Nerdly Pleasures: The Various Versions of The Phantom of the Opera (1925/1929) with Lon Chaney

1925 Title Card

1929 Title Card

Universal Studios produced and released the first ever cinematic treatment of The Phantom of the Opera in 1925. This silent film starred Lon Chaney, the Man of 1,000 Faces as the titular character, Erik the phantom. Chaney has since been recognized as one of the most versatile actors in silent film, and his make up and portrayal of the Phantom has been recognzied as one of the iconic roles pre-sound cinema. Although the role may not be his best, nor the movie which features it the most crticially acclaimed of his filmography, it is by far the one for which he is best remembered. In 1925, he scared the wits out thousands of movie patrons when his hideous deformed face is revealed. Before I discuss the versions of the films, a few basic facts about silent movies should be identified :

1. Silent pictures were never silent when played during the "silent era" and often were not projected in black and white. In larger theaters, often something close to a chamber orchestra would play music specially compiled for the film, while smaller theaters would have to make do with a house organist or pianist. While the cameras which captured the performers used black and white film stock, prints would often be tinted during processing to reflects the mood, setting or time of day of a scene. An outdoor daylight scene would be tinted yellow, a nighttime or cold scene blue, interiors orange or yellow, fiery scenes in red, moody scenes in green or purple.

2. Intertitles often conveyed more than just dialog. They provided narration, introduced characters and identified the actors who played them, described locations. Letters, books, notes, signs and newspapers could also serve the function of the intertitle, allowing the audience to quickly soak in exposition rather than view actors "talking" to each other with many intertitles. Intertitles made it very easy to export films to foreign markets, as they could be replaced with intertitles in the native tongue. Intertitles were not necessarily written to match the words the actors were speaking, and before sound the intertitles could direct a story in a different way to what was originally intended to be filmed.

3. All major motion pictures up to 1950 in the United States were shot on nitrate (nitrocellulose) film stock. Nitrocellulose was a comparatively unstable material, very sensitive to heat and could spontaneously combust if not handled properly. It also had a tendency to decompose or warp over time, and many films have been lost to one of these causes. After 1950, films were shot and printed on safety film (cellulose acetate), which did not display the fragility and unstable photo-chemical properties of nitrate.

4. By the 1950s, most studios, Universal included, deemed their silent film libraries as having no further commercial value and embarked on a campaign to destroy their silent film archives. They would burn their films to recover the valuable silver content of the film stock and to free up storage space. 50-80% of all silent films are lost due in part to the studio's efforts to make space in their vaults.

5. In the late 1920s, the studios were transitioning rather rapidly towards sound films. During this time, movies would be released with talking or singing sequences. But these films, while they would have an entire sychronized music and effects track, would not be all-talking, which was cumbersome thanks to the limitations of early sound film technology (everybody always seemed to be talking around a table). Older films, shot for silent screens, would sometimes be converted to a "talkie". At this time, there were two main competing technologies, sound-on-disk (such as Warner Bros.' Vitaphone) and sound-on-film (Western Electric Sound System/Movietone, RCA Phonophone, DeForest Phonofilm). Sound on disk had the soundtrack stored on vinyl phonograph records while Sound-on-film, which won this format war by 1932, was an optical sound track printed on the film itself.

6. In the 20's, the evolution of color cinema photography was still in its infancy, but color sequences did exist to a limited extent in several large budget features. The most advanced of these for most of the silent era was Process 2 Technicolor, which debuted in 1922 and was used in a handful of silent films. Process 2 used two primary colors, orangish-red and bluish-green. This did justice to flesh tones, red and green hues, but was not truly realistic when it came to other colors. Some films, like Douglas Fairbanks' The Black Pirate, used Technicolor throughout the picture, but other films used it only for certain sequences. While the camera negative only used one strip of film, the resulting projection prints used two strips cemented together. This caused no end of problems for projectionists with warped, scratched or broken color strips. Technicolor was a slow speed system and required copious amounts of light to allow a good exposure of the images onto the camera negative. Other processes of the period included Prizma color, which used similar principles but was washed-out compared with Technicolor, and the Handschiegl color process, which allowed color dyes to be applied to a specific portion of a film frame.

