The Phantom Carriage

The Phantom Carriage (1921)

Körkarlen

Do the Dead Come Back? Can Your Soul Leave Your Body...And Return Again?

An alcoholic, abusive ne'er-do-well is shown the error of his ways through a legend that dooms the last person to die on New Year's Eve before the clock strikes twelve to take the reins of Death's chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year.

Date of release
1921-01-01
TMDB
7.7 / 10 (382)
Runtime
1h 48m
Genres
Drama, Fantasy, Horror
Director
Victor Sjöström

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Based on: Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!

The Phantom Carriage is a 1921 Swedish silent film directed by and starring Victor Sjöström, based on the 1912 novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! (Körkarlen) by Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf. In the film, Sjöström plays a drunkard named David Holm who, on the night of New Year's Eve, is compelled by the ghostly driver of Death's carriage to reflect on his past mistakes. Alongside Sjöström, the film's cast includes Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg, and Astrid Holm.

Production

From 1917, there was a deal between Selma Lagerlöf and A-B Svenska Biografteatern to adapt at least one Lagerlöf novel for film every year. Prior to The Phantom Carriage, Sjöström had made three of these adaptions which had all been well received by critics, the audience and Lagerlöf herself. Since all of them had taken place in a rural setting, Sjöström felt that he wanted a change for the fourth and suggested the urban, gritty Körkarlen.

Shooting took place from May to July 1920 in the newly started Filmstaden studios in Solna. The set design was inspired by the southern Swedish town Landskrona, which corresponded to what Lagerlöf had in mind when writing the novel. Lagerlöf's original wish was to film it on location in Landskrona, but Sjöström chose to do it in the studio for technical reasons.

Post-production was famously long and intense due to the extensive use of special effects, developed by cinematographer Julius Jaenzon and lab executive Eugén Hellman. Double exposures made in-camera (optical printing was not available until the early 1930s), had been used before by Jaenzon, already in Sir Arne's Treasure from 1919, but were here developed to be far more advanced with several layers.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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