The new owners of the Paris Opera House are told, after the sale, that there is a ghostly phantom haunting the place. The Phantom sends a threatening note, insisting that young, pretty singer Christine (Mary Phibin) be given the lead part that currently belongs to prima donna Carlotta (Mary Fabian; yes, two actresses with similar names). Christine is…naive. She thinks the voice behind her mirror—that has been teaching her to sing—belongs to a holy spirit. Even when he says he’ll be coming for her in the flesh, she sees it as some kind of spiritual joining as opposed to sex. The spirit is, of course, Erik, the Phantom of the Opera (Lon Chaney), a deformed artist who wants her for himself, and away from her fiancé, Vicomte Raoul de Chagny (Norman Kerry). After terrorizing the audience at a performance, he kidnaps Christine, taking her into the labyrinth under the opera house where he plans to keep her forever. She is dismayed to discover who he is, and horrified when she sees his visage. She begs to be allowed to sing on the stage again, and he allows her to return to the world for a final performance. Once free, she plots with Raoul, and Erik plans his revenge.
You might reasonably ask, “What the Hell is the 1930 The Phantom of the Opera?” Well, I can only partially answer as it’s mostly lost. But then so is the 1925 version. You think you’ve seen the silent version? You haven’t. Let’s look at a bit of history to get this all in place.
The silent version, directed by Rupert Julian and starring Lon Chaney, had its initial test screening in early 1925. It wasn’t received well, so it was massively re-shot by director Edward Sedgwick, who was known for cheap westerns. This version didn’t do well at test screenings either, so a third version was made, keeping the ending of the second, but made up mostly of shots from the first, though overall trimmed and tightened a great deal. The biggest plot differences between the first and third was the character of The Persian becoming a policeman, and with that, Erik’s Middle Eastern background was changed to make him an escaped convict, and the ending was altered such that Erik no longer died of a broken heart, but by the actions of a mob. This is what was released and became a huge hit. Judging it from what has survived, it was exciting and frightening. It also made clever use of tinting to indicate where and when events were happenings. And it used Technicolor in a few scenes, bringing a beauty previously unknown in film; really, the masked ball is breathtaking. Julian was not a great director, but the production had love and money lavished upon it resulting in some amazing moments.
Then came talkies. It was not uncommon to attempt to re-purpose silent films, either by looping sound for a re-release, or by combing the silent sections with newly shot scenes. The 1930 Phantom is a case of the second. While the story was kept the same, roughly 40% of the film was re-shot, with Mary Phibin and Norman Kerry brought back for new versions of their old scenes. Unfortunately, the few years showed on them, particularly on Phibin who looks much different. Virgina Pearson, who’d played Carlotta, couldn’t sing, so she was recast with Mary Fabian. However, they still wanted to use Pearson’s scenes where Carlotta interacted with the managers, so in those cases Pearson was now said to be playing Carlotta’s mother, speaking for Carlotta. But they had a big problem. Lon Chaney had left Universal for MGM, and his contract dictated he couldn’t be dubbed, so they were stuck. So while scenes without Chaney now had voices, as well as music and sound effects, those with Chaney used the old intertitle cards, along with the music and sound effects. Their workaround was to add a new character—Erik’s servant—who could now speak for him, at least when he was off screen. So the voice coming through the mirror was no longer The Phantom’s.
This mostly-sound version was released in early 1930 (though it’s often called the 1929 version, perhaps because that’s when the new material was shot) and did very well at the box office.
Enough history? Not yet, as that doesn’t explain what we’ve got now. The filming of the silent The Phantom of the Opera was odd by current standards. In order to have two negatives, they set up two cameras next to each other, so every scene has two versions from slightly different angles. And when they shot Technicolor, they had a separate camera nearby recording the scene in B&W.