7. More than one camera would often be rolling on the set of a silent film. Due to the relative instability of nitrate film, having two negatives provided an important safety net. Since all projection prints were struck from camera negatives in these days, having an extra negative was important in case the primary negative was damaged. Often, the second negative would be taken from a second camera shooting from another angle or a second take. If a film was going to be distributed internationally, such as in Europe, then a second negative could be shipped overseas for cheaper processing overseas. Also, the second negative would not have the intertitles spliced in but kept separate so foreign-language intertitles could be created and spliced in for each country. If color photography was used, there was virtually always a black-and-white version of the same footage.

8. Silent film had no set standard for the film playback speed. Most silent film cameras were hand cranked, so the frame rate varied with the cameraman. Projectors often had several speeds available, including 12, 16, 18, and 20 and 26 frames per second. 16 frames per second was what all the cameramen tried to crank the film camera at, but silent films could include instructions to the projectionist to project a reel at a particular speed. Sound films in the US are shot and projected at 24 frames per second, and when silent footage is run at this speed, it often looks comically sped up when it was not intended to be shown that way. Slapstick comedy and chase scenes would often be under-cranked to show frenetic action, however, both in the silent and sound era.

With these principles in mind, let us turn to the film itself :

First Intertitle for 1925 Version

Chaney's Phantom is undoubtedly the closest adaptation of Gaston Leroux's novel. Unlike later versions where the Phantom is scarred by acid (Universal's 1943 Three-Strip Technicolor "remake" & Hammer Film's 1962 treatment) transformed into a monster through a pact with dark powers (1989's Phantom with Robert Englund) or only deformed on one side of his face (Andrew Lloyd Webber's 1986 musical and 2004 movie adaptation), Chaney's Phantom was deformed at birth and presumably shunned by virtually everybody his entire life. This is the only major film version made in the author's lifetime, although he had no personal involvement in the production. Most of the novel was filmed at one time or another during filming, including Christine's trip to her father's grave and the inclusion of the Madame Valerius character.

So, in 1924, when Universal began production, they intended the picture to be its "Super Jewel" for 1925. Universal had its greatest success turning out what we would call today B-Westerns during this period, but every year it would expend significant resources for one grand picture. In 1923, that picture was The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Lon Chaney and a cast of thousands. Universal thought it would replicate the success of Hunchback with another weird picture that would showcase Lon Chaney and its production resources, so it pushed Phantom into production.

The Star - Lon Chaney as Erik, The Phantom of the Opera

Of Chaney's makeup, performance and contributions to Phantom, which includes uncredited direction and designing the several masks the Phantom uses during the film, I can add nothing to the 85-years of accolades heaped upon him. The storyboards, conceptualized by Ben Carre', have also been frequently highlighted as contributing to the atmosphere of the film. The anonymous contractors and crew of Universal which constructed and decorated the huge sets and directed the extras are often overlooked. Except for intimate areas such as Christine's dressing rooms, the set designs are all first-rate. (Why would an understudy get what looks to be a huge dressing room?). This is all especially impressive since the entire film was shot on the Universal Studios lot (called Universal City) in Hollywood. Nobody went to France to shoot exteriors or interiors of the Paris Opera House (a.k.a. the Opera Garnier).

The film's reputation as something less-than-a-masterpiece can primarily be laid at the feet of two people, original director Rupert Julian and Universal Studios President Carl Laemmle. Julian, who had great success with the 1918 "Hate the Hun" picture "The Kaiser : The Beast of Berlin", was brought in by Laemmle to save Universal and its over-budget film "The Merry-Go-Round" from director Erich von Stroheim. Stroheim had a tendency to go over-budget on his pictures, financial excesses which eventually caused Laemmle to fire him from Merry-Go-Round and replace him with Julian. Julian finished the picture and the resulting success of the film kept Universal from falling into receivership. Julian's reputation at the studio (at least with Laemmle) was at its height and "Uncle Carl" (for whom nepotism was far from a foreign idea) deemed him to be the man to bring Phantom to the screen.

