The Phantom Carriage

1921 DramaFantasy 106 minutes Directed by Victor Sjöström

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About The Phantom Carriage

On New Year's Eve, David Holm dies in a graveyard fight. The last person to die before midnight must drive Death's carriage for a year. The ghost of his friend Georges, who has been the driver, takes him through what he did to his wife and children, and to Sister Edit, who is dying after he laughed at her. He is sent back. Victor Sjöström plays Holm. The Swedish title is Körkarlen.

Cast & crew

More about The Phantom Carriage

Sjöström directed and adapted Selma Lagerlöf's 1912 novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! Charles Magnusson produced. Julius Jaenzon photographed. Released in Scandinavia on January 1, 1921. Listed at 106 minutes. Metro Pictures put it out in the United States in 1922 as The Stroke of Midnight. In Britain it used the novel's title. Hilda Borgström plays the wife. Tore Svennberg plays Georges. Astrid Holm plays Edit. A copy is on the Internet Archive as PhantomCarraige.

Themes

  • The last death of the year
  • A drunk shown his own wreckage
  • A sister who will not give him up
  • David Holm
  • Death's carriage
  • New Year's Eve
  • Sister Edit
  • Sjöström
  • Körkarlen

Look

Julius Jaenzon shot the double exposures of the carriage and the dead.

Technique

Double exposure puts the carriage and its driver into the same rooms as the living.

Preservation

A print survives.

Notes

  • The carriage and the ghosts are double exposures.
  • The story is told in flashbacks inside flashbacks.
  • Sjöström plays the drunk, not only the director.
  • Ingmar Bergman later named the film as a model for his own work.

Scenes

  • Georges hands Holm the reins of the carriage.
  • Holm is walked back through the night he ruined his family.

Influenced by

  • Selma Lagerlöf's Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! (1912)

Also available

  • Internet Archive (PhantomCarraige)

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