Antonius Block 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.

Hitchcockyan Experiencing THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE in the wee hours of new year's morning was as haunting as advertised. The film is nothing if not a technical accomplishment in visual storytelling and uses everything from translucent super-impositions, multiple-exposures, colour-tinted photography to create some stunningly unsettling imagery. The relatively straight-forward supernatural account is told through a complex series of meandering flashbacks and eventually works like morality tale much like Dickens' A Christmas Carol. My viewing pleasure was further elevated by the spectacularly moody experimental score by KTL - creepy, uninhibited, atmospheric that brilliantly complements the eerie visuals. Matti Bye's orchestral score is more conventionally buoyant and might get a tad overbearing at times.Going in I was aware of Bergman's reverence for TPC and the impact it had on some of his more famous works particularly THE SEVENTH SEAL and WILD STRAWBERRIES but had absolutely no clue that it also served as the inspiration for the famous "Here's Johnny" sequence in THE SHINING! THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is one of the best advertisements of early, inventive bag-of-tricks film- making and necessary recounting of one of the most important life lessons - Not getting killed on New Year's Eve ;)

classicsoncall All film lovers are aware of the genius of Chaplin and Keaton, but after just one viewing of Victor Sjostrom's "The Phantom Carriage", one will be tempted to include him in the pantheon of silent movie greats along with those better known artists. Not only did Sjostrom direct this film, but is credited as a writer and appeared as the principal character, David Holm. Nominally considered a horror film, I'd prefer to think of this story as a dark morality tale, evocative in many ways of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol", though with a decidedly more sinister bent.What's particularly striking about the film are the visual images created by Sjostrom's extensive use of double exposure to produce other worldly effects such as spirits rising from the recently deceased, or the ghostly image of the phantom carriage itself making it's appointed rounds. The story is told in five parts, although that didn't seem to be necessary as it flowed quite logically with the director's effective use of expository flashback scenes.As strong and unrelenting as the story is, I can't help but feel that it would have made an even more significant impact if in the finale, Sjostrom had allowed Holm's wife to follow through in her determination to leave her misery behind, the result of Holm's neglect and insufferable manner. Had Holm been allowed to 'remain dead', the eternal suffering he would have had to experience would have created one of the most powerful film endings in the history of cinema. As it is, it seemed Sjostrom took the more convenient and 'acceptable' way out for his character, and for movie goers who were still getting used to this new medium.Even so, this is a genuine film masterpiece, proving that even the earliest pioneers in the medium had important things to say and creative ways to say them. The story has a lot to offer about redemption and reconciliation, and effectively moves the principal character through various stages of personal torment before making amends for a misspent life.

Sergeant_Tibbs 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