A Particularly Infamous Error - Raoul seems to be handing a lantern to Ledoux, but Ledoux is about 10 feet below him!

Unfortunately, Julian capabilities as a director were at best could be described as workmanlike. Others have referred to him as a hack, and in Phantom his lack a firm grasp of cinematic technique or inspiration soon led to clashes with Lon Chaney. Chaney decided that Julian was not really worth taking direction from and pretty much did his own thing. When Julian told cameraman Charles Van Enger to tell Chaney to do something, Chaney would tell Van Enger to tell Julian "to go screw himself". Julian was a point-and-shoot type of director, content to film a scene, any scene without moving the camera, using closeups or multiple shots. He ludicrously demanded that the falling chandelier sequence should be shot entirely in the dark! Fortunately cameraman Van Enger fooled him and we can actually view the impressive effect today. To be fair, an epic like Phantom would have challenged any director, and better directors have had pictures sunk under the weight of budgets, sets, stars and hype.

Mary Philbin - Our Damsel in Distress

Reviewers of Phantom have sometimes been less than kind to Chaney's two principal co-stars, Mary Philbin as the singer Christine Daae' and Norman Kerry as her lover Vicomte Raoul de Chagny. Mary Philbin was a quiet, shy girl in real life and it has been said that her best work was with directors who knew how to get the best out of her, not the artistically-oblivious Julian. Lon Chaney was able to get a really convincing display of terror out of her by flying into an improvised rage at her, some of which may have been caught on film. However, her performance is constrained not only by the function of the heroine in the story but by the writer, editor and director. Norman Kerry has been called rather stiff and while he is no Douglas Fairbanks or Rudolph Valentino, he has been castigated as a bad actor for something that was really not his fault. In the scene where he stands outside Chrstine's door while she is talking with her "master", there is a shot of him grinning while playing with his gloves when he should be confused and jealous. Commentators at the time and since have accused Kerry of really bad acting here, but as he never shows inappropriate behavior elsewhere in surviving footage, there is little doubt that his reaction shot was an inappropriate edit.

Norman Kerry - Our Hero being punished by the editor

When Phantom wrapped principal shooting in late 1924, the Studio decided to test out its Super Jewel with preview audiences before going nationwide. So in January, 1925, Universal screened a preview version of Phantom in a Los Angeles theater (the Los Angeles Preview Version). The audience's reaction was not great for primarily two reasons. First, the picture was over three hours long, making it an ordeal for audiences to sit through. Second, in 1925 audiences were not ready for an ending where the villain seems to avoid his just desserts. The intertitles were described as unclear and were rough. Universal cut the film to eliminate scenes where the stable manager complains to the managers that a horse has gone missing, where Raoul interviews Madame Valerius, where Raoul, Christine and the Phantom meet at the graveyard at Viroflay. It also added a slightly revised ending where the Persian shoots the Phantom, but audiences were still negative.

The Original Ending - The Phantom Dies of a Broken Heart

Uncle Carl was not pleased with the reception of the film and ordered something to be done to improve the picture. So Edward Sedgwick was brought in to direct new scenes inserted awkwardly into the existing drama where Raoul strives with the Russian Count Ruboff for Christine's affections in scenes set entirely outside the Opera. This seems primarily to introduce comic relief in the persons of two new characters, Raoul's valet and Christine's maid. The Phantom's sole involvement in these new scenes is when Raoul takes Christine to a shabby restaurant and the Phantom pays an Apache to kill Raoul. The director also filmed the existing ending with the Phantom being chased by the mob led by Simon Buquet. This version premiered in San Francisco in late April, 1925 (the San Francisco World Premiere Version) The audience's reaction was still not good, and the shlocky melodramatic additions were excoriated.

