Chaney’s ‘Opera’: Visually Stunning

The Silent Movie is celebrating Halloween early with “The Phantom of the Opera” (1925) Wednesday at 8 p.m.

Directed by Rupert Julian, it reportedly was much tampered with in post-production.

Its story is pared down in the extreme. The amazing thing is how little it matters, mostly because the original “Phantom,” with its potent Beauty-and-the-Beast motif, worked so well visually.

With its stunning play of light and shadow, especially in art director Ben Carre’s dramatic catacomb sets, it doesn’t matter very much what the phantom’s history really is. All that’s important is that this tormented masked man (Lon Chaney), who has a lair across the opera house’s subterranean lake, has fallen in love with Christine Daae (Mary Philbin), a member of the chorus, and promises to make her a star.

She doesn’t hesitate to reject her suitor (Norman Kerry) as part of her bargain with the phantom. His subsequent kidnapping of Christine and her inability to resist snatching off his mask come quite early in the film. Information: (213) 653-2389.