Körkarlen (1921 film)
| The Phantom Carriage | |
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Theatrical release poster
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| Directed by | Victor Sjöström |
| Produced by | Charles Magnusson |
| Written by |
Screenplay: Victor Sjöström Novel: Selma Lagerlöf |
| Starring | Victor Sjöström Hilda Borgström Tore Svennberg |
| Music by | Matti Bye (1998 restoration) |
| Cinematography | Julius Jaenzon |
| Distributed by | AB Svensk Filmindustri |
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Release date
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Running time
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104 minutes |
| Country | Sweden |
| Language |
Silent film Swedish intertitles |
The Phantom Carriage (Swedish: Körkarlen, literally "The Wagoner") is a 1921 Swedish horror film generally considered to be one of the central works in the history of Swedish cinema. Released on New Year's Day 1921, it was directed by and starred Victor Sjöström, alongside Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg and Astrid Holm. It is based on the novel Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! (Körkarlen; 1912), by Nobel prize-winning Swedish author Selma Lagerlöf.
The film is notable for its special effects, its advanced (for the time) narrative structure with flashbacks within flashbacks, and for having been a major influence on Ingmar Bergman.
It is also known as The Phantom Chariot, Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness! and The Stroke of Midnight.
On New Year's Eve, dying Salvation Army Sister Edit has one last wish: to speak with David Holm. David, a drunkard, is sitting in a graveyard, telling his two drinking buddies about his old friend Georges, who told him about the legend that the last person to die each year has to drive Death's carriage and collect the souls of everybody who dies the following year. Georges himself died on New Year's Eve the previous year.
Gustafsson, a colleague of Edit, finds David, but is unable to convince him to go see her. When his friends try to drag him there, a fight breaks out, and David is struck on the head with a bottle just before the clock strikes twelve. David's soul emerges from his body as the carriage appears. The driver is Georges.
Georges reminds David of how the latter once lived a happy life with his wife Anna, their two children and his brother, until Georges led him astray. As shown in a flashback that follows, David was jailed for drunkenness. Before being released from prison, he was shown his brother, who had been sentenced to a long term for killing a man while drunk. When David went home, he found the apartment empty. Furious, he became determined to track Anna down and have his revenge.
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Wikipedia