Sedgwick's Addition - Count Ruboff, a rival for Christine's hand

After the San Francisco premier bombed, the film was edited to remove the Russian Count subplot and the antics with Raoul and Christine's servants but kept the new ending sequence, and this version was more or less what the rest of the world saw, beginning with the New York premiere at the Astor Theatre in September, 1925 (the New York General Release Version). It played well into 1926 before being returned to the vault and grossed over $2,000,000 during first run engagements against a final cost of ~$650,000. While it was exported overseas, due to a huge public relations blunder it was not shown in the United Kingdom during this period. By this time, the book's character of The Persian (played by Arthur Edmund Carewe) has been renamed Inspector Ledoux and Erik is no longer the Sultan's ex-torturer but an escaped convict from Devil's Island.

He knows Everything - Arthur Edmund Carewe as ~~the Persian~~ Inspector Ledoux

So what is available of this 1925 version? Unfortunately, the original 35mm negatives were lost or destroyed by Univeral by the early 1950s and no (positive) projection print has been found. During the 1930s, Universal marketed 16mm "Show-at-Home" prints of its back library catalog and the Phantom was available. The sole visual record of the 1925 version survives in these prints, and apparently multiple sources have been used to present the film as it has been made available today. These existing prints are dupes of the Show-at-Home print, not the actual Universal product itself. Each generation from the negative is usually worse than the last.. As will be described later, this source is probably not 100% true to the original 1925 version as shown in theaters (but its pretty close). The print quality is not the greatest, the image lacks clarity and detail. Edges of the frame are indistinct, scratches abound throughout and contrast is far from ideal. There is no tinting or color sequences on my DVD and it runs 107 minutes.

This scene between Christine and Raoul was deleted from the 1929 Version

Universal decided to resurrect the Phantom, one of its biggest moneymakers of the decade, when sound films were becoming big at the box office in the late-20s. In 1929, the studio decided to convert the Phantom into a part-talkie, part silent version. This would require the original actors to film new scenes with their dialogue record and synchronized to the film. But the whole film was not to be remade, so scenes from the 1925 version would be used where possible. Mary Philbin and Norman Kerry were available and recorded talking scenes, but Lon Chaney was not and Universal could not legally dub his voice in scenes where he appeared. However in the scenes where his shadow is seen talking to Christine through her mirror, he was dubbed by another actor. For the opera scenes, performances of the signers would be dubbed in. Mary Fabian was cast as Carlotta while Virginia Pearson, who played Carlotta in the 1925 version, was redesignated as Carlotta's mother in her scenes with the managers. John Sainpolis was replaced by Edward Martindale as Raoul's brother Comte Phillipe de Chagny. In both cases, sound was the deciding factor as Pearson could not sing and Sainpolis was not deemed to have a good speaking voice.

The only time the Phantom talks during the 1929 Version

The 1929 version has a synchronized sound track throughout, with the sound being stored on phonograph vinyl discs. These discs survive and give us perhaps our only idea of what these people sounded like. (Chaney can be heard in his only talking picture, 1930's The Unholy Three and Carewe can be heard in 1932's Doctor X). However, the disks do not sync with the available film elements from the 1929 version. There are about eight distinct dialogue sequences spread out among the ten disks, and four of those disks (6, 8-10) have only music and effects, no dialogue. The music score is compiled almost solely from stock music pieces and cues and plays almost throughout the picture. Sound effects can be heard, as can unscripted chatter. The scene with Florine Papillon, the ballet dancer and Joseph Buquet is dubbed as is Christine's singing voice. The Faust opera scenes have been recorded with the singers.

Universal took from alternate takes of the footage shot in 1925 to keep the need to film new sequences to a minimum. Other than the new talking scenes, the footage is almost completely from 1925. Intertitles are still used whenever there is a non-talking scene, and these seemed to be newly created for the 1929 version. The version released to theaters cut out some scenes in the original and the running time was reduced to about 93 minutes. The 1929 version was successful and was released in early 1930 domestically and overseas, including, this time, the United Kingdom. Lon Chaney would be dead by the end of the year and so was unable to star in Universal's first supernatural horror film, Dracula. So what happened to this version? The conventional wisdom used to be that a 35mm print of the 1929 version was struck for the George Eastman House in 1950, but the sound disks do not sync up to the print except in some isolated scenes. It has been proposed that the print was a silent version for movie theaters which had not converted to sound.

