you will have a queen

She looks on the screen as if you could reach out and touch her… she had a quality no-one else ever had on the screen except Garbo.” - Billy Wilder

"Expressionism is mere play.... But why not? Everything today is mere play!"

When producer Carl Laemmle first read Gaston Leroux’s classic gothic mystery, his vision of Universal’s next extravagant horror success was instantaneous—it was said that he had known instantly who would be his Phantom. Character actor Lon Chaney, by then renowned for dramatic and demanding physical transformations, was given total creative control over his make-up for the Phantom, and personally dictated that any previews of his work be withheld from the press until the film’s release. The final cut of The Phantom of the Opera premiered September 6th, 1925—and throughout its run, audience members were alleged to have screamed and even fainted at the startling moment when Christine seizes the mask of the Phantom, revealing Erik’s monstrous visage to the world. As with many films of its time, any original prints of Chaney’s iconic silent horror are long lost; because of its superior quality, an assemblage of outtakes and alternate angles is the Phantom of the Opera most familiar to audiences today. Less often seen, a fuzzy, badly damaged reconstruction is all that remains of the theatrical release which thrilled and terrified audiences a century ago.

Mary Philbin as Christine Daaé and Lon Chaney as Erik, the Phantom

Nosferatu. Does this word not sound like the midnight call of the Bird of Death? Do not utter it, or the images of life will fade - into pale shadows and ghostly dreams will rise from your heart and feed your Blood.

Vivien Leigh and Marilyn Monroe, England, 1956

“The exquisite actress, who, besides Scarlett, had illuminated Blanche du Bois and Lady Hamilton, Anna Karenina, and Shaw’s Cleopatra gazed intently at the screen, evaluating this celebrated upstart. She said nothing until they were leaving the screening room. “You know,” she began, almost in a whisper, “I didn’t think she would be that beautiful.” (“And it broke her heart to say it,” Amy Greene laments. “It broke my heart to hear it, because I heard the tears deep inside.”)

Oh, come, Dr. Muller, surely a few thousands years in the earth would take the mumbo-jumbo off any old curse.

THE MUMMY (1932) dir. Karl Freund