198 - The Phantom Carriage, 1921, Sweden. Dir. Victor Sjostrom.

Monday, July 17, 2017

198 - The Phantom Carriage, 1921, Sweden.  Dir. Victor Sjostrom.

New Year's Eve.

Nearly midnight.

The first one to die will become the next year's Grim Reaper.

And he will collect all the souls for the next year.

Georges is the current Grim Reaper.  He died first last year.  He has spent the year collecting souls. While driving--

The Phantom Carriage.

Edit is dying at the Salvation Army.

David Holm is dying at the graveyard.  He and two drinking buddies are drinking.

Who will die first?

Edit asks to see David.  She knows him.  She tried to help him.  On more than one occasion.

David used to be a family man.  He had a wife named Anna and two children.  And a brother.  He had a job.  He was young and responsible.

Then he met Georges.  And Georges led him astray.  The two of them used to tear up the town.  And they were cruel to their wives and children.

David once went to jail.  Then his brother went to jail.  Then his wife Anna left him, and in searching for her he found his way to the Salvation Army.

The first time he came, Edit showed him kindness.  She prayed for him and mended his coat.  She asked him to return in one year and tell him about the blessings that he had received, for which she had prayed.

Edit did see David again, at a bar, where she found him with a man named Gustafsson, and when David and Gustafsson came to the Salvation Army meeting, Gustafsson gave his life to God.

David, no.  But his separated wife Anna was there, and at Edit's behest, she gave him another chance. He repaid her by breaking through the kitchen door with an axe.

Now it is New Year's Eve.

Edit is dying.

David is dying.

Who will die first?

Edit asks to see David Holm.  She wants to speak to him before she dies.  To tell him one more time that God loves him.  And to apologize for encouraging him and Anna to reconcile.

Gustafson works with her now.  He goes to get David.  He finds David at the graveyard with his drinking buddies.  He asks him to come to Edit.

But a fight breaks out.  And David is hit over the head with a glass bottle.

And dies.

Georges arrives.

Dressed as the Grim Reaper.

In the Phantom Carriage.

When he discovers that David will take his place, he feels awful.  He is the one who had led David into a life of sin.

Now David is dead.  Dead like him.  And will have to spend the next year collecting souls.

David resists him.

But David cannot resist The Grim Reaper.

Georges takes him.

Edit will be next.

Georges drives The Phantom Carriage to Edit.

Edit begs Georges to let her see David.  Georges will not take Edit anyway.  When she dies, it will be David's turn to take her soul.

Georges lets Edit see David.  Edit apologizes to David, even though she did nothing wrong.  David repents.

David calls upon the name of Jesus Christ.

David does not die.

David lives.

David returns to Anna.  At first she resists.  But he convinces her that he has changed.  That he is saved.  She was about to take poison.  But he has arrived just in time.

The family is saved.

The family is restored.

The family is reunited.

The Phantom Carriage is categorized as a horror movie.

But it is a ghost story.

With a moral lesson.

That preaches the Gospel.

It is one of the most influential films of the silent era.  And its impact is felt today.

Bergman himself took the character of The Grim Reaper for his world classic The Seventh Seal.

Kubrick borrowed the axe through the kitchen door for The Shining.

Sjostrom himself later acted in Bergman's film Wild Strawberries (1957), thirty-six years later.

And Sjostrom's DP Julius Jaenzon further developed his own technique of double exposure to create the eerie ghostlike effect of The Phantom Carriage.  By using quadruple exposure.

Using a hand-cranked camera in which each superimposed take had to be cranked at precisely the same rate as its predecessor to make it match.

On controlled sets in the studio, which Sjostrom had built to resemble the town of Landskrona, where Lagerlof had set the story and where she had wanted it filmed.

Making the carriage and driver appear as translucent images that move across the screen, before some objects and behind others.

In one scene the carriage moves out onto the sea.  And the Grim Reaper (Georges) goes down under water and collects a fisherman who drowned and puts him in the carriage.

In another scene David as a spirit separates from his body to talk to Georges and to try to resist him. Georges of course succeeds in taking David and putting him in the carriage.

And we should note that the novelist who wrote the novel (Korkarlen) on which this film was based, Selma Lagerlof, won the 1909 Nobel Prize for Literature.  The story's flashbacks, with their moralizing influence, are reminiscent of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

Victor Sjostrom himself played the role of David.

The success of The Phantom Carriage was so great that in 1924 Victor Sjostrom would be invited to Hollywood, where he worked for Goldwyn and MGM, and where he directed actors such as Lon Chaney and Lillian Gish.

His colleague Mauritz Stiller came with him and worked for Paramount.

And so did the actress whom Stiller discovered, Greta Gustafsson.

She made just a few films in Sweden and one in Germany.

When she came to America she changed her name.

To Greta Garbo.