The Curious Man with a Lantern as he appears in the print of the 1925 Version

This apparently makes sense until one encounters the Man with a Lantern sequence at the very beginning of the print. Just after the titles a man with a lantern is shown walking in the Opera cellars and is clearly speaking, but no intertitles are shown. Apparently he provides a spoken introduction to the film. If this were a silent film, the Man with a Lantern would serve no purpose. The second proposal is that this is an International Version intended for overseas and the Man with a Lantern was inserted so theaters could advertise it as a talkie (which would have been really stretching the truth). Presumably the Man with a Lantern would be overdubbed in whatever language was necessary. I would suggest that rather than go to the trouble of producting a domestic sound, domestic silent, international sound and international silent of the 1929 version, Universal probably used virtually the same silent print for the basis for all but the domestic sound version. The Man with a Lantern could be deleted for any theater without sound equipment overseas.

I bought the Milestone 2003 "Ultimate Edition" DVD release (distributed by Image Entertainment), which is now out of print. It contains both the 1929 and 1925 versions, each on a separate DVD. This is a great DVD package with only one flaw : its1929 version suffers from horrible motion judder and ghosting/blur. The 1929 version on the disc was sourced from a Photoplay Productions 1996 restoration for Channel Four in the U.K. The resulting video master would have been in the PAL format, and this is what Milestone (a U.S. company) chose to work with. At some point, they had to convert it to NTSC for U.S. TVs. A poor conversion is one possibility for the motion issues. The other possibility is that the technology used slow down the film when the PAL (50 fields per second) master was released caused issues with the PAL-to-NTSC (59.94 fields per second) conversion technology was applied.

Otherwise the Milestone DVDs contain a wealth of ads and promotional material, two trailers, photo reconstructions of the Los Angeles Preview and San Francisco Premier versions, and has the sound disks synchronized as best as they could to the 1929 print. It also has a great commentary by Scott MacQueen and interviews with Carla Laemmle (Uncle Carl's niece who played the prima ballerina as Rebecca Laemmle) and cameraman Charles Van Enger. As far as the scores go, I do not care too much for Carl Davis' on the 1929 version, but I really appreciate Jon C. Mirsalis' on the 1925 version. The 1929 print includes the surviving color sequence for the masked ball (until the Apollo's Lyre scene), and computer colorizes the Phantom on Apollo's Lyre to recreate the original Handschiegl process and the brief sequences at the ball after the scene. Apparently, the existing 35mm print of the 1929 version had serious nitrate decomposition issues in the scene where Christine wakes up in the swan bed in the Phantom's layer. The DVD inserted 16mm footage from 1925 and tint it for those frames of the scene that are too damaged. Image released an early DVD in 1997 which is reputed to have better image quality for the 1929 feature than the Milestone DVD and contains excepts from the1925 version but is otherwise rather barebones (and a port of the 1995 laserdisc release).

Seen in the 1929 Version, but not from the 35mm print

Image has just released a Phantom Blu-ray with both the 1929 and 1925 versions. The 1929 version is shown in separate 24fps and a 20fps versions. The 1925 version is tinted, (apparently by comptuer) and has a score by Frederick Hodges. The 1929 version offers three scores, one by Gabriel Thibaudeau (also in its 1997 DVD), one by the Alloy Orchestra and most importantly in my opinion, the old organ score by Gaylord Carter. I first encountered Phantom when A&E (back when they actually showed movies and TV shows with artistic merit, not the trashy reality garbage they show today) showed it in 1988 on TV. They used a print that had been circulating from Paul Killiam since the early 1970s which contained Carter's score. The score is often moody and eerie with a dreamlike quality which fits the picture very well. It also sounds authentic since many theaters would be equipped with an organ. There are audio and menu issues with the disc and the discs which have been sold before the corrected discs are re-released may have to be sent back to be replaced. Milestone has also announced a Blu-ray release for 2012.

