Starring Lon Chaney's makeup, Mary Philbin and Noman Kerry
Produced by Universal Pictures
A ballet graces the stage of the Paris Opera House as a business deal is consummated in one of its back rooms. Two men purchase the famed Parisian landmark. However, as the sellers leave, they caution that the new owners may hear something about a ghost who lurks in the catacombs beneath the building. The men laugh off the claim, until a mysterious cloaked figure appears then disappears from one of the theater boxes.
The entire company of the house is gossiping about what the Phantom might look like. Christine Daae, one of the singers, is about to find out more than she ever dreamed about the legend. It turns out a mysterious voice has been coming to her and making her focus on her craft, to the detriment and consternation of Raoul, her love.
The Phantom wants Christine in the lead role of Faust and crashes the great opera house chandelier onto the stage to encourage Carlotta, the current lead, to step aside. Soon the masked apparition is leading his protege into the chambers beneath the building. He lets her know his one rule: do not remove my mask... which she almost immediately breaks.
Can Christine escape the clutches of the Phantom and find love with Raoul?
Sometimes a movie is like a pile of old car parts. Not much to look at individually, but put them together and you've got a legend.
There are elements of The Phantom of the Opera that should be bad. The acting is amongst the worst examples of over-the-top winking and nodding I have seen from the period. The melodrama is amongst the most maudlin yet. And there are subplots that feel like filler.
Yet somehow, when you put it all together with the fantastic central performance by Lon Chaney's makeup and the sumptuous production design it all works. The overwrought melodrama fits. I can't imagine more nuanced performances taking the place of anyone here. And you need the disconnected subplots to take a break from the central tale of lust and envy.
Lon Chaney's makeup plays the title character as equal parts menace and pathos. He is so disconnected, so yearning for a relationship, he will literally level buildings to get his way. He shows moments of compassion and then becomes unhinged. Lon Chaney's makeup easily gives the best performance in the film.
It also gives us the first truly iconic moment in monster movies. I have seen Christine unmask the Phantom a thousand times. It's an indelible piece of movie history. Yet it is always simply a trick of makeup when taken out of context. Within the frame of this story, with these actors, it becomes a genuine moment of suspense and shock.
The sets here suit the epic perfectly. The opera house is massive and elegant and that chandelier has weight and mass. So when it crashes, you feel it. The catacombs beneath the structure are labyrinthine and ominous. It's an imagined nightmare brought to life.
That's not to say there are not missteps. While some subplots provide us the breath before the next plunge into madness, others are just extraneous. The two owners in the beginning pretty much disappear after completely dominating the first ten minutes of film and the ending...
Well, let me just say SPOILERS. We end with the Phantom seemingly realizing that Christine loves Raoul and saving him from certain death. The Phantom looks at the lovers embracing, seems to soften a bit and then... an angry mob chases him through Paris, corners him, beats him and tosses his corpse into the Seine. What, what, what?
More than anything, what stays with you after watching The Phantom of the Opera is the foreboding mood. Something is always hanging over our heads, around the corner, joust outside of your mind's eye. The mood and those iconic images: the chandelier, the Phantom in his Red Death costume on the roof of the opera house and, of course, the unmasking of a monster.
****1/2 out of *****
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