Over the years the sound version, as a whole, was lost (I’ll return to this in a moment). And at the end of the ‘40s, in an act that seems insane now, Universal destroyed all of their silent films. So all the original negatives are gone. So how do we have any cut of The Phantom of the Opera? Several ways. First, Universal would sell 16mm prints of films back in the ‘30s for home use. The construction of these prints wasn’t given much care and they didn’t always match the theatrical versions, as in this case. The tinting and color weren’t included. Scenes would be missing and the shots from the second camera sometimes replaced the ones used for the theatrical cut. The home prints deteriorated over the years, so film preservationist John Hampton gathered as many copies as he could and spliced the best bits together. The result also has a few minutes that seem to be from the sound version. It’s faded and filled with scratches, but it is considered close to the 1925 version.
The second source comes from the George Eastman museum which had been given a 35mm print in 1950. This is a high quality version, and with some cleaning up, looks beautiful today. But it’s a strange hodgepodge of bits from the 1925 theatrical cut, alternate shots from 1925, and sections from the sound version but missing the sound—for example Fabian is Carlotta and Pearson is her mother. It’s also entirely in B&W, meaning the tinting and Technicolor scenes are missing.
And we’re not quite done yet. The Bal Masque scene, in glorious Technicolor, was discovered separately, and has been spiced into place in the Eastman cut (as well as a poorer version of it sometimes appearing in the videos made from the Hampton source). Re-tinting the film is easy now, and a scene where the Phantom appears in color while the rest of the scene is still B&W (actually blue & white) has been recreated via computer.
Which gives us a poor print of something close to the silent 1925 version, and a very good print of something less close.
As for the 1930 sound version, the sound disks for the whole film were rediscovered, though without the images except for one reel, where we have it all. Outside of that one reel, the sound can’t be directly synced to any surviving rendition of the film.
So, how do I review the 1930 version? Well, I can’t, but I can speculate. The Eastman version of the silent film is a masterpiece. Scenes are gorgeous, the pace is rapid, the metaphors are thoughtful, and Chaney is truly unique. His Phantom make-up is wonderfully ghastly, yet he’s so expressive in it. And oh, the masquerade ball, in color is a thing to behold. I think less of the Hampton version, partly because the lower quality saps away much of the beauty of the images, but also because the pacing isn’t as good. A few nips and tucks help the picture.
But this is about the 1930 version, not the ’25. I’ve heard the sound from the ’30, and while the sound effects and music are nice (really nice—I wish someone would add sound effects to the Eastman cut), the voices are less so. These are not great voice actors, and it shows. As for the visuals, I can say less, but from what little exists, the changes in Mary Phibin’s appearance is distracting. And the switch from dialog scenes to intertitles whenever Chaney appears is even more distracting. Finally, the silent The Phantom of the Opera is a very stylized film. No one is trying for reality. The acting is exaggerated and subterranean sets are there to invoke visions of Hades more than to suggest anything that could actually exist. Attaching voices—more or less realistic voices—to something so far from reality just doesn’t work. You need that dreamlike otherness or the whole story comes off as rather silly, and spoken dialog punctures the dream.
You can’t see the 1930 cut, and I don’t think that’s a problem. Just watch a silent version. As it’s fallen into public domain, multiple videos have been released of various quality and with dozens of different soundtracks, each giving the film a different feeling. I recommend one based on the Eastman source and using the Carl Davis symphonic score from 1996, which flows with the film, raising the tension when needed. It’s a solid score. The Gavriel Thibaudeau score is good enough, though a step down. I am not impressed with any of the organ or piano ones I’ve heard, nor those made up of well known classical works.
Still, the talkie version is important. Universal was looking at making horror films, and while it’s easy to think of The Phantom of the Opera as outside of that genre (the book is pulp, the feel is melodrama, and since Andrew Lloyd Webber it’s a teen-girl romance), the silent version is meant to illicit screams, and apparently did. The Phantom lives in an impossibly complex underworld that includes a torture chamber and an analog for the river Styx. He can strike anywhere, invokes fear in all, sleeps in a coffin, and of course, has a skull-like face. So yes, this is horror, and its box office success in 1930 gave them the confidence to produce Dracula, making The Phantom of the Opera the first Classic Universal Monster.