Reviews & Ratings for
The Phantom Carriage More at IMDbPro »Körkarlen (original title)

Filter:

Best Chronological Prolific Authors Loved It Hated It Hide Spoilers:

Page 1 of 4:

[1] [2] [3] [4]

Index

35 reviews in total

---

40 out of 42 people found the following review useful:
a classic, 19 December 2002

Author: plaidpotato from United States

One of the best silent dramas I've seen. As dark and shadowy as anything the German Expressionists produced, but featuring performances that were quite understated and naturalistic for the day. No camera mugging and no unintentional laughs due to wild-eyed arm-waving histrionics. Sjostrom gave a convincing performance as the drunken, mean-spirited and frightening David Holm.

Set mostly at night in a dingy Swedish slum, the film had a very claustrophobic set-bound feel to it, aided by the low key lighting and extensive use of irising.

There was a deep, and typically Scandinavian, sense of despair and hopelessness to the narrative: the film begins in a rather grim present, and then we're told David Holm's story in a series of flashbacks (and flashbacks within flashbacks--a pretty complex story structure for 1921), where his character is offered numerous chances at redemption, but he doesn't take them, and we know he won't take them, because we've seen him die drunk and wretched and mean as ever in the present. The penultimate scene is as dark as any I have seen in all of cinema.

The writing and directing is tight and intelligent, even by today's standards. In several instances, Sjostrom skillfully sets the audience up to suspect one thing, and then pulls out a surprise. The ending might not be such a surprise to some viewers, but I didn't see it coming.

This movie deserves a full restoration and DVD release. Or even a crappy budget release. It just needs to be out there so people can see and appreciate it.

9.5/10, which rounds up to 10/10

---

23 out of 26 people found the following review useful:
This film is a masterpiece to put it simply., 20 April 1999

Author: Jörgen (jorgell@hotmail.com) from Södertälje, Sweden

This film is a masterpiece to put it simply. Especially the double exposure made by the cameraman Julius Jaenzon. It is skillfully made even with the standards we are used to today seventy eight years later. Viktor Sjöström, the director, also plays the main character, David Holm. On the night of new years eve he is killed in a fight, and the legend says that the first one who dies on the new year, will have to work as a soul-collector in the form of a transparent ghost. There is a new soul-collector to be appointed every year.

The scene in which the alcoholic, David Holm, rises up from his dead body (like the soul is leaving his earthly body) in the churchyard (where the fight took place) is a real award for a filmloving eye. Also when the present soul-collector arrives with his horse and carriage is a beautiful but also a scary scene. David Holm recognizes this soul-collector as a drinkingfriend from earlier life. It is now his turn to take over. Just like Scrooge in Dickens story "A christmas tale", David is shown what his life and doings has led to for the people around him.

The film is about the danger of abusing drugs, in this case alcohol. It is based upon a book by Nobel prize winner Selma Lagerlöf. Viktor Sjöström filmed a few more of her books, but this is the one with the best outcome, maybe because this book is the most filmic of them.

---

24 out of 28 people found the following review useful:
Best silent movie I've ever seen, 11 September 2003
Author: peter_olsson_1 from Höör, Sweden

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.

---

16 out of 17 people found the following review useful:
Much said without words., 29 March 2006

Author: Aesir Aasessoener from Sweden

Much said without words.

This is an excellent movie. It was made in color-not color as in today's films, but a special mono-color use (with shadings) that portrayed meaning, mood, sense and time. It should be seen in color, as it becomes an entirely different film. The story, by Nobel prize-winner Selma Lagerlöf, is effectively presented. One never has a clear sense of real, memory or phantom. Changes going on in Swedish society at the time are subtly layered. Most highly recommend. Try to rent it or find it on-line. I saw it in a Swedish film class and I want to add it to my film library.

---

13 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
They say this carriage "is no ordinary cart" . . . What a colossal understatement!, 16 February 2007

Author: wmorrow59 from Westchester County, NY

*** This review may contain spoilers ***

Victor Sjöström's Körkarlen plunges the viewer into life's lower depths for much of its running time, with grim scenes of alcoholic degradation, family violence and suicidal despair, but the most memorable passages involve the mythic image of Death itself. Here Death is embodied as a ghostly horse-drawn carriage, driven by a miserable sinner who was the last person to die on the previous New Year's Eve. For one year the wretch must collect the souls of the newly departed, and after twelve months of this horrible servitude the driver's own soul is finally released when the last person to die on December 31st becomes the new driver.

The scenes involving this carriage (the film was known as "The Phantom Carriage" or "The Phantom Chariot" in English-speaking countries) are eerie and mesmerizing, utilizing double-exposure cinematography that was quite sophisticated for its time and still effective when seen today. Most strikingly, the carriage travels to the floor of the ocean to collect the soul of a person who drowned. As fascinating as these scenes are, however, the bulk of the film is concerned with the downward spiral of David Holm, played by the director himself in an understated portrayal of a man who has given up on the possibility of living a decent life. In flashbacks we see Holm enjoying a pleasant day at the beach with his wife, children and brother, and he appears to be a perfectly ordinary guy. Abruptly, without segue or explanation, we then see Holm as an alcoholic wreck, in trouble with the law and alienated from his family. Ordinarily this leap from Before to After might feel like a story-telling deficiency, but in this case the filmmakers trust us to fill in the familiar, sordid details on our own. It's suggested that Holm has been led astray by his convivial friend Georges, the drinking companion who first relates the tale of the Phantom Carriage, but whatever the cause of his downfall Holm appears to be a lost cause, a mean-spirited drunk who takes perverse pleasure in inflicting pain on his family and in refusing to reform.

