夜半歌声 (Song at Midnight) (1937) w/ English-language subtitles

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"Song at Midnight" (夜半歌声, or "Yèbàn gēshēng") is China's first horror film, adapted (unacknowledged) from Gaston Leroux's 1910 French novel, "The Phantom of the Opera," which can be read online here (in English translation):
www.gutenberg.org/files/175/175-h/175-h.htm
or purchased here:
www.amazon.com/Phantom-Opera-Collins-Classics/dp/0007420277/

Plot (Google):
A Chinese opera troupe rents a ramshackle theatre where a singer is said to have been murdered.

Review (Weird Wild Realm):
"The night photography is consistently beautiful... great set designs add to the perfection... truly a superior & romantic horror film...." – Paghat the Ratgirl
www.weirdwildrealm.com/f-song-at-midnight.html

Gaston Leroux's "Phantom of the Opera" is not mentioned in the credits, but the source for the film's plot is obvious, even if more liberties are taken with the material than in most western adaptations. For example, here, the story is transplanted from 15th century France to 1920s China, with all the revolutionary rhetoric added to the dialog that the new setting suggests. As in all versions of the story, the "phantom" is a disfigured man with an obsessive romantic interest who secretly trains a musical protégé, but, here, instead of the protégé being the object of his affections, in this variation, they are separate characters.

"Song at Midnight" made another change which ended up becoming a huge part of Phantom lore and has been followed in most subsequent versions. Unlike the novel and the earlier film adaptation starring Lon Chaney (available for viewing here: https://youtu.be/Jgs4TQHgL4I ), the Phantom's disfigurement this time isn't a birth defect, but the result of acid being splashed in his face during an altercation over his lady love.

The English-language subtitles accompanying this video were primarily taken from two sources, one credited to Liu Yuqing as translated by Christopher Rea, and the other credited to T. L. Young. I cannot speak Mandarin myself, so I am not in a position to judge which version is the more faithful translation, but I can observe that there are disagreements between the two texts. So for this video, I selected individual lines from both sources based on how well I felt each flowed with the action onscreen, with an emphasis on minimizing the strange effect (common among translated captions) of long passages on the soundtrack being accompanied by few words in the subtitles, and vice versa. I have taken the further liberty of rewording some of the captions for the same reason. Given that, these subtitles should not be taken as strict, literal translations of the Mandarin, but approximations intended to reflect the rhythm of the original dialog as well as the meaning.

The "simplified Chinese" subtitles also accompanying this video are from a file I found online. I have not altered that text, other than adjusting the timing to better match this particular copy of the film. Speaking of which...

Per IMDb, this film ran 124 minutes on its initial release, but this print is six minutes shorter. The discrepancy might explain certain odd moments, like 1:44:20, where a character is shown being held captive, but is suddenly free without explanation 20 seconds later.

Thanks for watching, and please check out the Classic Suspense Movies and Their Remakes playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbVIgqv36Mo7rp3PCRCIpL3aBxGM7EUY3

Видео 夜半歌声 (Song at Midnight) (1937) w/ English-language subtitles канала Castle Karnstein