The Phantom Carriage (1922)

The Worst Film Ever

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

It's simply great fun, a winsome film and an occasionally over-the-top luxury fantasy that never flags.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

The premise of this movie is intriguing, and based on an old Swedish legend which said that the last sinner to die on New Year's Eve would have to spend the next year driving Death's carriage picking up the souls of people who die. From the beginning we're pulled in to this story by both its special effects and its storytelling. The scenes with the phantom carriage wheeling around, including one over the water to retrieve a drowned soldier, as well as those with a transparent Tore Svennberg and his ominous cloak and scythe, are fantastic. Director Victor Sjöström's use of flashbacks was ahead of its time, and he gradually reveals everything behind a young Salvation Army worker's request to see a man before she dies.Sjöström also plays that main character, and gives us a great performance in depravity. Among other things, he scorns help from charitable women in the Salvation Army by ripping up repairs to his jacket one spent all night mending, openly tries to pass along his disease (consumption) to others, and after tracking down his wife and small children, hacks down a door with an axe to get at them. It's pretty dark stuff. As he faces an avalanche of guilt over the consequences of his actions and his own impending fate, can he be redeemed? It's a weighty question that would later absorb Ingmar Bergman, who idolized Sjöström, and the link between the two provides additional interest. Aside from the influence the film had on Bergman, 36 years later Sjöström would play the main character in 'Wild Strawberries'. It's also notable that 'The Phantom Carriage' was one of Stanley Kubrick's favorites from the silent era, and that he, too, was influenced when he put together Jack Nicholson's axe scene from 'The Shining'.As with many of the films from this time period, it drags in places to modern eyes, as interchanges between characters via intertitles and elongated facial expressions sometimes get a little tedious. It's also ultimately a morality tale, which may put some viewers off – and yet, I found the devotion and faith of the Salvation Army sister, as well as the prayer to 'mature one's soul' before dying to be uplifting. We see the dual nature of man in the film, good and evil, and it's put into the larger context of our mortality. It's fantastical, and yet we realize that someday death will come for us all, and whether we believe in an afterlife or not, we hope that we've done good things for others in the world. Well worth watching.

For being a silent movie, this is among the best I've ever seen. The version I watched didn't even have background music, but even in complete silence it made a memorable impact. It's emotionally strong, the acting is honest and natural and the pacing is quick, which altogether made a modern impression on me. The best thing about the film is Victor Sjöström the actor. He is a very sympathetic lead. He held my attention at all times and makes a genuine and varied portrayal. Perhaps the greatest thing about his acting it that he doesn't much look like an actor?One funny thing worth mentioning: not only does the film have themes in common with The Shining, as has been pointed out before, but it also has a lot of similarities with Citizen Kane, quite coincidentally: a master actor-director in a film considered a landmark in visual effects and cinematic narrative.

"The Phantom Carriage" (known as "Körkarlen," or "The Wagoner" in Sweden) opens with a young woman dying in a convent on New Year's Eve in remote Sweden. Meanwhile, David Holm, the man she repeatedly asks to be sent to her bedside, is getting drunk in a cemetery; he dies that evening, and is plunged into an odyssey in which he is taken by a phantom carriage. The carriage is driven by his former friend, who was, in accordance with folkore, forced to drive the grim reaper's carriage for the entire year due to having been the last person on earth to die before the dawn of the new year.Though lauded by most all who have seen it, "The Phantom Carriage" is surprisingly less-known than one may think it would be, especially considering it was the film that influenced Ingmar Bergman to become a filmmaker. In Sweden, it is deservedly heralded as a national classic. It is a seasonal film in that it takes place on the New Year's Eve holiday, a pivotal theme for the film. In many ways, it operates as something of a macabre relative to Charles Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," possessing similar levels of rumination on death, despair, and the human condition. It is a considerably darker story, however, and has more in common with the horror and fantasy genres than "A Christmas Carol."A great deal of the praise for the film has centered on its cinematography, which is absolutely deserved. It's beautifully photographed, from the sepia-toned interior scenes to the icy blue outdoor sequences; the chilly Swedish countryside is captured hauntingly, and the shifting colors indicating the multiple time frames is effective. The special effects, though simplistic, have also been a major point of interest, as it is one of the earliest films to feature such sophisticated use of double-exposure that is still impressive and visually compelling to this day. Visual elements aside, the film is also just narratively sophisticated, and weaves an intricate and thematically rich plot in spite of its silent format.Overall, "The Phantom Carriage" is one of silent cinema's greats. It's visually stunning and loaded with compelling and haunting images, but it's also sophisticated merely in terms of storytelling. A great, somewhat more sinister pairing with "A Christmas Carol," fitting for a cold night in late December. 10/10.