Many issues regarding the Phantom as it currently exists :

Cast Credits for the 1925 Version

Cast Credits for the 1929 Version

1. The opening credits of the 1925 and 1929 versions are identical for the title card, stars and director/copyright. Then they diverge, with the 1925 showing an intertitle on a draped curtain background "Produced in its entirety at Universal City, California." Next, they both show the cast/players, with the 1925 version on the draped curtain intertitle and the 1929 superimposed over the opening shot of the opera cellar. After two intertitles on the 1925 version introducing Gaston Leroux and the story, both versions show the Man with a Lantern. Nowhere in the available information for the 1925 version mentions the Man with a Lantern. Moreover the sequence in the 1925 version is very short (11 seconds) and different angles are used. By contrast, the 1929 version the Man with a Lantern is clearly talking to the audience (the sequence is 1 minute, 50 seconds long) and the phantom's shadow can be seen skulking in the background.

My suggestion is that the snippet of the Man with a Lantern sequence which is found in the 1925 prints was put there in error by some unidentified party. I also believe that the title sequence on the 1925 version may have been taken from a 1929 print, probably because the original titles were in bad shape. Otherwise, why have the cast on an intertitle card on the 1925 version and yet have them superimposed over the scene on the 1929 version? On the 1929 version, the superimposition of the cast is seamless.

2. In the 1929 version, what is the Man with a Lantern saying? Phillip J. Riley, in his excellent book on the film, volume 1 of the MagicImage Filmbooks series, says that there is a transcription of a prologue in the Library of Congress that may have served as the spoken text for this scene. He also had lip readers try to make out what the actor is saying, and one person said he could make out Gaston Leroux and another thought the actor was speaking in German. You can buy the book here : http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1882127331/ref=nosim/silenerafilmsond and I recommend it for any Phantom enthusiast.

3. In a 16mm print of the 1929 version that I was able to view, the end cast credits are identical to the ones on the 1925 version. This includes Virginia Pearson's credit as Carlotta. I doubt that Universal made that mistake. Milestone's DVD release does not contain the Man with a Lantern sequence in its presentation of the 1929 version. I assume that Photoplay edited it out for showing on Channel Four, since the sequence is worthless to the uninformed. Killiam's release with the Gaylord Carter score also has it, but when I saw it on A&E in the late 80s, the sequence was missing. (Although I was about 11 at the time, I surely would have remembered something like that and taped it and watched it several times over the years.) Image's releases do contain it, as does Milestone's presentation of the 1925 Version. However, Milestone may have edited it out because there is no soundtrack disk for that sequence. Without a soundtrack disk, the inclusion of any music from the existing disks may not be accurate.

The Phantom's handwriting improves with age

4. In the 1929 version that is available, which sequences are from the shooting in 1925 and which are from the 1929 filming? Most, if not all of the intertitles, including letters and cards were redone for 1929. All of Chaney's sequences are from 1925, as are the crowd scenes. The Technicolor scenes from the masked ball must also be original, as they were hugely expensive to film. The Man with a Lantern sequence is obviously from 1929, as is that portion of the opening credits which lists "Carlotta's Mother". The only obvious 1929 sequence is the scene with Mary Fabian as the new Carlotta. Riley and others say that the scene where Christine tells Raoul about the Phantom under Apollo's Lyre is also new, but I am unconvinced.

First, the actors do not look as if they have aged 5 years. Second, the surviving sound where they talk about the Phantom is does not come close to matching the sequence as it exists. Third, the shots with Philbin and Kerry are virtually identical to the 1925 print.

Kerry and Philbin on the Roof of the Opera - Do they just age well?

