Der Fuhrmann des Todes

„Lord, let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped…"

"Strange...unusual..."someone may think...to begin a review on this film with a prayer, more to say, a prayer not to achieve wisdom or intellect but...maturity - something that has hardly been a theme of many top notch productions - something hardly even mentioned as a human merit in the commercial world - yet, something at the core of this film's message.

In the period of supermen and thrilling actions, viewer's eyes and perceptions are not used to such reflective dimensions. However, it appears that Victor Sjoestrom's masterpiece, based on the 1912 novel THY SOUL SHALL BEAR WITNESS by the Noble Prize winner Selma Lagerlof finds its most profound gist in that. THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE made almost 90 years ago is a milestone in Swedish cinema and a notable film that has overwhelmed eminent people of the 20th century, including Ingmar Bergman. But, I usually ask myself a question, especially before the meditative time of November, what is it that makes such films stand out as masterpieces. Is it the direction, the cinematography, special effects, narrative structure, or perhaps something less common in an ordinary discussion...?

Having watched the restored version with its newly commissioned soundtrack by KTL, I had a feeling that I was watching something unique. Of course, I had heard before how significant it was for the cinema but that did not play a decisive role in my experience. I was mesmerized whilst my own subjective viewing and found this silent pearl captivating. Yes, Sjostrom's film touched me tremendously with its innovative structure of flashbacks (although there are flashbacks within flashbacks, I did not get confused), with its powerful cinematography by Julius Jaenzon, with its flawless direction by the master of Swedish cinema who plays the lead as well. The images that are in this film are really hard to forget, hard to skip. The viewer is, as if, taken to its world, experiences what the characters get through, absorbs oneself to a great extend with what one sees in this silent masterpiece. Everything seems to be balanced and crafted so well, including the movements of the camera, the extensive use of special effects, double exposures in the visualization of the ghost characters who walk in three dimensions, the tension and the performances of the great Swedish cast of the time.

It is truly hard to skip the mesmerizing, symbolic, even ICONIC moments of the movie when the driver of the 'strict master' (Death) arrives at various spots, including the sea (intense visual experience), the room of a rich suicide, the streets as well as the graveyard where David (Victor Sjostrom) is to substitute his pal Georges (Tore Svennberg) on that memorable New Year's Eve. The visual feast finds its climax at the moment when David, having visited the dying Edit (Astrid Holm), the member of the Fralsningsarmen (Salvation Army), arrives finally at his home and sees the drama of his wife and children, the drama caused by his monster-like behavior. The visual moment worth high consideration is when David comes back to his home obscene and drunk, is closed in the kitchen by his wife who is afraid of tuberculosis infection and he brutally takes the axe and breaks through the door. The whole drama becomes visually and mentally so powerful that tears are running on the cheeks of a more delicate viewer. However, the greatest maturity of the film is its content so vividly derived from Selma Lagerlof's novel and so creatively executed in this picture...

There is everything that human heart can experience: love, disappointment, courage, sympathy, fear, bad influence, fights, suffering, loneliness, sorrow, wretchedness, despair, but finally the glory of reconciliation and tears of joy. There are truly different psychological dimensions, or more to say, mental journeys that the director, with the masterful power of the source novel, invites us to experience. There are elements of gloom, the elements of intensive mysticism; there is a redeeming power of prayer for other people (the plot of Edit) and the gist of penance. While the film seems to touch the very heart of Christianity at certain moments, it also appears to evoke thought provoking feelings about what, in fact, is the most important value in life.

The bitter experience of the leading character makes us shocked at first but...in time, indifferent to his feelings. He becomes a villain in our eyes. Although the character of Georges proves to us the consequences of bad influence, we don't see David as a victim (sort of) but as a single human being responsible for himself. We, as viewers, at certain moment, stop feeling empathy with the character but rather concentrate on other people, good people and cry with them. But, at the right moment, we seem to realize his plea to God, his fruitful tears of penance, we seem to forgive him as his wife (Hilga Borgstrom) does forgive him. The human heart appears to shout out from its depths: "Genuine redemptive tears!" What a drama! What a psychological feast! What a movie that evokes such feelings! That is the profoundity of THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE and though that aspect may be considered difficult to capture for some viewers, I think it is an absolute necessity while analyzing this film.

Although the movie has become a source of inspiration for many eminent people of cinema, I think that not all of them understood its gist in the right manner. Enthusiastically speaking, it is another silent film that proves the masterful nature of the early cinema and a film that may be seen from different angles. Nevertheless, there is also a danger that we condense its meaning to a sheer scary movie and look through the terrifying moments ignoring the rest. That would be nothing but an unforgivable conjecture. THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is a story of a joyful gift, of another chance to become mature, a redemptive chance. Masterpiece, 10/10

The best silent movie I've ever seen. It's so harrowing and perfectly describes the feelings I've had about death, life, love and especially hope. It's optimistic ending makes it even stronger. I cried when I saw this movie the first time, which was the day after my grandfather's death.

He once told me this was the first movie he ever saw, in a cinema, to which there was a 10 kilometers walk in the snow. The cinema used to be so crowded the humidity got so high the walls were completely wet. Naturally I had a lot in mind that day. It wasn't the first time I saw the movie, but the first time I experienced it's meaning completely. I've never seen any silent film like this and that it's silent actually makes it scarier.

