Cinema
The Phantom Carriage
Körkarlen
Victor Sjöström · 1921
Synopsis
On New Year's Eve, Sister Edit, a young woman of the Salvation Army, is dying and has only one wish: to speak to David Holm. Holm, a drunkard, is drinking in a cemetery with two comrades and tells them the legend: the last sinner to die before the twelfth stroke of midnight must drive for a year the cart that gathers souls. A brawl breaks out, midnight strikes, and the driver of the year that is ending comes to meet him. Holm will have to look at what he has made of his life and of those around him.
Context
The film is based on a novel that Selma Lagerlöf had written in 1912 at the request of the National Association against Tuberculosis. It was the first shoot at the new Råsunda studios, from May to July 1920, but the laboratory work required by Julius Jaenzon's multi-layered superimpositions, which make the dead pass through objects, delayed the release to 1 January 1921. A great success in Sweden, it was released in 1922 in England, Germany, France and the United States. Ingmar Bergman, who saw it at the age of fifteen, returned to it all his life.
Who it is for
One hundred and seven minutes, silent, with Swedish intertitles. The story goes back in time several times, and sometimes goes back within a flashback.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as the summit of the golden age of Swedish silent film; in 2025 it entered Sweden's cultural canon.
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