"The Phantom of the Opera" (1911)

[monk222]

Lon Chaney in The Phantom of the Opera (1925, dir. Rupert Julian) (via)

“Poor, unhappy Erik! Shall we pity him? Shall we curse him? He asked only to be ‘some one,’ like everybody else. But he was too ugly! And he had to hide his genius or use it to play tricks with, when, with an ordinary face, he would have been one of the most distinguished of mankind! He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and, in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar. Ah, yes, we must need pity the Opera ghost…”

-- Gaston Leroux, The Phantom of the Opera (1911)