A restored viewing of the film is better than none at all
London After Midnight, one of the most famous of all lost films, gets a surprisingly effective reconstruction in this 2002 DVD. Using extensive production photographs and apparently working from an original shooting script, the film's story is recreated much in the manner of a Kevin Brownlow documentary; the camera creates a sense of motion through pans and dissolves.
Lon Chaney truly was the man of 1000 faces. This is not a very good example of his London After Midnight makeup. You can get the general idea here, but In character, in the movie, the make-up is much more scary and sinister.
The shot selections are excellent. Working from what could easily have devolved into an endless stream of pans across posed cast shots, the restoration team instead has managed to cull a well-considered mix of wide-shots and close-ups.
The technique has been used before to restore missing scenes from movies, but in those movies I have always felt that the images served mostly as filler; I'm thinking in particular of the restored version of Capra's Lost Horizon where several restored dialogue tracks play against a montage of standard production stills.
With the "London" restoration, though the images are static, the rhythm of the editing is that of a conventional silent film. All the shots seemed to have been a logical choice of what the original director might have chosen. With a little imagination it is possible for the viewer to fill in the movement of the actors within the scene, and after awhile it might be possible to imagine watching the film itself.
Interestingly, this devoted reconstruction is in service to a movie whose cinematic qualities would probably not merit much attention were it not for two facts: First, it features one of the most interesting and iconic make-up jobs by the fabulous Lon Chaney; and, second, the fact that it is a lost film.
But being a legendary lost film is no guaranty of quality, although it is also inconceivable that a work of any quality by one of cinema's early masters should have just disappeared somehow. Imagine an early symphony by Mozart or Beethoven, and somehow, by some process, no one bothered to copy it.
All that said, however, London After Midnight, as presented in the restoration, appears to be a rather preposterous melodrama of the kind where the plot only advances by the miraculous coincidence of everyone being exactly where they need to be, and witnessing just the things they have to, at the exact right moment.
The story opens with an apparent suicide: Roger Balfour is found shot dead, with a note in hand. The police inspector called to the scene has nagging doubts, but is unable to prove a better theory. He has no choice but to rule the death a suicide. Five years later, the inspector is called to the scene again when a mysterious man and woman take up residence in the Balfour estate; the people living at the adjacent estate, who were very much involved in the Balfour case, have been witnessing many odd things, and developing evidence suggests that the new tenants not only might be vampires, they might also be involved in Roger Balfour's death.
Director Tod Browning went on to direct Bela Lugosi in his career defining role as Dracula; London After Midnight, also written by Browning from his story, The Hypnotist, borrows a great deal from the vampire lore created by Bram Stoker, and many of the visual and story elements in "London" can easily be viewed as a trial run for Dracula, including the idea that Lucille (named Lucy in Dracula) is an object of feminine purity that must be protected at all costs from the disgusting attentions of the undead vampire.
The restoration of London After Midnight is most likely of interest only to genuine film buffs; far too many of the general public are still reluctant to see a film in black and white, much less a silent film, and much less again to see a silent film restored as a montage of still images. But for film buffs and students, the reconstruction is definitely worth viewing, and at 47-minutes is just about the right length.
Never one to give up on an idea (he remade many of his own films) Browning revisited the London After Midnight story in his 1935 film Mark of the Vampire.