The Paris Opera House, which was built over abandoned catacombs and torture chambers, is being sold, and its new owners are warned about rumors of a phantom that haunts box #5. Indeed, the entire opera company is aware of the caped and masked man who watches operas from that box and is thought by some to live down in the catacombs. One day, Carlotta, the star diva, gets a threatening letter from the Phantom warning her to allow her understudy Christine to sing the part of Marguerite in the next performance of Faust. Indeed, Christine, in her dressing room, has been hearing the disembodied voice of the Phantom, calling himself her Master, telling her that he will help her career and will soon take physical form and be her lover. For her part, Christine is already dating Raoul, who gets a note from the Phantom telling him to give her up. Raoul doesn't want to even though there are tensions between them as he wants her to give up her career to marry him and she won't, something that makes the figure of her unknown Master appealing. Carlotta refuses to bow out so the Phantom causes the grand chandelier in the house to fall on the audience during an aria of Carlotta's. Christine leaves her dressing room through a secret passage behind her mirror and the masked Phantom meets her, taking her in a gondola across the Black Lake under the Opera House into the catacombs. We learn the Phantom's name is Erik, he's an escapee from Devil's Island, and he has composed an opera, Don Juan Triumphant, just for Christine. He wants her to become a star but warns her never to try and remove his mask. While he's playing an organ, she comes up behind him in a playful mood to unmask him. Unfortunately, his face looks like a dreadfully deformed skull, apparently from torture during the second French revolution. She's horrified and he's angry, telling her she must now live as his prisoner. Christine manages to talk him into letting her go back to the Opera House one more time to sing in Faust, but he tells her she must not see Raoul. Of course, she does, meeting him at the glittering masked ball that the opera is throwing (the chandelier incident seems forgotten). But Erik shows up too, elaborately dressed as the Red Death, sees them together, and kidnaps Christine again during her performance in Faust. Ledoux, a member of the secret police, helps Raoul track down Erik and Christine through catacombs and sewers, but will the wily and insane Phantom escape after all?
This silent movie which turns 100 this year is a part of most movie buffs' collective unconscious; even if someone has never seen the film, they know of it and they know its most famous scene, Christine's unmasking of Erik, a moment which still retains its power to shock. Its secret is that there are actually two (maybe three) visual jolts: when Christine rips off the mask, she is behind him and doesn't see his face at first, but we do, so first we see the grotesque face, and secondly we notice that he is shrieking in horror himself, as though we're seeing ourselves shrieking. A third jolt of sorts comes when we see Christine's reaction a few seconds later. It's a masterful scene due to direction (credited to Rupert Julian though at least two other directors also worked on the film), acting by Lon Chaney as Erik, and makeup, also done by Chaney. The story began as a 1910 novel by Gaston Leroux, was adapted to the screen several times, and is now probably best known as the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. I have not seen the musical—and at this point, probably never will—but I have seen at least two other film versions and this is still the best. There are several versions in circulation. The one I saw on TCM (copyrighted 1996, remastered in 2013) has been restored. Most of its scenes are effectively tinted in monochrome colors, magenta being the most interesting, and the masked ball sequence (almost as stunning as the unmasking) is presented in Technicolor. Though this has gained a reputation as a classic horror movie, it's really more a romantic melodrama with a few creepy scenes. As such, it's not especially effective. The backstories of Christine and Raoul are not presented (for that matter, neither is Erik's except for the implications of past torture) and the two actors (Mary Philben and Norman Kerry) have little chemistry. Erik is not a romantic figure here—we see him as an unbalanced stalker—but we do occasionally have some sympathy for him, and might have more if we knew his background. Still, the movie doesn't drag much, though modern day viewers may be anxious to get to the unmasking scene which comes around the halfway point. I've argued that this isn't really quite horror, but it would make good Halloween night viewing just the same. [TCM]
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