The phantom that birthed Hollywood monster movies: The Phantom of the Opera at 100

Most people probably associate The Phantom of the Opera with Andrew Lloyd Webber – even above and beyond Gaston Leroux’s 1910 novel, the celebrated work of gothic literature from which all subsequent versions of the story have been adapted. First previewed in the West End on 27 September 1986, Webber’s Phantom will celebrate its 40th anniversary next year and is the longest-running show in Broadway history. It provided the basis for Joel Schumacher’s 2004 film, inspired a loose sequel with Webber’s 2010 show Love Never Dies and continues to be one of the most successful musicals ever staged.

Mention The Phantom of the Opera to a cineaste, though, and Webber’s adaptation (or Schumacher’s for that matter) is unlikely to be the first that comes to mind. Those of us who love cinema are far more likely to think of the great Lon Chaney, the inimitable ‘Man of a Thousand Faces’, seated before an organ in Universal’s 1925 film, his awful visage revealed by a terrified Mary Philbin as she tears away the mask that has been hiding his true face both from her and from us. He, the phantom of the title, is deeply in love with Philbin’s opera singer Christine. Having dragged her to his lair beneath the Paris Opera House, he is visibly horrified when the mask is removed – as, no doubt, were the first audiences to see the film a hundred years ago.

Though it is not the earliest adaptation of The Phantom of the Opera (that distinction belongs to a lost German version released in 1916), Universal’s film has been the most influential. Without it, there might never have been a West End show; the musical’s development began with a screening of the 1925 film before Webber had even read Leroux’s novel. And had the film not been as successful as it was, we may never have been able to enjoy a rich lineage of further adaptations and reworkings, from Universal’s 1943 remake to Hammer’s 1962 version, Brian De Palma’s Phantom of the Paradise (1974) and Richard Friedman’s Phantom of the Mall: Eric’s Revenge (1989).

Above all, though, Phantom is significant for its importance to the development of the horror genre. It wasn’t described as ‘horror’ in the 1920s; that term didn’t come into widespread usage until the beginning of the next decade. Phantom was considered an example of ‘melodrama’ along with The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), The Man Who Laughs (1928) and any number of other films that might now be thought of as early horror. Phantom, at least, is still deserving of that melodrama label; its narrative histrionics, grandiose aesthetics and thematic concern with unrequited love are proof enough of that. But it is also a landmark early horror film, laying the groundwork for the monster movies that Universal would go on to produce in the 1930s. Its lasting importance lies in bridging the gap between the ‘melodrama’ of the silent period and the ‘horror’ of the sound era.

When Dracula and Frankenstein ushered in the age of modern horror in 1931, they did so by following a blueprint that had been established by Phantom and, to a lesser extent, the earlier Lon Chaney vehicle The Hunchback of Notre Dame. These two films had already proven the market potential of horrifying films adapted from gothic literature. Dracula, Frankenstein and several Universal horror films soon to follow, including Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), The Invisible Man (1933) and The Black Cat (1934), were adapted from well-known source material, which afforded them an air of prestige and guaranteed a built-in audience.

Phantom also cemented a popular fascination with monsters. Chaney’s Quasimodo is undoubtedly grotesque, but his phantom has created a more enduring memory. That classic moment when Chaney’s skeletal make-up is revealed – having been designed and applied by the actor himself – has become one of the defining images of silent cinema. Something akin to the modern jump scare, the sequence in which it appears is meticulously designed to frighten its viewer as Christine’s hands slowly edge closer to the phantom’s face before suddenly unveiling the horrors beneath.

Phantom also firmly established the idea that horror monsters should walk a line between monstrous and sympathetic, a key element of the Universal horror formula from Frankenstein to Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954). The phantom – or Erik, as we eventually learn is his name – is rendered monstrous in both his appearance and his actions. An abusive, obsessive stalker who believes that Christine is his to possess, he represents all that is wrong with traditional masculinity. Yet his abject loneliness also elicits sympathy. An outcast representative of a social underclass, he is both literally and figuratively depicted as ‘beneath’ the wealthy socialites who frequent the Opera House that towers above his subterranean lair.

Quite a legacy to celebrate, then, as Chaney’s trailblazing classic reaches its centenary.

The Phantom of the Opera is currently screening at various UK cinemas as part of Too Much: Melodrama on Film.

Craig Ian Mann is hosting a screening of the film with a live score by HarmonieBand at Showroom Cinema, Sheffield on 30 November