Swedish films and Scandinavian films in general, are known for stark landscapes and slow pacing. With the development of cinema and the technological and narrative development of film itself, Swedish films distinguished itself from the very beginning, which could be well illustrated from the film of Victor Sjöström.First shown in 1896 in Malmö, films came into Sweden's society. It was during the 1930s that going to the movies became a common form of popular entertainment, a circumstance that is reflected in production statistics: in 1929 only six Swedish films premiered, whereas by 1939 the number has grown to thirty-one. (Wright, 1998 pp1-2) When Svenska Biografteatern moved from Kristianstad to Lidingö in 1911, which had two star directors: Victor Sjöström and Mauritz Stiller, Swedish filmmaking rose to international prominence. But an early debate soon spread.On Nov.13th 1913, Victor Sjöström's famous film—Ingeborg Holm was shown in Stockholm, which had provoked a furious debate in the press. The headline in Stockholm daily Dagens Nyheter read 'poor relief under attack at the movies'. Meanwhile, a poor relief inspector penned an angry article in Stockholm Dagblad entitled 'unwholesome cinematography'. On the other side, a defensive rebuttal stressed the intention of Ingeborg Holm to depict conditions in rural areas, as opposed to Stockholm, while maintaining that the film industry had a responsibility to promote social progress. (Florin, 2003, pp 61) The debate actually spawned 1918 amendments to Sweden's poor relief law. On the one hand, we do see an early illustration of the impact that film can have on the world around it; on the other hand, the government agency for film censorship did play an indefensible role at that time.Despite of the debate, and while being labeled as one of the pre-classic film, Ingeborg Holm is a shining example of staging in depth. According to Barry Salt, this film has a dramatic depth and power resulting almost entirely from the handling of narrative and acting that is superior to anything. (Olsson, 1994, pp 117) For example, the staging of Sven's death very consciously utilizes the two planes of depth in the take. While Sven dies in the foreground, the rest of family is involved with other things in the room beyond, unaware of what has happened. When Ingeborg comes to the bed, we can confirm the reflection of her. This is quite fit to the definition of narration by Bordwell, which is the process whereby the film's syuzhet and style interact in the course of cueing and channeling the spectator's construction of fabula. (Bordwell, 1985, pp 53) The success of Victor Sjöström can't be a single phenomenon. At that time, the film industry developed quickly in Sweden. Svenska Biografteatern, as one of the oldest Swedish film company, was founded in 1907. After moving to Lidingö, it had a considerably large studio (20*7 meters). Meanwhile, they used the distribution network of Pathe Freres. And the First World War happened to be convenient to Svenska Bio. The war caused a scarcity of film in the countries involved and the Swedes were also favored politically by the fact that their competitor Denmark's previously popular films were rejected by the allies due to its close connection with Germany. (Soila, 1998, pp 150) Sjöström's film Terje Vigen succeeded in that period, which is not only a major artistic triumph for Svenska Biografteatern and everyone who contributed to its making, but it is likely to lend Swedish industry an illustrious international reputation.(Florin, 2003, pp 64) And in Gothenburg, Hasselbald, as the biggest competitor to Svenska Bio in Sweden at that time, with other film companies, formed the new Filmindustri Inc Skandia in 1918, which introduced a number of new directors who were to remain in the industry for many years. In 1921, after petition for bankruptcy, the large amounts of Skandinavisk's assets also went Svensk Filmindustri.In 1921, Victor Sjöström's film The phantom Carriage was shown. Not only did it turn out to be the golden age's most sophisticated production, but it boasted of a plot that flung wide the doors to timeless and legend. (Florin, 2003 pp 74) A lot of methods have been used in this film to give it narrative richness, like the camera-work, the use of flashbacks and the ability to reproduce the mood of the Selma Lagerlöf tale. Especially, the double exposures in the film are still stunning by virtue of their effectiveness and brilliant execution.The technical perfection in the film like creating a feeling of dizziness, literally forging a connection between the world of here and now and an unknown, mysterious realm the dissolves work as analogy, are all due to the long period of post-production. The phantom carriage allowed the ghost characters to walk around in three dimensions, being able to first be covered by an object in the foreground, but when in the same take walking up in front of the object; it would be seen through the ghost's semi-transparent body. According to the Swedish Film Institute, one difficulty in the film was that cameras were hand-waved, meaning that the camera had to be waved with exactly the same speed in the different layers for the end result to appear natural.If the dissolves represent the most compact visual tokens of transformation in the film, that is also its most recurrent theme. At the beginning he appears to be evil. In the following sequences, we see him as dead and then as a spirit, revealing that he had once been a good person. Resurrected, he recovers his original virtue. a chronological recapitulation of those events at the level of plot would go as follows exemplary husband and father, boozer, corpse spirit, resurrected and again righteous.The phantom carriage has such a influence that latter, Ingmar Bergman said he watch it once a year. The great influence of a masterpiece, that may be the real reason for people always feel nostalgic to the era labeled as GOLDEN.