About The Phantom of the Opera (1925)
The story behind the film
Universal's The Phantom of the Opera adapts Gaston Leroux's 1910 French novel about a masked figure who haunts the Paris Opera House and secretly coaches a young singer, Christine Daaé, to stardom. The production was troubled: director Rupert Julian clashed with his star, scenes were reshot, and the film was previewed in Los Angeles in January 1925 before being re-edited. It finally premiered at the Astor Theatre in New York in September 1925 and became a major hit.
Universal built a huge replica of the Paris Opera's auditorium and backstage world for the film, and those sets — the grand staircase, the cellars, the underground lake — became as famous as the actors. The original release also included sequences in early two-colour Technicolor, most famously the masked ball where the Phantom appears dressed as the Red Death.
Cast & crew
- Directed by Rupert Julian (with uncredited work by others during reshoots)
- Lon Chaney as Erik, the Phantom
- Mary Philbin as Christine Daaé
- Norman Kerry as Vicomte Raoul de Chagny
- Arthur Edmund Carewe as Ledoux, the mysterious detective
- Gibson Gowland as Simon Buquet
- Produced by Universal under studio head Carl Laemmle
Why it's worth watching
The reason to watch is Lon Chaney. He designed his own make-up for the Phantom's face, and Universal kept it secret until the premiere. The unmasking scene — Christine creeping up behind the Phantom at his organ and pulling away the mask — is one of the most famous moments in film history, and it still lands because Chaney plays the Phantom as both monster and wounded, obsessive lover. The falling chandelier, the chase through the cellars and the Phantom on the rooftop above the opera house are classic set pieces that later versions, including the stage musical, would echo.
It's also a showcase of how lavish a 1920s studio picture could be: hundreds of extras, a full working opera stage, and colour sequences at a time when nearly everything was black and white (often tinted).
Fun facts
- Chaney was known as "the Man of a Thousand Faces" for his self-made make-up transformations, and the Phantom is his most famous.
- Carla Laemmle, the niece of producer Carl Laemmle, danced as a prima ballerina in the film as a teenager; she lived until 2014 and was its last surviving cast member.
- Universal reissued the film in 1929–1930 with some new scenes and a soundtrack; many surviving copies derive from that reissue rather than the original 1925 cut.
Public-domain status
The Phantom of the Opera was published in 1925, so its US copyright has expired and the film is in the public domain in the United States. (Wikipedia notes its original registration was also never renewed.) See "Rights & source" below for details of the copy we broadcast.