented to accompany us (though she insisted that we shield her from any possible recognition, not too easy to do, since she had hardly changed in appearance in the quarter-century since that classic's production.) I, for one, remember being amazed at the care and expense that had obviously been lavished on its production.

Not very long after that evening, we went to a neighborhood theater in Pacific Palisades, Calif., to see James Cagney in the 1957 Universal-International biographical film about Lon Chaney, Sr., "Man of a Thousand Faces," again with Mary Philbin in our company. The unmasking scene from "The Phantom of the Opera" was rather perfunctorily recreated, with an actress playing Mary who did not resemble her. As we exited the theater, Mary and our family friend, who had quite a few early Hollywood associations (She had once been married to Ernst Lubitsch, the legendary director, when they first came to Hollywood from their native Germany.), regaled me with reminiscences about Irving Thalberg (played in the film by a young Robert Evans), whom they had both known and for whom they had quite a high regard.

Mary remained a family friend over the years until her death more than thirty years later. She led a very quiet life, for many years occupying a house she had owned since the days of her stardom (only a few blocks north on Fairfax Ave. from that silent movie revival house!) I remember her with great fondness for her modesty and extraordinary sweetness.

Christine Daae is the understudy for Carlotta in the opera Faust at the grand opera house in Paris. She receives coaching from a mysterious man that she can only hear but not see in her dressing room. Meanwhile stories of a phantom go around the opera house and threatening notes are received that force Carlotta to call off sick, giving Christine her chance to shine, and shine she does. However when she meets the man, he is the phantom – horribly scarred and insane. He demands her love, but Christine plans to flee with her real lover – a plan that the phantom cannot allow.

I'm not sure it if makes any great difference, but the version I watched was a restored version of this film with a new score and some colour treatment on the film stock. The main thing that struck me about the film was the sheer grandeur and scale of the film. The story is simply told but doesn't lose the tragic elements even if they are silently told. The cast are to be praised for the job they do telling the story without words – it is a very different style of acting from today, but they do it well. Each actor has to exaggerate their expressions and movements but not do so to the point of being comical, they all do well. Philbin is excellent as the woman with an unwanted admirer and Chaney is a great phantom – tragic and hideous throughout.

The film benefits greatly from a superb series of sets, each large, gothic and foreboding. These wonderful sets are made even better by the cinematography which makes excellent use of shadow and light, the film has a great atmosphere to it and this is almost entirely created by the lighting and sets. The film has had a helping hand in the restored version, the phantom's appearance as the Red Death is colour treated to give him a blood red cape which stands out in scenes of full colour or, as on the roof, where his cape is the only colour. Even without this help the direction is great and the film feels rich in darkness to suit the material.

The score is really great (in the version I saw) and is well designed to help the mood onscreen and compliment the emotions of the characters at any given moment. I'm a protégé of action movies and multiplexes and am supposed to need things exploding to hold my attention, however this film hooked me throughout with it's tragic tale and lavish design.

I find silent films more eerie than the talking B&W horror films (Dracula, Frankenstien, the Thing from Another World) and also more eerie than the modern color films (Suspiria, Ju-on, the Descent). The exaggeration in the actors gestures and expressions; the early camera technology that's not quite fluid and not quite clear; the tinted colors; and an artificially overlaid soundtrack – it all combines and adds up to paint an abstract and unnatural picture.

Cinema has evolved so far since the Silent Era that watching these films is almost like glimpsing into another world completely unrelated to the one most of us grew up watching. And I find it fascinating that this is, indeed, the ancestor to many horror films that I adore today. So, like with other classics, I viewed Phantom of the Opera with the delight of discovering our cinematic horror roots – seeing the predecessor to Jack Pierce, Rick Baker, and Stan Winston in action, watching the precursor to John Carpenter, Mario Bava, and David Cronenberg.

From the opening scene, Phantom of the Opera makes great use of shadows. A character with a lantern wanders the labyrinth below the Paris Opera house, ducking into an alcove as the shadow of the Phantom passes. Barring a handful of shots showing a cloaked figure from behind (or from a distance), this motif continues as Erik, the Phantom, is represented as a shadow, calling to Christine from the catacombs behind her dressing room mirror until she inevitably comes face to face with the mask (which she will inevitably remove.) Even though I'm quite familiar with the face of Lon Chaney's Phantom from the numerous still-shots out there, I still felt the pulse of anxiety and suspense when that famous moment drew near. Though blatantly exploitive in its camera angle, the timing, the expression on Chaney's face, though it aims purely for spectacle and shock for the audience of 1925, it carries something newer spectacles/shock-films lack: charm.

I couldn't help but smile watching Chaney's haunting performance beneath that famous makeup, seeing it animated for the first time, the sadness and tragedy that underlines the phantoms soul. He moves with a precision and deliberateness that's not entirely natural, but remains paradoxically sincere. The rooftop scene, in particular, where Christine and Raoul plot, oblivious to the presence of the unmasked phantom who listens in with great intensity from his perch above – gripping his cape in his heartbroken state, eventually throwing himself back into the grasp of the statue in disbelieving defeat.

There's something both awkward and poetic to the movements of the actors as they express their emotions not in subtleties, but rather in exaggerated body language that almost feels at home here (almost, but not quite.) Early in the film, frightened ballerinas spontaneously spin in place (one revolution) as a visual representation of their anxiety. Somewhat silly, but simultaneously delightful in its approach.

Later in the film, Christine rejects the Phantom, arcing her back to its limit, her face turned as far away as possible, with her hands outstretched as if the very air around Erik would prove toxic. A single still frame presented to an audience, completely isolated from the context of the rest of the film, would leave absolutely no room for misinterpretations.

The film goes on to a larger scope and bigger thrills with the inevitable fall of the chandelier, the Phantom's many tricks and traps in the catacombs under the Paris Opera House, and the final pursuit where the mob chases Erik through the streets of Paris -- the film strains itself to outdo all the silent films that came before. However, it strains too far, and I find myself liking the film in its quieter, more personal, exploits (the phantom in the shadows, the unmasking, the rooftop.) I do have to comment on the end of the film, though: Erik has been cornered and surrounded on all sides by the angry mob. He raises up a closed fist threateningly, as though within his grasp lay one final card that could level the playing field -- an explosive of some type -- and the crowd visibly hesitates, backing off. After a dramatic pause, the Phantom opens his hand to reveal he's holding nothing at all.

Then we realize the film, itself, has done the very same thing. For the length of its running time it convinces you it held something -- some kind of awe-inspiring trick up its sleeve. Thus the problem with all exploitation films, but you have to admire Phantom for how it sustains so little for so long and makes you smile after you realize the truth.

Like a good magic trick.