addiction to alcohol turned him into a spiteful, angry wretch who terrorized his wife and chil- dren. But even though David has a revelation similar to Scrooge’s in the final moments, call- ing out in prayer for forgiveness and receiving a second chance to re-enter his body, his rep- rehensible acts – including coughing in his in- fant son’s face while infected with tuberculosis and almost driving his wife to suicide – are much harsher than Scrooge’s miserly ways. While the film’s true sense of horror is meant
to come from David’s thoughtless abuse, violent acts and inability to recognize chances for re- demption, its striking death imagery is also not to be missed. The double exposure effects shots of “souls” rising from their bodies and the half- transparent carriage seeking out the dead may be old hat today, but they still work well enough, particularly a scene in which the carriage heads underwater to collect the soul of a drowning victim. In another sequence, perhaps the most effective of the entire film, David takes an axe to a door, madly glaring through the hatchet marks while his family cowers in fear – it prac- tically cries out to be compared to the similar axe attack in The Shining. As expected, the film has received the royal
Death Rides Out
THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921) Blu-ray/DVD Starring Basil Rathbone, Herbert Rudley and Lon Chaney Jr.
Directed by Reginald Le Borg Written by Gerald Drayson Adams and John C. Higgins MGM
That cover image says it all. Notably diverting from the expressionistic,
artfully achieved terror of Germany’s silent hor- ror cinema, the 1921 Swedish classic The Phantom Carriage is a sombre and restrained meditation on death that relies more on sym- bolism, iconic imagery and intimately human themes. With effective use of double exposure shots, director Victor Sjöström’s powerful and influential morality tale follows a dead man who is forced to reconsider the tragic path of his life as he spends an evening collecting souls along- side Death himself. Passing a bottle around in a cemetery on a
bleak New Year’s Eve, down-and-out drunkard David Holm (played by Sjöström) offers to tell his drinking pals a spooky tale. He recounts the ancient Scandinavian legend of the Phantom Carriage, in which the person who dies at mid- night on the last day of the year must spend the next year as a reaper of souls, visiting the freshly dead and delivering them to their final
REI SSU ES
destination. But, as David discovers when he’s killed in a fight as the clock strikes twelve that evening, his creepy tale is not just a legend. As his soul rises out of his body, he’s approached by a horse-drawn carriage driven by a hooded figure with a sickle – it’s Georges (Tore Svennberg), an old friend of David’s who died exactly one year ago. Georges invites David onto the carriage and together they take a flashback-heavy tour to visit those people that have been hurt by his actions over the years. If all this talk of
ghosts, reflection and redemption sounds a bit like Dickens’ A Christ- mas Carol, you’re not too far off. As he rides with Georges, David is forced to recon- sider the mistakes he made that led him to his current state, specifically how a crippling
treatment from Criterion, with a pristine new digital restoration, multiple scores – including an excellent experimental soundtrack by ambi- ent metal duo KTL – and footage of the once state-of-the-art Swedish studio where the film was shot. Also on the disc is an interview with the late Ingmar Bergman, who explains how he was heavily influenced by The Phantom Car- riage, particularly in The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawber- ries, even casting Sjöström in the lead role of the latter, as the old man redis- covering his past life on a trip around Swe- den. But while The Phantom Carriage may primarily live on as inspiration for Bergman’s
ac-
claimed art house classics, Sjöström’s fascinating look at death is still worth seeking out as one of Europe’s most har- rowing silent horror classics.
PAUL CORUPE
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