![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The fantastic parts, on the other hand, are impressive because of cinematographer Julius Jaenzon’s masterful handling of the trick photography.ĭouble exposure, also referred to as “spirit photography” because it involves superimposition of images, so that one of them looks “ghostly,” had already been used in cinema before 1921 (it was pioneered by George Albert Smith as early as in 1898’s ‘The Corsican Brothers’), but never to quite such an extent, or with similar skillfulness, as in ‘The Phantom Carriage’. The realistic parts of the movie - that is, the scenes that precede David Holm’s death as well as the past events revealed via flashbacks - are compelling because of Victor Sjöström’s directorial talent for creating passages that are not overly exaggerated for effect (for the standards of the silent cinema, at least), but aim to imitate life.Īlso, David Sjöström’s convincingly menacing role gives the movie an edge and an aura of authenticity. We see how monstrous he was towards his wife, how careless he was about his children and how ungrateful towards a beautiful nurse who tried to help him on a number of occasions.Īmong the flashbacks are also interwoven pieces of information on the present state of David Holm’s wife (who is now suicidal) and the kind-hearted nurse (who is now on her deathbed), which constitutes a very complex and demanding structure for the early 1920s, but also mirrors the state of mind of a person who desperately tries to put his or her whole life in order just when it is announced to be over. The dead Carriage driver refuses to help him, and David Holm panics, as fragments of his past deeds come back to haunt him in chaotic flashbacks. Suddenly, as he sees his own lifeless body lying on the ground, David Holm decides that he wants to live again, and promises that this time he will live a decent life, and will try and make amends for all the things he did wrong. ![]() His attitude changes only after he has to deal with the irony of fate himself: not long after having told the grim anecdote, the man is accidentally killed - at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, no less - and his dead friend promptly approaches him and offers him the reins of the Phantom Carriage. His friend, he says, used to believe that whoever dies at the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, will be cursed to drive “the Phantom Carriage” and collect the souls of the dead throughout the following twelve months as bad luck would have it, the superstitious man passed away the previous year, exactly at the dreaded hour.ĭavid Holm does not think there is any truth to the legend of the Carriage, but he savours the cruel irony of the situation. Victor Sjöström himself plays unlikable drunkard David Holm, who treats his two drunkard friends to a ghastly story. Victor Sjöström’s ‘The Phantom Carriage’, an atmospheric depiction of the Grim Reaper’s burden, is certainly one of these. Next to these early works that have been a long time ago recognized as groundbreaking and influential, there are still some very important but underappreciated titles. Caligari’ and 1922’s ‘Nosferatu’) and yet others argue that no movie before 1931’s ‘Dracula’ can really be labelled a genuine horror movie.Īll the aforementioned films were, however, highly inspiring for the future directors, and helped shape the genre as we know it today. Some film historians like to look for it near the end of the nineteenth-century, in the early works of Georges Méliès (whose 1896 shorts’ ‘Une Nuit Terrible and Le Manoir du Diable’ showed, respectively, a man being attacked by a giant spider, and a bat metamorphosing into Mephistopheles) some are quite certain that it was Stellan Rye and Paul Wegener’s ‘The Student of Prague’ (1913) that brought all the necessary elements together others claim that proper horrors were not brought to the screen until after World War I, when they were disguised as masterpieces of German Expressionism (for example, 1920’s ‘The Cabinet of Dr. ![]()
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