Published via Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

Selma Lagerlöf is the greatest name of 20th Century Swedish literature. Its reputation stems not only from quality and influence of her work or the fact that she was the first woman to get Nobel Prize for Literature. Her works also served as basis for some of the early classics of Swedish cinema. One of those was 1912 novel Körkarlen (“Coachman”, published in English-speaking countries as Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!). It was first adapted as eponymous 1921 silent fantasy drama directed by Victor Sjöstrom (also known under its English language title The Phantom Carriage), recognised as one of the most memorable and influential films of its time.

The plot begins on New Years Eve in unnamed Swedish city. Edit (played by Astrid Holm) is Salvation Army sister who is dying of consumption and on her deathbed she requests to see David Holm (played by Sjöstrom), a man who had met one year earlier and tried to help mend his ways. Holm, a vagabond and drunk, doesn’t want to do it and instead prefers drinking and entertaining other street bums at the graveyard with morbid tale which he heard from his educated friend Georges (played by Tore Svennberg). According to the story, anyone who dies the last before New Years Eve is condemned to spend first year of afterlife by driving Death’s coach and collecting souls of dead people. Georges has died on the last New Year’s Eve and David realises that the story was true when Georges actually comes not only to collect him but to pass his grim duty. As he pleads with Georges to spare him from such fate, David is reminded how he became a drunk. He used to be loving husband to his wife Anna (played by Hilda Borgström) and father to his two children before Georges led him to life of drinking, which made Anna leave him. David became embittered man, bent on revenge and he even became responsible for Edith’s fatal infection.

Critics and film scholars are at odds where to put The Phantom Carriage in terms of a single genre. It could be described as fantasy film, as horror, as social drama trying to depict sorry state of lower classes in Sweden, but, most importantly, as morality tale that promotes both Christian values and importance of hygiene, an issue that in times before antibiotics, due to seemingly unstoppable infectious diseases like tuberculosis, meant difference between life and death. All that is covered well by Victor Sjöstrom, actor and director who became one of the most talented and successful authors of early Swedish cinema. Sjöstrom has remained faithful not only to Lagerlöf, but also knew how to find other films to build on. In this particular case it was Griffith’s Broken Blossom, most notably through portrayal of Donald Crisp’s villainous, violent man that, mostly through faults of his character, destroys innocent lives around him. Sjöstrom builds on it using flashbacks within flashbacks – narrative technique that was quite novelty at the time – in order to show how David Holm used to be good man before his own frailty and circumstances conspired to transform him into wretched monster. Sjöstrom plays character well, just as he handles the rest of the cast, managing to overcome limitations of silent film medium and mostly avoid overacting. Sjöstrom also employs rather primitive but effective special effects to make Georges and his coach look ghostly and flawlessly interact with he world of the living. He also finds good sense of rhythm and unlike some other silent dramas of its type, The Phantom Carriage isn’t too long and could be easier to digest for modern audience, despite few overly melodramatic missteps in characterisation and plot.

The Phantom Carriage was originally released on New Year’s Day 1921, and soon afterwards became big hit not only in Scandinavia, but also internationally. Sjöstrom’s talent was recognised by Hollywood, including Charles Chaplin who praised his work, and Sjöstrom later continued his career in America. The film would prove to be quite influential for many future film makers, including Stanley Kubrick who gave it homage in The Shining. But the film maker most influenced by The Phantom Carriage was Ingmar Bergman. The Seventh Seal, one of his best known films, was clearly inspired by Sjöstrom’s work and elderly director himself appeared in Bergman’s The Wild Strawberries. In 2000 Bergman directed The Image Makers, television play depicting the creation of this film. Lagerlöf’s novel was afterwards adapted twice – in 1939 France under direction of Julien Duvivier and in 1958 Sweden under direction of Arne Mattson.

RATING: 7/10 (+++)