Horror Is Universal: THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (1925)
This article was originally published in September 2019. Revisions have been made to provide additional context and information on the subject.
As you probably know, the story of a disfigured musical genius who lurks beneath the Paris Opera House and becomes enamored with the chorus girl he’s training was not invented by Andrew Lloyd Webber in the 1980s. That musical is by far the most famous adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, but it certainly wasn’t the first adaptation to achieve cultural prominence. That would be this version, Universal’s 1925 prestige picture that truly launched its journey into the making of horror films. In many ways, Phantom lay the groundwork for the cinematic elements that would come to characterize Universal Horror. Anchored by the iconic visual design of its antagonist and the performance of the actor who played him, it’s a film that expertly builds a foreboding atmosphere which explodes into shock and spectacle.
The Plot: For months, the Paris Opera House has been haunted by the presence of a shadowy, unpredictable figure. Dubbed “the Phantom” or “the opera ghost,” he can seemingly make the building itself bend to his will and cause chaos if his esoteric demands are not met. All his plans revolve around Christine Daae (Mary Philbin), an innocent chorus singer that the Phantom has taken under his wing. Thanks to his tutelage (and more than a little backstage meddling), Christine has risen to become the opera’s top performer in just a short time. Viscount Raoul de Chagny (Norman Kerry) wants Christine to marry him, but while she loves him back, she has already pledged herself to her unseen master. Things go haywire when the Phantom kidnaps Christine after a performance gone wrong, making good on his promise to appear in person and demand her love. He reveals himself to be Erik (Lon Chaney), a talented but hideously deformed composer who wants Christine to stay underground with him forever. Christine escapes back to the surface and reunites with Raoul, and together they plan to flee the country. But surviving the jealous wrath of the Phantom isn’t going to be as easy as they think…
Universal had held the film rights to Phantom since 1922, when Carl Laemmle had actually met Gaston Leroux. Production began in late 1924. For the director, Laemmle selected Rupert Julian, one of the studio’s biggest filmmakers at the time. Two years earlier, he had successfully taken over the troubled production of Universal’s big-budget drama Merry-Go-Round, establishing himself as a director you could trust to steer a film project smoothly. Elliot J. Clawson, who had worked with Julian since 1916, became the screenwriter and penned a close adaptation of Leroux’s novel - closer than what the final film became, as we shall see. The film would reunite Julian with his Merry-Go-Round stars Norman Kerry and Mary Philbin, who were both popular stars at the time. But they would soon be eclipsed by the man playing the eponymous Phantom, Lon Chaney.
Although this is the only film we’ll be discussing in which Chaney appears (at least for now), I can’t talk about Universal Horror without giving you a brief synopsis of his life and career. Born in 1883 to deaf and mute parents, Chaney developed a skill for pantomime that was essential to his home life and made him an ideal silent-film actor. After several years of theater work, he ended up at Universal in 1913. Chaney would ultimately become one of the first real Hollywood superstars, known primarily for his roles that required grotesque and elaborate makeup. He was also famous for designing and applying this makeup himself, doing so with such dedication that it sometimes caused permanent health damage: his vision, for example, was impaired by a wax wart that he wore over his eye for Hunchback. But the extremes he went to for his roles paid off for him, securing his legacy as “The Man With a Thousand Faces.”
Phantom was Universal’s Super Jewel for 1925. It had a $2 million budget, and you can see that money all over the screen. Something I’m going to say a lot in regards to these earlier films is “This was really impressive for the time.” This film is no exception. The most impressive part is undoubtedly the set for the Paris Opera House auditorium, which was built for this film and stayed on Universal’s backlot until 2014. It was the first film set to be built with steel girders set in concrete, because it needed to hold so many extras. Just as iconic as the opera house are the labyrinth of catacombs beneath it, based on charcoal sketches by French artist Ben Carré (whose designs were replicated without his knowledge, something he didn’t learn until the 1970s).
It’s not just the sets that are impressive for the 20s, but several of the effects as well. The infamous falling chandelier stunt is an integral part of any Phantom experience, and this film pulls it off with great success. The crew filmed a shot of the chandelier being raised to the ceiling, then reversed the shot so it would look like it was falling. A quick cut from the chandelier in motion to a shot of it shattered on the floor effectively creates the illusion of impact. Rupert Julian originally wanted to cut to black rather than show the aftermath of the accident, but cinematographer Charles Van Enger decided to ignore him (Koszarski and Van Enger 283). This is not the last time we will hear about people on the set of this film ignoring Rupert Julian, hint hint. Another dazzling effect that showed how much money was being poured into this project? Technicolor, which was used to film the opera sequences and the lavish masquerade ball sequence. The former footage has been lost, but the latter is still preserved on modern-day cuts of the film. You can imagine what a huge deal that would have been for both audiences and the studio back in 1925.
