Product Details

Product Description

THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA (3-Disc Dual Format Edition)

A film by Rupert Julian

BFI Video proudly present this definitive three-disc Dual Format Edition of this celebrated classic of the silent era and horror cinema

Lon Chaney, 'the man of a thousand faces', gives his most famous performance in this first version of the oft-filmed tale. Based on Gaston Leroux's novel, Chaney stars as the Phantom , who lives in the catacombs beneath the Paris Opera, and falls in love with the voice of a young opera singer. Infatuated, he kidnaps her, dragging her to the depths below where she will sing only for him.

Directed by Rupert Julian, this lavish 1925 production launched the Hollywood Gothic style which would become the trademark of Universal horror films.

Original prints of the film were fully tinted, with some sequences in Technicolor, and a rooftop scene using a special process that enabled the Phantom s cloak to show red against the blue night sky. This Photoplay restoration replicates all these effects, and is accompanied by Carl Davis celebrated score that draws heavily on Gounod's Faust, which is the opera being performed in the film.

Special Features

• Presented in both High Definition and Standard Definition
• Newly restored presentation of the tinted and toned 1929 version, with Carl Davis score
• High Definition presentation of the 1925 version, with newly-commissioned piano accompaniment
• Original trailers from the 1925 and 1929 versions
• The Man with the Lantern sequence
• Sequences from the sound version
• Lon Chaney: A Thousand Faces (2000, Kevin Brownlow, 86 mins, DVD only): Kevin Brownlow's definitive documentary
• Fully illustrated booklet with essays, films notes and credits