Dan Navarro's Movie Reviews

Gaston Leroux, the French author whose 1911 novel inspired Universal's brilliant horror film The Phantom of the Opera in 1925, was passionate about theater and inquisitive enough to conduct extensive research into the Paris Opera House, where most of his story is set.

In his inquiries, Leroux learned about the extraordinary labyrinth of cellars and passageways that lie beneath the opera house's auditorium. There are seven stories beneath stage level, some of them little more than dimly lit caverns. It was in this labyrinth that Leroux placed his "phantom," a hideously disfigured misfit who lives in the caverns but hungers for the attentions of Christine, a lovely ingénue who performs on the opera stage several stories above his shadowy lair.

As played by the legendary Lon Chaney, this phantom—his given name is Erik—is the most human of monsters, often emerging from his caverns to sit and appreciate the opera and the ballet sequences from his private box in the main auditorium. It is there that Erik first sees Christine, who will become both his passion and his ultimate undoing.

Most "beauty and the beast" tales—think King Kong—have the beautiful object of desire shrieking and trying desperately to escape her pursuer. But in Universal's The Phantom of the Opera, Christine (Mary Philbin) doesn't seem all that interested in flight, at least not at first. Rather, she sees the masked Erik as her benefactor and even calls him "Master." An accomplished musician, he coaches her and helps her to hone her art, preparing her for a starring role in Gounod's Faust, whether the opera company likes it or not. (The irony of her using the phantom to claim the coveted lead role in "Faust," a story about a man who sells his soul to the devil, is not lost on the audience.)

When the impresarios have the temerity to deny Christine the lead role in spite of the Phantom's urgings, he exacts a terrible vengeance by cutting loose an enormous chandelier and sending it crashing down onto the audience.

While in the Phantom's subterranean chambers, Christine impetuously pulls off his full-face mask as he sits playing the organ—and launches one of the most famous, and most frightening, images of the silent screen era: Erik unmasked!

Chaney, the man of a thousand faces, outdid himself with the creation of this one. At the unmasking, Erik's face is revealed to resemble nothing so much as a skull. His eyes bulge grotesquely out of their sockets, his nose appears to be mostly nostrils, and his jagged teeth flare through a wide mouth with no lips.

Chaney's makeup was so perfect and so hideous, Universal had it written into his contract that no pictures of the unmasked Phantom were to be exhibited before the picture's release, or for quite some time after. The revelation of his unique ugliness was intended to come as a surprise, and it did.

Now that the Phantom has been betrayed by his protégée, he flies into a rage, but refrains from harming her, for she is the closest thing to a loved one he has ever known. Horrified, Christine begs his forgiveness and agrees to be his "slave"—the intertitle actually uses that word—if he will but allow her to return to the stage for one last performance. Reluctantly, he agrees, but cautions her not to return to Raoul (Norman Kerry), the dashing young viscount with whom she had been carrying on a light flirtation.

Naturally, once she is free from her gruesome captor, she betrays him again, going straight to Raoul for help. They meet at the spectacular Bal Masque, an elaborate party where all of Paris—the rich, the poor, the glamorous and the wannabes—rendezvous one night each year, in costume. Originally, The Phantom of the Opera contained several Technicolor sequences—the Bal Masque, the ballet performance, and a now-lost excerpt from Faust—but in Milestone Films' 2003 DVD release, The Phantom of the Opera: The Ultimate Edition, only the Bal Masque sequence survives in color. The scene is a feast for the eyes, and not only when Chaney makes his appearance, robed in bright crimson, as The Red Death. Early two-strip Technicolor is gloriously displayed here, as literally hundreds of revelers parade about in colorful costumes of every description.

Rupert Julian is the director of record for The Phantom of the Opera, but persistent reports over the years have also credited others as co-directors, most notably Lon Chaney himself. The master of makeup was also a master of pacing, atmosphere, and showmanship.