Phantom Of The Opera & The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
The State Theatre is proud to present the Silent Film Series feature presentations. Many of Silent Films from over a century ago are exceptionally well preserved, showing a quality beyond what many people think. Our staff works diligently to find the best quality feature length silent films for your consideration. Classic Silent Films, such as The Cameraman, Nosferatu, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari have continued to entertain and inspire generations of new filmmakers and audiences.
Join us at The State Theatre for a double feature of silent film horror. The State Theatre Silent Film Series presents The Phantom of the Opera, starring the man of a thousand faces Lon Chaney, and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, starring Conrad Veidt as the somnambulist Cesare. From the grand opera house in France to the shadowy corners of a German city, these two films have set the standard for the horror genre for years to come.
THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI
Robert Wiene’s inventive, chilling and entertaining film forever altered modern storytelling, solidifying expressionism, psychological storytelling and the horror film as powerful forces even today.
The film follows a mad scientist (Werner Krauss) who has hypnotized a servant (Conrad Veidt), and when a man is murdered, the whodunnit begins to unfold. Filled with strange and discomfiting angles and shapes, the film unfolds in an atmosphere of paranoia, and it is as powerful after 100 years as it was for its original viewers.
THE PHANTOM OF THE OPERA
In 1908, Gaston Leroux wrote about a disfigured man who terrorizes the Paris Opera House and falls in love with the young leading lady. Leroux was known for his cutting-edge horror stories, but if he were alive today, he would probably be amazed at all of the various adaptations of his Phantom of the Opera. His story has been made into six films, and two musicals: one by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and the other by Arthur Kopit and Maury Yeston. Leroux was impressed by the first film version, produced by Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal Pictures, in 1925, but didn’t live long enough to see any other incarnations.
The 1925 film stars Lon Chaney in the title role, with Mary Philbin, Norman Kerry, Arthur Edmund Carewe, and Gibson Gowland. Well-known reviewer Roger Ebert stated that “Phantom has “two elements of genius: It creates beneath the opera one of the most grotesque places in the cinema, and Chaney’s performance transforms an absurd character into a haunting one.”
This Phantom of the Opera opened two years before The Jazz Singer, in which Al Jolson spoke and sang on screen.