5. In the existing 1929 version, Mary Fabian's shots seem to be the only ones that are new, the shots of Raoul, Christine, the managers and the Phantom all seem to be from 1925. Assuming that Fabian's scenes are the only ones in the film proper that are from 1929 and shot at sound speed (24fps), what effect would this have had on the rest of the print as projected back in 1929 and 1930? Since a relatively small portion of the print was shot at sound speed, it would be logical to project the film at silent speeds. However, if the 1929 print was intended to be some kind of part-talkie, then it would have to be projected at sound speeds. Did projectors designed for synchronized sound have speed settings, or were they strictly 24fps? I would think they were adjustable, as not all films in 1927-29 would have been made available in sound. Which brings me to my next issue :

Mary Fabian as Carlotta, in the only sequence which must have been shot at 24 frames per second

Virginia Pearson as the Original Carlotta (and restyled as Carlotta's Mother in the 1929 Version)

6. What was the intended projection speed of the 1925 version? The standard camera speed of silent films was 16fps, but in practice the actual speed varied widely. Intended projection speeds gradually increased as the silent film era progressed, and 24fps would have been a reasonable speed for some later silent films. Phantom is not one of those films. On the other hand, a 16fps projection speed would be ridiculous. The Image Blu-ray has a version projected at 20fps, which is probably close to the original intent. Riley reports that the ideal film speed was 14 minutes per reel, which at 1,000 feet of film per reel gives us a frame rate of 19 frames per second. He also reports that due to the editing, some reels were at 1,024 feet and others at 800 feet, so there was something less than an ideal standard. 20 frame per second may not be absolutely perfect, but it is an excellent choice for 1080i, which can support a field rate on Blu-ray up to 59.94 fields per second.

The Only Survivng Color Sequence, shot in Process 2 Technicolor

7. What sequences were in color for 1925 and 1929? First, lets start with the 1925 version. All that truly survives today is the masked ball sequence. We know for sure that the Handschiegl process was used for the Phantom's cape and hat as he spies on Christine and Raoul while perched on Apollo's Lyre. The process may have also been used to color the letters in the Phantom's notes in red. The contemporary trade journal Harrison's Reports reported that the picture had 17 minutes of color film. It is known that the unmasking scene was filmed in color and black and white, and Chaney insisted on the black and white version in 1925 because the heat of the studio lights exposed the edge of his bald cap in the print. The opera and ballet scenes were shot in color and black and white, although how much color footage of this variety survived to the New York General Release Version is unknown. Establishing shots of the grand staircase also had a color version. Finally, I read that the ending chase sequence, which was added for the San Francisco World Premiere Version, was also shot in color. I doubt this because that sequence is rather undercranked and the color technology of the day was noted to have slow shutter speeds and required lots of lighting and relatively long exposure times. Certain sequences were filmed with the outdated Prizma color system, but they apparently systematically trimmed from the 1925 releases because the color looked muted compared to Technicolor sequences. The only sequence that may have been shot in Prizma and survived in the 1925 New York General Release Version are the scenes where Raoul and Phillipe appear at the opera in their military uniforms (Soldier's Night at the opera).

The Phantom's Costume Computer Colorized to Recreate the Handschiegl Process (film is tinted blue)

8. Why is the aspect ratio so thin on the 1929 version? The original aspect ratio for silent films was 1.33:1. 1.37:1 was the Academy Ratio for sound films after 1932. The 1929 version in its talkie version did not use an optical soundtrack, so no space had to be taken up on one side of the print for the track. So, in 1929 the prints being projected would have been in the ordinary 1.33:1 format. However, when the 1929 version was being duplicated for the George Eastman House, it was duplicated with machines designed for sound. Sound films of the time (circa 1948-50) had a monaural optical sound track on the left edge which reduced the size of the image, which had to be squeezed into the remaining area of the film stock. Silent pictures did not have this problem, and their frame size is larger than sound pictures from 1932 onwards shot in the Academy Ratio. If you review this discussion of Super 35mm (where the gray area in the illustration represents the optical track), you should get the idea : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35. So, when they made a duplicate print of Phantom in 1948-1950, the printing machine masked the left side of the image where the optical track should be. This is why many silent films are thinner today than they would have been back in their time. The resulting aspect ratio is anywhere from 1.15:1 to 1.20:1.

