11/10/2022 0 Comments 1925 phantom of the opera maskLon had already given many great performances and was not about to be hampered by a hack.Īlas, that cannot be said of his leading lady Mary Philbin, who came second in a Chicago beauty contest in 1920. The cinematographer was forced to act as go-between to convey the director’s instructions to the star, but Chaney just ignored Julian and did as he pleased, and rightly so. He wanted a much broader performance than the one Lon had in mind. I knew Lon Chaney personally, and he was a very nice man who got along with everyone, so I’m blaming Rupert Julian again. For a start, the director and the star wouldn’t speak to each other. The Phantom Of The Opera was a much-troubled production. I am happy to say they had enough residual good sense to cast Lon Chaney as The Phantom, and it was his acting, along with a number of remarkable sets designed by Ben Carre, that makes the 1925 version of The Phantom Of The Opera a film well worth watching. An expatriate New Zealander, Julian was an unimaginative hack who, in 1918, had directed and played the lead in The Kaiser Beast Of Berlin (1918), a huge box-office success in that dangerous year of bullets and influenza. Naturally, this sensible advice was ignored by the studios when they hired Rupert Julian to direct. A reader at Universal decided Gaston Leroux‘s 1911 novel would make a popular film, concluding that “If we do it, for God’s sake, let’s not botch it!” – although I believe a more colourful term was used, rather unusual since it was a black-and-white film. The Phantom Of The Opera is what they call a Universal Super Jewel, named that to raise it above the undistinguished low-budget formula films that normally kept the studio in profit. Have no fear of oppressive over-orchestration and cacophonous caterwauling, for this was made in 1925, when the absence of sound technology protected all cinema-goers from such a disagreeable experience. This is the first film version of The Phantom Of The Opera (1925), starring that Man Of A Thousand Faces, Lon Chaney Senior. This week I’m extremely pleased to discuss a film that is good – mostly – sometimes. What’s his goal? What’s his secret?” (courtesy IMDB) Christine meets this phantom (a masked man) in the catacombs, where he lives. “At the Opera of Paris, a mysterious phantom threatens a famous lyric singer, Carlotta and thus forces her to give up her role (Marguerite in Faust) for unknown Christine Daae.
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