'PHANTOM OF THE OPERA’

Evening Star, Issue 19268, 5 June 1926, Page 6

'PHANTOM OF THE OPERA ’

COMING SHORTLY 1 The Phantom of the Opera ’ will ho released in Dunedin shortly. With startling audacity tho Universal Studios and their directors and players suggest an absolutely thrilling and gripping story largely by shadows, gestures, glimpses, and the weirdest possible setting. Just how this result is achieved is a mystery as deep almost as the story itself, but there it is, in a form that produces a peculiarly eerie feeling. The centre-piece of tho story is a pitiably malformed creature, blessed with almost every intellectual gift, but cursed with physical ropulsiveness and hatred. In contrast with the sinister “Phantom,” who lives in cellars which extend five storeys underground beneath tho Paris Opera house, and which were prisons and torture chambers in France’s golden age, there is a reproduction of the great opera-house itself, with its brilliant throngs and its gay roysterors, and a complete performance of ‘ Faust.’ Tho “ Phantom,’’ like other monsters created by vivid imaginations, is dominated by a vengeful bitterness, directed against humanity in general. From ita_ uncanny abode it rules the gay domain above ground with unspeakable and vindictiveness. A love theme in a picture story is inevitable. Hero the “ Phantom ” falls in love with the heroine, a beautiful young opera singer, whom ho kidnaps. The hero, her real sweetheart, guided by a Persian secret service man who knew tho “ Phantom ” in the East as a master criminal, goes to tho dark cellars, is captured by the ‘Phantom,” and is subjected to hairraising experiences until rescued in the most spectacular way ever screened. This is merely a sketch of this remarkable storv.