9. What about the Masked Ball? The Eastman House Print has a black and white or tinted masked ball sequence. I remember seeing the sequence tinted on the Paul Killiam release of the film (1929 version) which was done in the early 1970s. The Image and Milestone DVDs and Blu-rays will have the sequence in Technicolor. Film Archivist David Sheperd found most of the Masked Ball sequence in Technicolor in the 1970s and it has been added to later releases. Unlike the material from the George Eastman House, this was not copied on color equipment, so it should show the full 1.33:1 image.

10. Does the Original Score to the 1925 version survive? In his commentary, Scott MacQueen identifies two scores to the 1925 version, each by a different composer. He notes that each had different music cues. In 85 years no one has advertised that they were playing the original score, so preumably MacQueen was reading Universal production notes and memos describing the scores. It is wholly unknown whether any silent version from 1929 would have had a score sent with it, as the 1925 scores were far longer. Silent film scores seem to have a much lower survival rate than the films themselves. The original score found on the Kino' International's Ultimate DVD Edition of Nosferatu required many an educated guess based on the composer's notebooks. See here : http://www.gilliananderson.it/film0598.html?IDPellicola=20. I highly recommend that release, which you can find here : http://www.amazon.com/Nosferatu-Ultimate-Two-Disc-Max-Schreck/dp/B000VUQ4HW/ref=sr_1_1?s=movies-tv&ie=UTF8&qid=1320687866&sr=1-1. A reconstruction of the original scores for Phantom in the same vein may or may not be possible depending on the quantity of material which has survived that describes the score.

The beginning of the 1925 Trailer

The (possibly generic) beginning of the 1929 Trailer

11. What do the trailers tell us? A trailer survives for the 1925 version and the 1929 version. The 1929 trailer has a synchronized soundtrack on the Milestone DVD and is tinted yellow for the most part. I am uncertain whether a unique disk exists for it or whether the DVD authors took it from the disks for the 1929 talkie version. (It is not impossible that the film has an optical soundtrack.) It begins with an intro telling the audiences that they will hear as well as see the picture. Then it segues into the footage shot for the film itself, much of which comes from the 1925 version. It appears to be in 35mm and runs 1 minute, 32 seconds. The 1925 trailer seems to be missing the first few frames, including the those which give the title of the film. The 1929 version's title seems to be the same except there is no hooded man gesticulating over the Opera House. It ends with a second showing the crowds who stood in the pouring rain to see the film at the Astor Theatre. It seems to end extremely abruptly. It lasts for 2 minutes, 44 seconds, is not tinted and may be in 35mm. It may be only film footage taken of Studio President Carl Laemmle.

John Sainpolis as Philippe De Chagny - Raoul's Older, Not-Quite-Smarter Brother (but what happened to the Martindale footage?)

Virginia Pearson as Carlotta or Carlotta's Mother, depending on which version you are watching

12. What about the missing 1929 footage? Those scenes where people talk to each other are lost. This includes scenes with the managers, Madame Giry, Faust, Christine, Raoul, Phillipe and Carlotta ('s Mother). I am not aware of any 16mm prints of the 1929 version floating around which may have the footage. While there has to be some dubbing in the 1929 version, audiences would likely complain if the whole picture was overdubbed. They would complain that the actor's lip movements would not match the projected image in any way and likely feel cheated. Reviewers would certainly pan the 1929 version as cheap. All those scenes, in which the actors appear older, are presumably lost. Edward Martindale's contributions, as the actor who replaced John Sainpolis as Phillipe (except for scenes in long shot), are unknown outside his voice on a disk. It is also impossible to determine how the actors aged between 1924/25 when their original scenes were shot and 1929.

The rest of the credits, common to both versions

13. Why do the available versions have so few credits? Both versions have few credits, and the only people credited outside the cast are Julian and Laemmle. The cast of thousands is reduced to eight (1925 version) or nine (1929 version). Apparently, both the Los Angeles Preview and San Francisco Premiere Versions had much more substantial credits. Among those credited were more cast members, cameramen, writers, set designers and the like. I would not be surprised if a frame or two with this information is missing from the 1925 version that exists today. As the 1929 version was a very pared down version of the story, the credits may have been lost in the pruning.

In closing, I will leave you with stills from the iconic unmasking scene(s) :