The Phantom of the Opera is a 1925 American silent horror film adaptation of Gaston Leroux's 1910 novel of the same name directed by Rupert Julian and starring Lon Chaney in the title role of the deformed Phantom who haunts the Paris Opera House,Harrison's Reports film review; September 17, 1925, p. 151. causing murder and mayhem in an attempt to make the woman he loves a star. The film remains most famous for Chaney's ghastly, self-devised make-up, which was kept a studio secret until the film's premiere. The picture also features Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, Gibson Gowland, John St. Polis and Snitz Edwards. The last surviving cast member was Carla Laemmle (1909–2014), niece of producer Carl Laemmle, who played a small role as a "prima ballerina" in the film when she was about 15 years old. The first cut of the film was previewed in Los Angeles on January 26, 1925. The film was released on September 6, 1925, premiering at the Astor Theatre in New York. In 1953, the film entered the public domain in the United States because the film's distributor Universal Pictures did not renew its copyright registration in the 28th year after publication.
Plot The following synopsis is based on the general release version of 1925, which has additional scenes and sequences in different order than the existing reissue print.
In the 1890s, at the Paris Opera House, Comte Philippe de Chagny and his brother, the Vicomte Raoul de Chagny attend a production of Faust, where the latter's sweetheart, Christine Daaé, may sing. Raoul wishes for Christine to resign and marry him, but she prioritizes her career over their relationship.
Meanwhile, the former management has sold the Opera House. While leaving, they tell the new managers about the Opera Ghost, a phantom who is "the occupant of box No. 5".
Mme. Carlotta, the prima donna, receives a letter from "The Phantom," demanding that Christine replace her the following night, threatening dire consequences if this does not happen. In Christine's dressing room, a voice tells her she must take Carlotta's place and think only of her career and her master.
The following day, Christine reveals to Raoul that she has been tutored by a mysterious voice, the "Spirit of Music," and it is now impossible to stop her career. Raoul says someone is probably playing a joke on her, and she storms off in anger.
That evening, Christine substitutes for Carlotta. During the performance, the managers are startled to see, seated in Box 5, a figure who later disappears. Simon Buquet then finds the body of his brother, stagehand Joseph Buquet, hanging by a noose and vows vengeance. Once again, a note from the Phantom demands Carlotta say she is ill and let Christine replace her. The managers get a similar note, reiterating that if Christine does not sing, they will present Faust in a cursed house.
The following evening, a defiant Carlotta sings. During the performance, the Phantom drops the chandelier hanging from the ceiling onto the audience, killing people. Christine enters a secret door behind the mirror in her dressing room, descending into the lower depths of the Opera. She meets the Phantom, who introduces himself as Erik and declares his love. Christine faints and he carries her to an underground suite fabricated for her comfort. The next day, she finds a note from Erik telling her that she must never look behind his mask. As he is preoccupied playing his organ, Christine playfully tears off his mask, revealing his deformed face. Enraged, the Phantom declares she is now his prisoner. She begs him to let her sing, and he relents, allowing her to visit the surface one last time if she promises not to see Raoul again.
Released, Christine meets with Raoul at the annual masked ball, where the Phantom appears disguised as the "Red-Death." On the roof of the Opera House, Christine tells Raoul about her experiences. Unbeknownst to them, the Phantom is listening nearby. Raoul swears to whisk Christine away to London following her next performance. As they leave the roof, a man with a fez approaches them. Aware that the Phantom awaits downstairs, he leads Christine and Raoul to another exit.
The next night, during her performance, Christine is kidnapped. Raoul rushes to her dressing room and meets the man in the fez again. He is actually Inspector Ledoux, a secret policeman who has been tracking Erik since he escaped as a prisoner from Devil's Island. After finding the secret door in Christine's room, the two men enter the Phantom's lair. They end up in a torture chamber of his design. Philippe also finds his way into the catacombs, looking for his brother, but is eventually drowned by Erik.
The Phantom subjects Raoul and Ledoux to intense heat. He then locks them in with barrels of gunpowder and causes the room to flood. Christine begs Erik to save Raoul, promising him anything in return, even becoming his wife. This causes the Phantom to save Raoul and Ledoux.
A mob led by Simon Buquet infiltrates Erik's lair. As they approach, the Phantom attempts to flee with Christine. Raoul saves Christine while Erik, in one last act of twisted showmanship, frightens the crowd by pretending to hold some kind of lethal weapon in his clenched fist, only to reveal an empty palm before he is swarmed and killed by the mob and thrown into the Seine. Raoul and Christine later go on their honeymoon in Viroflay.
Cast
Preproduction
In 1922, Carl Laemmle, the president of Universal Pictures, took a vacation to Paris. During his vacation, Laemmle met the author Gaston Leroux, who was working in the French film industry. Laemmle mentioned to Leroux that he admired the Paris Opera House. Leroux gave Laemmle a copy of his 1910 novel The Phantom of the Opera, which Laemmle read in one night and bought as a vehicle for actor Lon Chaney.Preface to Production was scheduled for late 1924 at Universal Studios.
