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This topic comprises 2 pages: 1 2
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Topic: Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera comes to CT!
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Tom Doyle
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 176
From: Bristol, CT, USA
Registered: Nov 2002
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posted 03-21-2003 12:59 PM
The Phantom of the Opera is coming to Connecticut for one weekend only: Friday March 28, Saturday March 29, and Sunday March 30 at the University of Bridgeport.
This film presentation will feature original music composed especially for this event. The score will be played by the "Partially Artificial Musicians (PAM) Band", a robotic orchestra created and programmed by Kurt Coble, a faculty member of the Robotic Music Laboratory at the university.
Tickets are $5 each. Showtimes are Friday March 28 at 8pm, Saturday March 29 at 2pm and 8pm, and Sunday March 30 at 2pm and 8pm. For more information and driving directions, go to: www.pamband.com
For all you film buffs, I should let you know that this is a 16mm print. However, it is on LPP stock and is in _excellent_ condition. This is actually the silent 1929 re-release version of the movie. It has tinted scenes throughout and includes the rare Technicolor footage. This is a classic silent horror movie - it does not get much better than this!
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Tom Doyle
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 176
From: Bristol, CT, USA
Registered: Nov 2002
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posted 03-28-2003 12:47 PM
I believe the Masked Ball scene is the only Technicolor footage filmed for this movie. It was still an experimental process at the time. This was a pretty lucky find - Universal did not even save any of their negatives of that era, so there are no perfect prints in existance. The 16mm prints show the flaws from the 35mm print they were made from. So, all things considered, the existing film is in pretty good condition.
When the film was re-released in 1929, they did it as a silent film and also as a 'talkie'. It sounds like you may have the 'talkie' version? (I don't know about yours, but this print of the silent version has a soundtrack slapped on it consisting of organ music that isn't very good.)
Of course, for this weekend's showing, the music is an original score by Kurt Coble. He is the lead violinist for the current broadway production of The Phantom of the Opera, so the music should be quite good.
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Mitchell Dvoskin
Phenomenal Film Handler
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Posts: 1869
From: West Milford, NJ, USA
Registered: Jan 2001
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posted 03-28-2003 01:38 PM
It is my understanding that the 1929 release of Phantom Of The Opera was a sound only release. It was made by recutting the 1925 silent version, along with filming some extra sequences. The sound from the 1929 version no longer exists along with the any of the original 35mm elements from the 1925 version (although 16mm prints of it survived). The 1929 version was the only version that was distributed for years (both 35mm and 16mm), as a silent movie, but do to the recutting, it does not work correctly as a silent. For example, the opening scene of the 1929 version of the film, someone is standing in the sewers of Paris with a lantern. This scene seems to go on much to long without anything happening, because it was intended to have narration over it. Other scenes were add/cut and re-ordered. There was a laserdisc and subsequent DVD release that had both version of the film on it. It was interesting to see how the film was changed when you watch them back to back. As a silent, the 1925 version is far superior.
The production itself was plagued from the start. There were casting, director, producer changes throughout. The original shooting screenplay had extensive amounts of comedy sequences that were later cut. The only thing that survives of the comedy is the stage hand who keeps seeing the phantom, but nobody believes him. Finished in 1923, the film sat on the shelf for 2 years before Universal got around to releasing it.
Universal built a full scale reproduction of the auditorium of the Paris opera house on a sound stage, which as of a few years ago (and may still) was still standing. Many other Universal film used the set, including the Jimmy Stewart version of The Man Who Knew Too Much.
/Mitchell
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