Avanti! will accompany the Canadian conductor, one of the top conductors in the film world, in the main screening of the Midnight Sun Film Festival in Sodankylä (14.-18.6.2017) on Friday 16 June (at 20:15). Gabriel Thibaudeaun under the direction of the fine music composed by by Rupert Julian for the film The Phantom of the Grand Opera (1925). Thousand faces Lon Chaney in the most famous of all classic melodrama film adaptations. The soprano solo, a special feature of the orchestration, is sung by Reetta Haavisto. Buy tickets for 25 € via this page.
This is one of the most beloved and iconic classics of silent cinema, where love turns to revenge and murderous hatred, and the real “beast” may well be the attitudes and prejudices of the dominant community. It is the mob that beats up the poor ghost and throws him into the river. The lynching mentality is the fate of the romantic, and some echoes of this may also have lived on in Lang’s M – The City Seeks a Murderer (1931), when Lorre, guilty of more serious crimes, was sentenced to death.
A thousand-faced virtuoso and specialist in horror roles, Lon Chaney (1883-1930) is startling in the most famous of classic horror-melodrama film adaptations as a maniacal, obsessive, faceless composer. Like the best monsters, Chaney’s unforgettable creation is also tragic, sensitive and moving, evoking pity as much as fear. What is ingenious, especially in the early part of the film, is the very sparing, almost foreplay-like teasing use of this, where the tension of the character’s entrance and the unmasking is played out at length. In a way, Chaney’s intensity already anticipates Brando’s electricity and every gesture, moment and scene in which he is present is pure magic.
Besides, the Paris Opera House is in itself the perfect setting for the film, with the Lumière brothers playing the whole thing in the neighbouring quarter in 1895 and everyone from Bogart to Hemingway and Rita Hayworth to James Bond sitting in Harry’s New York Bar next door.
Director Rupert Julian (1879-1943) was born in an exotic place like New Zealand and emigrated to the United States in 1911. His cinematic vision is at its strongest here, and the vertical dimension of the construction is particularly noteworthy, with the viewer sometimes high above the rooftops and the ghost seen sitting at the top of a tower, then descending into the labyrinths of the basement and the whirlpools of the underground river flowing beneath the opera house – and the only real difference between the two “Heaven and Hell” is the intervening field of dreams, the stage, where the freak composer has no official access, of course.
Julian’s bloody creation is so emotional that, despite its black and white, it conveys many other colours: red death, blue love and black current. The organ sounds its dirge and theatrical reels mingle with real-life masquerades in this moonlit tale in which – like in King Kong (1933) – the beauty finally slays the monster.
Text: Lauri Timonen
DIRECTOR: Rupert Julian
COUNTRY: USA/U.S.A.
YEAR: 1925
TIME: 1.35
LANGUAGES: en
SUBTITLE: The Phantom of the Opera
CATEGORY: Music, Silent movies with orchestra