The filmmakers were unfamiliar with the layout of the Paris Opera House and consulted Ben Carré, a French art director who had worked at the opera and was familiar with Leroux's novel. He said that Leroux's depiction of the opera cellars was based more on imagination than fact. Carré created 24 detailed charcoal sketches of the back and below-stage areas of the opera, which the filmmakers replicated. Carré was in Europe when shooting began and had no further involvement with the project. It was not until he was shown a print of the film in the 1970s that he realized that his designs had been incorporated.
The screenplay was written by Elliot J. Clawson, who had worked as director Rupert Julian's scenario writer since 1916. Clawson's first script was a close adaptation of Leroux's book and included scenes from the novel that would not appear in the released film, such as that in which the Phantom summons Christine to her father's grave in Brittany, where he poses in the cemetery as the "Angel of Music" and plays "The Resurrection of Lazarus" on his violin at midnight. The scene was filmed by Julian but excised after he left the project.
Inspired by the novel, Clawson added a lengthy flashback to Persia, where Erik (the Phantom) served as a conjurer and executioner in the court of a depraved sultana, using his Punjab lasso to strangle prisoners. Falling from her favor, Erik was condemned to be eaten alive by ants. He was rescued by the sultana's chief of police, who became Inspector Ledoux in the final version of the film, but the ants had consumed most of his face. The flashback was eliminated during subsequent story conferences, possibly for budgetary reasons. Instead, a line of dialogue was inserted to explain that Erik had been the chief torturer and inquisitor during the Paris Commune, when the opera served as a prison, with no explanation of his damaged face.
The studio considered the novel's ending too subdued, but Clawson's third revised script retained the scene in which Christine kisses the Phantom compassionately. He is profoundly shaken and moans: "Even my own mother would never kiss me." A mob approaches led by Simon (the brother of a stagehand who was murdered earlier by the Phantom). Erik flees the Opera House with Christine. He takes control of a coach, which overturns because of his reckless driving, and he escapes the mob by scaling a bridge with the aid of his strangler's lasso. Waiting for him at the top is Simon, who cuts the lasso. The Phantom suffers a deadly fall, and his dying words are: "All I wanted... was to have a wife like anybody else... and to take her out on Sundays."
The studio remained dissatisfied. In another revised ending, Erik and Christine flee the mob and take refuge in her house. Before entering, Erik cringes "as Satan before the cross". Inside her rooms, he is overcome and says that he is dying. He asks whether she will kiss him and proposes to give her a wedding ring so that Christine can give it to Raoul. The Persian, Simon and Raoul all burst into the house. Christine informs them that Erik is ill. He slumps dead to the floor, sending the wedding ring rolling across the carpet. Christine sobs and flees to the garden, and Raoul follows to console her.
Production Lon Chaneyin The Phantom of the Opera Production began in mid-October but encountered many problems. According to director of photography Charles Van Enger, Chaney and the rest of the cast and crew had strained relations with director Rupert Julian. Chaney and Julian eventually stopped communicating, so Van Enger served as a go-between. He would report Julian's directions to Chaney, who responded "Tell him to go to hell." As Van Enger remembered, "Lon did whatever he wanted."
Julian had become Universal's prestige director by completing the Merry-Go-Round (1923) close to budget after original director Eric von Stroheim had been fired. But on the set of The Phantom of the Opera, his lack of skill as a director was obvious to the crew. According to Van Enger, Julian had wanted the screen to turn black after the chandelier falls on the opera audience, but Van Enger ignored him and lit the set with a soft glow so that the aftermath of the fall would be visible.
The ending changed yet again during filming. The scripted chase scene through Paris was discarded in favor of an unscripted and more intimate finale. To save Raoul, Christine agrees to wed Erik and kisses his forehead. Erik is overcome by Christine's purity and his own ugliness. The mob enters his lair under the Opera House, only to find the Phantom slumped dead over his organ, where he had been playing his composition Don Juan Triumphant.
By mid-November 1924, the majority of Chaney's scenes had been filmed. Principal photography was completed just before the end of the year, with 350,000 feet of negative exposed. Editor Gilmore Walker assembled a rough cut of nearly four hours, but the studio demanded a length of no more than 12 reels.
A score was prepared by Joseph Carl Breil. No information about the score survives other than Universal's release: "Presented with augmented concert orchestra, playing the score composed by Briel, composer of music for The Birth of a Nation". The opening-day full-page advertisement in the Call-Bulletin read: "Universal Weekly claimed a 60-piece orchestra. Moving Picture World reported that 'The music from Faust supplied the music [for the picture].
The first cut of the film was previewed in Los Angeles on January 26, 1925. Audience reaction was extremely negative; many viewers complained of the film's excessive melodrama and suggested the insertion of comedic elements to relieve the tension. By March, the studio had decided to change the ending so that the Phantom would not be redeemed by a woman's kiss and would thus retain his evil nature through the end of the film. The redemptive ending is now lost, with only a few frames still surviving.