According to specs, this 1080p, 1.33:1 was restored from archival 35mm elements by Film Preservation Associates. I choose to watch the film in its entirety at 24fps for this review, then I did a spot check on the 20fps version, which appears to have been culled from the exact same print (the 20fps version is a bit jittery, of course, but doesn’t have the 24fps version’s problems with speed-up). The first disc features the 1929 theatrical release version (78 minutes) in two “historically accurate” projection speeds – 24fps or 20fps (this is not an option on the BFI Blu-ray or the Image disc, but was on an earlier UK DVD from Park Circus). This is, I believe, the third Blu-ray release of The Phantom of the Opera, following a very similar, but now OOP version from Image Entertainment and a UK version via the British Film Institute. These ninety year-old images have the power of legend burning behind them, like a ghost story around the sepia-tone campfire. As sound, color, digital special effects, and other waves of modern filmmaking roll by, pop culture has matured to a point that the once ridiculed antiquity feels oddly contemporary. Like its silent horror contemporaries, The Phantom of the Opera’s ability to chill an audience has endured. The catacombs and stages of the central opera house are awe-inspiring works of industrial art that are then beautifully rescuplted with graphic lighting by a small army of cinematographers, including Milton Bridenbecker, Virgil Miller, and Charles Van Enger (note that they are the men credited for their work and that it’s very possible others contributed as well). Painfully cobbled together from the efforts of at least four different directors – Rupert Julian (credited), Edward Sedgwick (director of Fantômas, 1920), Ernst Laemmle, and star Lon Chaney, himself – the first and still best adaptation of Gaston Leroux’s novel remains a haunting masterpiece a solid ninety years after its initial release. The thought of centering a pre-sound era movie around something as sound-dependent as opera music may seem counterintuitive to the uninitiated, but the vivid expressionism and opulent theatricality on display in the original 1925/1929 Phantom of the Opera is enough to make you believe you can hear every note and nuance of the symphony.

Phantom of the opera cast 1920