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.

Had I known this was going to turn out as deeply awesome as it did, I would have perhaps saved it for a time of need. I'm always looking for spiritual visions that permit a journey inwards, but they are so few in the grand scheme that I'm grateful for each and every one. I try to cherish them because they let me watch from the heart. It's why I keep myself from finishing off the rest of Tarkovsky's films - I want to know that there's always a drink of fresh water at hand when I'm parching.

I came to this, like most people I presume, for its reputation as a horror film where the reaper gets out to harvest souls. I collect these as well but for different reasons, and was expecting here something more or less expressionist. As with most silents however, it's not really horror by our contemporary sense; horror in these films comes from more directly abstract notions, guilt, humiliation, spiritual damnation, and it's usually with the intent to distill a life lesson. They may seem outdated now but only because we presume to know these things and so reckon that no further guidance is necessary - while we, self-sufficient modern humans in perfect control of our destinies, continue to live our lives in random iterations.

Here death itself. The journey of the soul in the world inside the soul. Like earlier texts of this journey, Dante's Inferno or the Egyptian Book of the Dead, it is advisable, imperative even, that we read beyond the feverish vision of the beyond. That we read between the collective dream the author has dreamed up as meant to await us and contemplate on why we dreamed in the first place.

The man who dies last on New Year's Eve - at the cusp of new life, and so at the start of a new cosmic round - becomes Death's driver for the coming year, this is the premise. He ferries the vehicle - and us as passengers - where the journey inwards or across can begin. Our man contemplates the chain of events that brought him lying dead before the carriage of death.

The opening chapters in the Book of the Dead that propel the process of rebirth, and which pertain very much here, are thus named: "The chapter of making Osiris S. possess a memory in the Underworld" and next "the chapter of giving Osiris S. a heart in the Underworld".

The man remembers, he had a perfectly good life and family but blew it up like so many we know of. He goes into prison and comes out reborn again with realization of what his deeds brought him. But he has to start again, like every new life he has to build his again from nothing. Instead he drags himself through this next life in a limbo of guilt and seething hatred. It is this unswathing of the spirit across different worlds that matters, and the dissolution in each one granting passage in the next. How strong karmas resonate from one existence to the other, powering the cart. Death's driver is granting the visions after all.

There is a woman in all of this, a nurse for the Salvation Army. From her end, she is looking to hear from god. We see from both ends, her trying to save who she considers a mandate from god and on the other side the man who is wrestling personal demons. If god doesn't speak through him, then he never spoke at all. In a beautiful scene, she spends the night mending his torn soul; when he wakes up, furious at the kindness, he tears it up again for spite.

More great cinema about the karmas metaphysically weaving together the participants: having failed to mend him, the woman literally contracts his illness. And when the man violently attacks with an axe a locked door, his wife on the other side falls to die.

The man finally wakes up from death though, having prayed and thus lay himself prostrate before a higher force. This is likely a part that modern viewers will find hard to swallow. But this is the thing; it is not literal death in these texts, never was. The underworld the soul must travel through to be reborn on the other side is always inside, why it's so often called a 'descent', and so the power to make a full transit by learning again life-value through the different levels always rests with the soul. What the man learns at the moment of prayer is the humility that shatters ego. Of course he is forgiven. One of the final chapters in that ancient Egyptian text reads: "chapter of causing a man to come back upon his house on earth". Notice that the dead man is no longer symbolically referred (and so protected) by the name of the god Osiris, having passed the horrible tribulations, now the deity is embodied inside.

So god does speak after all through this man, but it speaks to her who was looking to apprehend him and so, no doubt, will hear his voice in the miracle. From our perspective seeing deeper into these lives, our perspective itself dislocated from bodies and wandering with the spirits, we know there was no god: the miraculous transformation on the visible level was only the last step in a painful, arduous process of healing the heart. It's a powerful notion, worth two or three Seals (Bergman).

So it's really only us who can mend ourselves. It's a lesson, make no mistake, but a lesson worth keeping. Simply said, it sounds trite - most anything does if the words are not right. The man was told after all, no doubt he understood in some capacity, but it meant nothing. Which is why it's important to journey from the heart.

Something to meditate upon.

It's undeniable that The Phantom Carriage's influence precedes itself. From its iconography of the grim reaper, it's Christmas Carol-esque tale of repentance, to echoes of Jack Nicholson chopping down the door in The Shining. If The Phantom Carriage is known for anything, it's for being Ingmar Bergman's source of inspiration for what his films would later muse upon. He would later recruit director and star Victor Sjostrom to lead on of his most acclaimed films Wild Strawberries. Of course, we already know how profound these concepts are nearly 100 years later and their importance is still imbedded in the film. It's fascinating to watch inventive techniques of translucence portrayed on screen too, though admittedly the prior year's Caligari is more impressive. Its real problem is undisciplined structure and its resulting poor pacing, but these are archaic issues of silent cinema that required a few years of trial and error. Nevertheless, the atmosphere is palpable, the ideas are timeless and it oozes with passion from Sjostrom, if not as nightmare worthy as the next year's Nosferatu.

8/10