Returning to the subject of camerawork, I love the way this film is shot. I’ve wondered if anyone involved with the production had seen Nosferatu, because a lot of the staging and film tricks used here remind me of that movie. I’m mainly referring to Phantom‘s reliance on shadows and silhouettes to build a creepy atmosphere. The Phantom only appears as a shadow on the wall in the first half of the film, to conceal what Chaney’s makeup will look like. While it’s done for practical reasons, it also makes for a cool, creepy visual. At the point in the story where we don’t know exactly what the Phantom is yet, it feeds into the idea of him as this mysterious, ephemeral force that you can’t lay eyes on. Shadows are also used to cover up some of the film’s more gruesome moments: there’s a great shot where, as a stagehand pulls up a curtain, you see the curtain’s shadow rise in the background to reveal the shadow of a hanged man. You’re left to imagine exactly what the stagehand sees and what happened beforehand, which in a way is creepier than if the film had just tossed a corpse at you.
As good as Phantom is, it’s a film where the second half is better than the first half. Silent film might not be the best medium in which to tell this story, and I don’t just say that because the plot revolves around singing. There are more differences between silent films and talkies than you might realize. Without sound to help you convey information, you have to rely on body language to get your point across. That results in a lot of over-the-top acting with exaggerated gestures and facial expressions, many of which feel out of place in a serious film like this. The biggest offender here is the character of Christine’s opera rival Carlotta, who hams it up like mad in her two big scenes. Slapstick comedy is also something you seem to find often in silent films, probably due to the success of comedians like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. Phantom has a brief comedy sequence in the first act where minor characters are popping in and out of a trap door as they chase each other around. It’s not a bad scene in and of itself, but it feels strange coming on the heels of the scene where we get a morbid description of what the Phantom allegedly looks like. Luckily the film dispenses with all of that by around the halfway point, which means the second half is dominated by the moody atmosphere and the performances of the three leads.
Real talk: the leads in this movie give some of the best silent film performances I’ve ever seen. I love all of them to bits. Norman Kerry’s Raoul is quiet, dignified, concerned and caring. Mary Philbin’s performance musters up all the wide-eyed, frozen terror that anyone would feel in Christine’s shoes. This is no sweeping Gothic romance; this is a hostage situation. But Chaney is the star of the show, of course, and what a performance he gives.
From the moment Erik first appears on screen, his hand trembling with fear as he tries to touch Christine’s shoulder, Chaney’s physical performance is fascinating to watch. This incarnation of the Phantom really feels like a man who has to make a conscious effort to act like a normal person. His initial behavior around Christine is exaggerated in how gentle they are, like he’s trying to make himself look as unintimidating as possible. At the same time, however, he keeps defaulting back to cold, statuesque postures as though he can’t stop himself. He wants to be charming and charismatic, but his own instincts are working against him.
Erik and Christine’s journey into the catacombs beneath the opera house stands out as an exercise in rapidly escalating creepiness. From the two masks he wears in this version to the coffin he sleeps in to Christine’s discovery of the custom-made outfits and accessories he’s procured for her, the film peels back the layers of mystique and shows us that we’re dealing with someone a lot scarier than just a ghost. It’s a ticking timebomb of a sequence, counting down to the moment when Christine sneaks up behind the Phantom, pulls off his mask and…well…
Look at that. Just look at that! Forget being impressive for the time, this is still impressive almost ninety years later. It’s even more impressive when you know that Chaney designed and applied all of this himself.
To elongate and thin out his face, Chaney wore a bald cap draped with lank hair and glued his ears close to his head. To create the image of a skull he accentuated his cheekbones with putty, and pulled up his nose by gluing a strip of material called fishskin to the tip, yanking it up and fastening the other end onto his forehead. Enlarging his nostrils with wire and ringing them with black greasepaint made it appear that he had no nose, just as painting his lower eyelids white and then putting a layer of black underneath his eyes made them look twice normal size. A red gaping mouth and a set of hideous, snaggled false teeth completed the ghastly effect. (Mallory 28)
Not only did Chaney put all of this on, he managed to keep it a secret from pretty much everyone until the cameras were rolling. It’s been said that people at the premiere of this movie screamed and fainted at the sight of this makeup, and I believe it. It’s a gruesome payoff to all the foreboding buildup that the film has given us.
