Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera comes to CT!

This is topic Lon Chaney's Phantom of the Opera comes to CT! in forum Film-Yak at Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE.

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Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 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!

Posted by Steve Kraus (Member # 476) on 03-21-2003, 01:19 PM:

How many frames per second?

Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 03-21-2003, 01:25 PM:

I believe the 16mm print is 24fps. This print was made around 1983. It is a reduction of very good 35mm. I think it was made not long after the Technicolor footage was discovered.

Posted by Mark Lensenmayer (Member # 134) on 03-21-2003, 09:40 PM:

I've seen this film a number of times, and it is excellent.

The first time was while trying to save the Ohio Theatre. They brought in an older organist named John Muri or John Muni, I don't recall which. He was terrific. He got to the climax of the picture (no, not the unmasking scene...something else), building louder and louder and then, just STOPPED. SILENCE. 3,000 people just held their breath...just an incredible moment. The character made their decision and the accompaniment started up again. I've never more strongly felt the power of simple silence.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 03-23-2003, 03:08 AM:

I've got a 16mm print of this. It has only 1 color sequence: the party.
I've always suspected that there were more. The color stuff is on Agfa stock, and has a pipe organ score on the soundtrack.

My print is sharp, but has damage in the original print. Can anybody supply all of the color sequence locations?

I ran mine last Halloween. It was projected on the white house across the street with my xenon projector. Most of the kids that were trick-or-treating had never seen film. The guy that owns the white house had a blast. He watched the entire film from a lawn chair in his yard.

It's 24fps, and has the short talking sequence at the beginning that is dubbed. Good show.

I have a feeling that we were showing the only film copy in town that night.

Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 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.

Posted by Mitchell Dvoskin (Member # 751) on 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

Posted by Manny Knowles (Member # 1171) on 03-29-2003, 03:58 AM:

My senior tech just got back from setting up the projection system for this in Naples, Florida.

He said there was a huge orchestra with live performances of some of the songs from the Andrew Lloyd Webber show. The woman was from Miami and the guy was from out-of-state. He had high praise for them (everybody).

A somewhat reduced orchestra played along with the film. They alternated with a solo organist.

Playback was at 20fps which was the original camera speed. This may not be the same "Phantom" movie -- I don't know any of them.

Tickets were in the $60 range. The event was sold out for the entire week.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 03-30-2003, 05:59 PM:

My 16mm print is the 1929 version. It has a pipe organ score by Lee Erwin on the soundtrack. I think it was done in 1973.

Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 04-01-2003, 12:14 AM:

Mitchell:

You may be right about the 1929 release as a sound-only. My friend (who owns the print being shown) had told me there were two versions, but he could have been referring to a later re-edit for 16mm, or I could have misunderstood him - I'll have to ask him for more details. The version he showed this past weekend was definitely the 1929 one, although it did not seem out of sorts as a silent presentation.

I found a bit of information here:
http://www.silentera.com/PSFL/data/P/PhantomoftheOpera1925.html

I went to the Friday night show with some friends, and attendance was very poor - I was quite surprised. I personally would have preferred seeing it with the original score, but it wasn't bad.

It was definitely an interesting experience. There were no brass or woodwind instruments - the 'orchestra' was primarily electric string instruments and percussion. Afterwards, when I was talking with Kurt Coble, I remarked that the music sounded like an avant-garde electronic soundtrack - he said "Exactly!"

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 04-01-2003, 06:52 AM:

Tim

How was the print? Color sequence?

Thanks for the info and link to the silent film site.

The only thing that I added to my print of PHANTOM is a 1940's Universal logo. It actually looks somewhat better than the feature!

Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 04-08-2003, 10:31 PM:

Bruce:

The print was in excellent condition, and very clean. I noticed only one scratch and it was only visible for a matter of seconds. The owner has a very discriminating eye when it comes to purchasing film. Of course, the show was limited by the condition of the original film, which, sadly, was not quite as good.

The Technicolor sequence was definitely in it. (That scene was in great shape.) Also, on this print, almost every scene was tinted. The owner has more than one print of the film and he chose to show this one - he told me he had never seen another one quite like it. I'm going to talk to him this weekend and I'll be sure to ask him for more details on his Phantom prints. Does anyone else here own a print of this film?

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 04-09-2003, 05:57 PM:

I'm glad it was a good show.

My print has a badly dubbed voice-over when the guy with the lantern is speaking just after the titles.

The color sequence is on Agfa stock, and begins at the masquerade ball and ends just before the heroine and her boyfriend go out on the roof. The music track on the color sequence matches the b/w footage. My print is scratch-free. The pre-print original is rough in places, and has some jumps. The focus is good throughout the film.

I saw a tinted print once many years ago. I'm glad you guys mentioned that one. I had not thought about it in years. It was a silent print. There was someone playing a piano as we viewed it. I dont think that it had the color sequence, as I seem to remember the ball scenes being RED, as in tinted.

This movie still scares first-time viewers. This makes it all worthwhile to me when I run it.

I tried to run this print at silent speed once. It just drags along then...

Posted by Ken Layton (Member # 133) on 04-09-2003, 06:10 PM:

Several years ago I ran a beautiful new 16mm print that came straight from Killiam Shows. It was strech printed to run at 24 frames and looked very good. We were the second group to rent this new print.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 04-09-2003, 10:26 PM:

Way back in the olden days, (late 1970's,) the TV station I worked for booked some titles from Paul Killiam Shows, Inc. The prints were always brand new, or near-mint. Since we never cut footage from prints, Killiam trusted us with their best prints.

We never let them down.

We never got Phantom from them, though we did run the 1940's Technicolor Phantom, and the horrible Eastman 1962 (?) Hammer Phantom.

Posted by Tom Doyle (Member # 1474) on 04-16-2003, 10:45 PM:

Mitchell - You were correct - there is only one version for the 1929 film. My friend was referring to the 1925 silent vs. 1929 talkie.

I found out quite a bit of information this past weekend when I talked to him. The print I saw had tints in every scene. (I thought there were a couple of black and white shots, but they were actually very dark blues.) I was curious to know if this was what the original looked like - he doubted it. He told me that guidelines were made on how to tint scenes, and that the lab that produced this print probably did all the coloring themselves starting from an original black and white print. (This print does _not_ have the dubbed voice-over in the beginning, just organ music.)

This print also did not originally come with the full color ball scene - he was given two brand new prints of the ball scene (I forgot to ask what stock it was) and spliced one in, replacing the old one, which was tinted red.

He mentioned that the Technicolor footage is different from the black and white footage of the Masked Ball. It appears that different cameras were used to shoot the same scene, and that the two prints show the same scenes, but with slightly different camera angles. He wasn't certain if every shot matched up between the two, but he mentioned bringing in the films sometime. Since he shows films on a screen in our theater with 2 projectors, he'd be capable of running the two clips side by side. Hopefully we'll do this sometime.

Of course, he didn't know that any Vitaphone disks existed, and when I told him that the Silent Era website indicates some do, he was very interested. Does anyone have any information on the discovery of these? Has anyone seen this film with the partial Vitaphone soundtrack?