The Phantom of the Opera

The Phantom of the Opera

1925

Dir: Rupert Julian

Lon Chaney

Mary Philbin

Universal, after the success of The Hunchback of Notre Dame found a second vehicle for a super jewell film starring Lon Chaney in Gaston Leroux's novel The Phantom of the Opera. The film became the one most asociated with Chaney probably because of the famous makeup he created for the title role.

An eyewitness early in the movie describes the Phantom's features. "His eyes are ghastly beads in which there is no light- like holes in a grinning skull! His face is like a leprous parchment, yellow skin strung tight over protruding bones! His nose- there is no nose!"

In Mark A Vieira's book, Hollywood Horror from Gothic to Cosmic, he describes Chaney's task creating the Phantoms appearance. "He made a chalky cranium by means of a skullcap that had a wig sewn onto it. He glued his ears back, used his cotton-and-collodian technique to raise false cheekbones and hollowed his eye sockets with dark makeup. He molded snaggle teeth with a hard dental rubber called gutta-percha. Creating a nose that was not there was his greatest challenge....Working with a combination of fish skin, spirit gum, and wires, Chaney pulled his nose so high that it looked as if it had rotted away. "It's an art not magic.' Chaney said later. 'I achieved the death's head of that role without wearing a mask. It was the use of paints in the right shades and the right places- not the obvious parts of the face- which gave the complete illusion of horror."

The well known story concerns an understudy, Christine Daae, played by Mary Philbin in a production of Faust at the Paris Opera House which is purported to be haunted by a Phantom.

The Phantom has fallen in Love with Christine and takes measures to propell her to stardom including terrorizing the Opera if his demands are not met.

After toppling the great chandelier on the audience during a performance, the Phantom whisks Christine away and take her to his lair in the subterranean catacombs beneath the Paris Opera House. The Phantom's lair includes a coffin in the bedroom and an adjoining torture chamber.

The Phantom, named Erik, warns her never to look upon his face but her curiosity gets the better of her and she pulls away his mask revealing his face. Christine falls down in terror as Erik proclaims "Feast your eyes- glut your soul, on my accursed ugliness!"

The Phantom frees her with the warning not to engage with her fiance. At the Masked Ball, she unites with her lover, Raoul De Chagney. Erik observes there interaction as he is disguised as the Red Death in a remarkable color sequence of the film taking place on the grand staircase of the Opera House. This leads to the Phantom again capturing Christine and the resultant conflict with Raoul and the investigating inspector.

Chaney is again spectacular in the lead role and the success of The Phantom of the Opera would certainly influence Universal's later leap into the horror film genre in the early 1930s.

Watch the unmasking scene below.