Once you get past the unmasking scene, all bets are off and it’s a rush to the finish line. The film turns from a Gothic mystery into an action thriller of chases, kidnappings, murders and narrow escapes. The best way to demonstrate the shift is to discuss how the character of the Phantom changes in this latter section of the film. He has his moments of sympathy now and then, but ultimately he’s a straightforward villain rather than the tragic figure modern viewers are more familiar with. His backstory is that he’s an insane criminal with knowledge of “the black art” who’s escaped from Devil’s Island. When he realizes that Christine isn’t going to submit to him anymore, he goes full laughing mad and is ready to not only kill Raoul but blow up the entire opera house unless she agrees to stay with him. Some of this stuff is in Leroux’s book, some of it isn’t. But the moment that gets taken out of this adaptation, one which is so important to the climax, is the moment where Erik realizes the error of his ways and decides to let Christine and Raoul leave together. Instead we get an action sequence where Christine has to be saved from the Phantom, who’s got her locked in a carriage as he flees from a mob hunting him down.
The abrupt ending is a product of the film’s troubled production and the studio’s lack of confidence in what it was making. In a way, there are three versions of Phantom. The first is the one that Rupert Julian tried to make, a straightforward thriller that didn’t make any major changes from the book. When that cut of the film was previewed in January 1925, audience reactions were negative. They decried it as having “too much spook melodrama” and needing “gags to relieve the tension.” Julian, who by now was at odds with most of the cast and crew (particularly Chaney, who basically directed his own performance) either quit or was fired from the project. The second incarnation of the film was headed by Julian’s replacement, comedy director Edward Sedgewick, and it was intended to be a mix of action and romantic comedy. New comic relief characters and subplots were added, and the chase sequence ending was filmed to replace the original subdued climax. When this new version was screened for test audiences in April, it was allegedly booed off the screen. At this point, the only way to save Phantom was in the editing room. The third and final version of the film was constructed using mostly Julian’s material (with some scenes still cut) and some of Sedgewick’s material, notably the ending. It premiered to mixed reviews in September 1925. Critics praised the effects and spectacle but felt that the actual content of the film left something to be desired.
Is that a fair assessment of Phantom, though? Most modern reviewers don’t think so. Today it is hailed as a fine adaptation and a horror classic, with Chaney’s performance and makeup turning the Phantom into cinema’s first legendary monster. Personally, I agree with the latter-day reactions to the film. It’s a solid, engaging action thriller with strong horror elements that elevate the material. I don’t even mind the revised ending and the changed characterization of the Phantom, because I think they fit with what the movie tries to be. It sets out to have big scares, shocking twists and a scary villain, and it has all of those to great effect. Is it a perfect adaptation? No, but it’s a damn good film in its own right.
1925’s The Phantom of the Opera is a triumph of early filmmaking with its ambitious scale and elaborate effects. Although its grim tone is somewhat hampered by the tropes and techniques common in old silent film, it finds its footing in the second half and becomes an effective action thriller with horror elements. The main attraction, of course, is Lon Chaney’s tragic yet terrifying performance as the eponymous Phantom, and his chilling appearance is the first great example of horror makeup in film. While the story and characters are simplified from Leroux’s novel, it’s still one of the more accurate adaptations and one of the most influential. In fact, considering how the musical was partially inspired by this film, it may very well be the most influential Phantom adaptation of all time.
Final Rating: 4 Stars
I want to add some brief remarks on the preservation of the film, because I think it’s an interesting story. The version of Phantom that we have today is not the exact version that premiered in 1925. Instead, it’s a combination of the original footage and footage shot for a 1930 reissue of the film that added new sequences with sound, taking advantage of the rise of “talkies.” The surviving opera sequences come from this cut of the film: a different actress plays Carlotta in these reshoots, so the original Carlotta scenes are re-contextualized and the original actress is instead credited as “Carlotta’s Mother.” The unmasking scene is usually taken from the 1930 version as well. An additional fun fact is that Phantom has been in the public domain since the 1950s, a result of Universal failing to renew the copyright 28 years after its release. It will be the only major Universal Horror film to hold that distinction until 2027, when copyright on creative works from 1931 are set to expire.
Speaking of which, what’s next for this series? Universal made a lot of money with Phantom, enough money to fund several lower-budget projects. And since doing a horror film worked out so well, why not make some more? So the studio got to work. Six years would pass before audiences saw the end results, but they would be well worth the wait.
UP NEXT: Dracula (1931)
References Used
Mallory, Michael. Universal Studios Monsters: A Legacy of Horror. Universe Publishing, 2021.
Landis, John. Monsters in the Movies: 100 Years of Cinematic Nightmares. Reprint, DK Publishing, 2016.
Koszarski, Richard, and Charles Van Enger. “Career in Shadows: Interview with Charles Van Enger.” Film History, vol. 3, no. 3, Indiana University Press, 1989, pp. 275–90, http://www.jstor.org/stable/3814982.