'Love' (or psychotic obsession) is a many splendored thing: Some thoughts on The Phantom of
In spite of the fact I've spent a good proportion of the last twenty-five years talking about films, I'm never convinced I have anything very meaningful to say. I lack the necessary ego and confidence for academic research.
The Phantom of the Opera always fired my imagination. I was inspired by a still in Denis Gifford's book on horror at the age of nine. It was, of course, that famous still that inspired my overheated childish brain. There was something very intriguing about this ghoulish portrait. Lugosi as Dracula still looked like Lugosi when he wasn't playing Dracula (although the make-up became too florid in some of his later appearances as the Count) and Karloff's visage was deeply hidden, but still discernible beneath Jack Pierce's brilliant sculpting. However, Chaney as The Phantom? How on earth could anyone distort their face to look like this? The photographs of Chaney in the book bore no resemblance to the distorted skull in the image of The Phantom. The sunken sockets, the protruding, grinning teeth, arch cheekbones, the wisps of hair matted across a bald pate and, most infamously, the a nose pulled up to resemble a snout. It's a chilling detail. Describing the Phantom appearance to the whirling gaggle of ballet dancers Joseph Buquet observes, "The nose? There is no nose.".
I was captivated by his appearance and the strange juxtaposition of the elongated, snaggle-toothed, cadaverous face sitting atop a slight body draped in a cape, arms folded, black dead eyes intensely fixed on some unseen out of shot presence. And yet, for all its grotesque horror, I always found it a tragic, cruel image. Just how did this image elicit such sympathy?
Erik is precisely poised. It's a portrait dripping with dramatic intensity, but the strategic and considered inclusion of the statuette of Beethoven just behind the Phantom invites us to compare the two. Beethoven is chiseled in a pose of brooding Romantic intensity, a cloak wrapped around a lithe frame, luxurious locks of thick, dishevelled hair flow onto his shoulders, his fingers rest on his chin as he stares off into space in profound creative contemplation. It's an idealized depiction of a young, potent, fiercely artistic spirit.
That's the tragic dimension of the image. Erik, in slightly awkward and contrived dramatic pose, is copying Beethoven. He's attempting to appropriate this contrived depiction of visionary power to legitimize his own claims regarding his artistic genius and, perhaps most heartbreakingly, his own romantic longings. In this composition he is a reduced to a darkly twisted parody of everything the statuette represents. It's an image that manages to be simultaneously grotesque and tragic.
The movie itself is as much an exercise in lavish spectacle as it is in claustrophobic horror and entrapment. The opera house and the catacombs which snake out beneath it are both photographed in a manner that emphasizes their scale. After unfavourable preview screenings in January 1925, Rupert Julian, the film's original director, was ordered to reshoot several scenes. He refused and promptly walked off the picture. Director Edward Sedgewick was brought in. Several scenes were reshot, cut down or removed and several new ones added.
From the available evidence I could find, these are the most notable of the deleted scenes. Sadly, only the stills have survived, none of the original footage from which these stills are taken now exists. Of particular interest is the original ending, which is more sentimental, emotional and romantic. In, it Erik finds redemption by agreeing to release Christine so she can marry Raoul. He then collapses and dies from a broken heart, telling Daroga (rewritten as the character Ledoux in the 1929 version) "All I wanted was to be loved". The mob arrives too late to exact vengeance and Erik is laid to rest in his casket. This excellent collection of stills, edited together by a devoted fan, provides some sense of the missing scenes and action.
A new opening title shot was also added. The original (below) is starkly different from the now familiar shot of a cloaked figure who hugs the walls of a darkly lit space. With his back to us, he moves enigmatically moving in and out of shadow. However, the original title shot (which is much shorter) emphatically emphasizes The Phantom's menace, power and presence as, in a process shot, we see a hooded figure looming over and dwarfing the Paris Opera House.
With these scenes removed, some new ones added and some reshot, and with an entirely ending which climaxes with a horse drawn dash through the streets of Paris and Erik's violent death at the hands of a baying mob, the film was previewed again on April 25th 1925. This is the date usually cited as the film's world premiere. However, it was still felt to be unsatisfactory and new scenes were once again added. The film opened again, in this new, revised form, in New York on 6th September, 1925.
The onset of sound in 1929 led to the film being reissued in a substantially new, shorter, form with new scenes reshot for sound. This hybrid concoction of the 1925 and 1929 scenes is the version of the film that's most readily available today and it exists in both silent and sound form.
This probably provides the most credible explanation for the rather strange prologue at the beginning of the film in what's popularly come to be known as 'the man with the lantern' scene. It bafflingly seems to provide no narrative purpose. In long shot, in the darkness of the catacombs we see a capped figure hesitantly make his way across screen holding a lantern above his head. He pauses momentarily, peering into the darkness and looking at the camera. It's evident that he's speaking, but, of course, in the silent version we can hear nothing.
As he peers toward the camera a distinct sharply moving silhouette appears on the wall behind him. It pauses, before darting swiftly away back into the shadows. This, of course, is The Phantom, although this is not Chaney. Chaney had been involved in none of the reshoots for the version released in 1929. The sound version, of the same moment, can be seen here.
The film was released yet again in 1930 and once again there were subtle changes to the editing of the previous 1929 version, bringing the total number of different versions to five.
The hybrid 1929 version is certainly the most readily available and familiar version of the story. Although it's heavily stripped down it still contains a number of powerfully memorable moments, perhaps non more so than the unmasking sequence. In many ways the staging of this pivotal moment in the narrative pierces the heart of the dark attraction cinema and the horror genres in particular. It dramatizes the agonizing pleasure and tension of our desire to see from the comfort and safety of the darkness, even when we know something dreadful lies in store for us.
With his hideous deformity and splendid isolation, it was Erik I found myself captivated by. Driven to an underground existence by the cruelty of society, his creative genius becomes warped and channelled into hatred and a talent for ingenious forms of murder. In spite of these psychotic tendencies I wanted to see Erik triumph over the handsome, stiff, dull, unimaginative aristocratic Raoul and win the affections of a beautiful, but it has to be conceded, a rather dull and vain Christine. After all, I reasoned, what woman wouldn't fall for the violently creative charms of a helplessly romantic, mad, murderous obsessive personality? It was of course a forlorn a hope. Like so many movie monsters before and since, in its re-edited and reshot form, only unrequited love and a brutal fate awaited Erik as he is torn to shreds by a howling mob and thrown into the Seine. Like the famous still in Denis Gifford's book, it still feels incredibly cruel.
