Preservation
The finest quality print of the film existing was struck from an original camera negative for George Eastman House in the early 1950s by Universal Pictures. The original 1925 version only survives in 16 mm "Show-At-Home" prints created by Universal for home movie use in the 1930s. There are several versions of these prints, but none is complete. All are from the original, domestic camera negative.
Because of the better quality of the Eastman House print, many home video releases have opted to use this as the basis of their transfers. This version has singer Mary Fabian in the role of "Carlotta". In the re-edited version, Virginia Pearson, who played "Carlotta" in the 1925 film, is credited and referred to as "Carlotta's Mother" instead. The majority of silent footage in the 1930 version is actually from a second camera, used to photograph the film for foreign markets and second negatives- careful examination of the two versions shows similar shots are slightly askew in composition. In 2009 Reelclassicdvd.com issued a special edition multi-disc DVD set which included a match-shot, side by side comparison between the two versions, editing the 1925 show-at-home print's narrative and continuity to match the Eastman House print.
For the 2003 Image Entertainment/Photoplay Productions two-disc DVD, the 1930 soundtrack has been re-edited in an attempt to fit the Eastman House print as best as possible. However, there are some problems with this attempt: There is no corresponding "man with lantern" sequence on the sound discs. While the purely silent "music and effect" reels seem to follow the discs fairly closely, the scenes with speech (which at one point constituted about 60% of the film) are generally shorter than their corresponding sequences on the discs. Also, since the sound discs were meant for a projection speed of 24 frames per second (the established speed for sound film), and the film on the DVD is presented at a slower frame rate (to reproduce natural speed), the soundtrack as edited has been altered to run slower. A sound reissue trailer included for the first time on the DVD runs at sound speed with the audio running at the correct pitch.
On November 1, 2011, Image Entertainment released a new Blu-ray Disc version of Phantom, produced by Film Preservation Associates, the film preservation company owned by David Shepard.
Read more about this topic: The Phantom Of The Opera (1925 film)
Famous quotes containing the word preservation:
“It is my hope to be able to prove that television is the greatest step forward we have yet made in the preservation of humanity. It will make of this Earth the paradise we have all envisioned, but have never seen.”
—Joseph O’Donnell. Clifford Sanforth. Professor James Houghland, Murder by Television, just before he demonstrates his new television device (1935)
“The bourgeois treasures nothing more highly than the self.... And so at the cost of intensity he achieves his own preservation and security. His harvest is a quiet mind which he prefers to being possessed by God, as he prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to that deathly inner consuming fire.”
—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“The reason why men enter into society, is the preservation of their property; and the end why they choose and authorize a legislative, is, that there may be laws made, and rules set, as guards and fences to the properties of all the members of the society: to limit the power, and moderate the dominion, of every part and member of the society.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)