While David Holm is our central figure the story's true catalyst is a young Salvation Army nurse who takes a sympathetic interest in his case and doggedly believes in him despite his hateful behavior. When the nurse herself is dying-- indirectly due to her ministrations on Holm's behalf --she demands to see him, and thus inadvertently sets in motion a chain of events that will result in his recovery.

At times this film resembles Dickens' tale of Scrooge in its use of ghostly visitors who inspire a flawed man to take stock of his life, suffer over his misbehavior, and reform. I was also reminded of Sjöström's 1917 drama Terje Vigen, in which a man returns from jail to find his house empty and his family gone: a sequence echoed here. The director reiterates a standard theme of Scandinavian folklore, found earlier in his Berg-Ejvind och hans hustru (a.k.a. "The Outlaw and His Wife," 1918) that no man can outrun his fate. This time, however, it could be argued that David Holm actually succeeds in evading his seemingly inevitable fate, for he's given an unexpected second chance to make amends.

Viewers expecting a a supernatural tale will appreciate the sequences featuring the Phantom Carriage of the title, but may not be prepared for this film's painful examination of a troubled man's alcoholic downfall. But those with a taste for intense and powerful silent drama will appreciate Körkarlen in its entirety. It stands with the best serious cinema of its era and is certainly one of Sjöström's most accomplished works.

---

12 out of 13 people found the following review useful:
Brilliant film; KTL soundtrack recommended, 29 March 2008

Author: Robert_Woodward from United Kingdom

Victor Sjostrom's silent film masterpiece The Phantom Carriage has recently been released on DVD with a new soundtrack recorded by KTL. The duo, comprising American guitarist Stephen O'Malley and Austrian laptop artist Peter Rehberg, has conjured an extraordinary collection of sounds to accompany and accentuate the original film footage from 1921. An ominous banging sound introduces each Act and a medley of drones, guitar chords and feedback ebbs and flows as the grim drama unfolds.

As impressive as the new soundtrack is, the film remains the real star with its timeless rendering of a dark and dystopian fairy tale. According to this tale the last person to die before the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve is condemned to spend a year behind the reins of the eponymous phantom carriage, collecting the souls of the dead. This is the fate of the anti-hero of the film, David Holm, who is moved to painful scrutiny of his life following his untimely death and subsequent encounter with the driver of the carriage.

This film is often referred to as a horror film and although this is a fitting label, the real horror here resides not in the supernatural elements but rather in the depiction of human suffering at the hands of others. Sjostrom gives a remarkable performance as the drunken, spiteful and menacing Holm in life, and the wretched, frightened Holm looking back from the land of the dead and shrinking from his past deeds.

Striking imagery abounds throughout The Phantom Carriage and more than compensates for the inevitably limited dialogue. The ill-omened onset of midnight is powerfully illustrated through the image of a clock-face hovering alone in the darkening night sky like a second moon. Equally impressively, the dead are depicted through pioneering semi-transparent imagery and the scenes of the phantom carriage riding over land and sea remain chilling to watch.

Sjostrom's film deserves its place as one of the most esteemed silent films of all time and the new soundtrack by KTL is a superb accentuation of its themes. This is a must-see.

---

11 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
A FANTASTIC silent film!, 2 June 2003

Author: norm.vogel@verizon.net from S. Bound Brook, NJ.

This, unfortunately, is a little-known film.....i say "unfortunately", because it ranks up there with the "classics" of the American silent screen!

It's about a legend of a "phantom chariot" that travells all over the world, picking up the souls of those who have died. The legend says tha the last person to die on New Year's Eve is condemned to drive the chariot for the next whole year.

It brings to mind the sequence of the "Ghost of Future Yet To Come" in Dicken's famous "Christmas Carol".

The double-exposure effects of the ghosts (esp. when they interact with the "live" people) are EXCELLENT!

If you love silent films, you MUST see THIS; it will "blow you away"!

Norm Vogel

Norm's Old Movie Heaven http://www.nvogel.com/film/film.html

---

4 out of 4 people found the following review useful:
The soul's long, hard journey into night (and the mechanisms that produce god), 12 October 2011

Author: chaos-rampant from Greece

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.

---

10 out of 16 people found the following review useful:
The greatest of the swedish silent movies, 9 December 1998

Author: Jesper Henke (jesper.henke@svt.se) from Umeå

Sjöströms masterpiece and a movie that captures the swedish soul . It also served as a great inspiration for Bergman; the similarites between Körkarlen and Smultronstället (with Sjöström in the leading role as Isak Borg) from 1957 is not a coincidence. Don't miss it for the world!

---

4 out of 5 people found the following review useful:
One of the best movies of all time, 7 November 2010

Author: kris-oak from Sweden

This is perhaps among the best movies ever made. If you rent it or buy it, and take the time to see it you will never regret it. If you are tired of reviews, you can stop reading here....now run along and get it.

Based on Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöfs tale about a carriage driving around on New Years eve, collecting the souls of the dead.The tale is at once a ghost story, a morality and a social statement much like the best of Charles Dickens. The film was made when movies were very young but as with many of those pictures by Lang, Murnau, Wiene and even Stiller, they remain very modern both in language and story. (In those days the best movies were made in Europe; Griffith seems ridiculous compared to this.)

The film was made in heaven by a true genius, Victor Sjöström. By the time he started to dabble with pictures he was an actor employed by the Swedish Royal Dramatic Theatre. He not only directed the movie, he played one of the main characters and built the backgrounds when needed. To help him along came camera man Julius Janzon and those two created magic much like Orson Welles and Gregg Toland would do on Citizen Kane, later.

If you're not simply captured by the movie, think of this: Janzon double exposed up to x9 to gain the ghost effects; on a hand turned movie camera.

For Sjöström, just to prove his genius, he moved to Hollywood to make a few movies including masterful renditions like "He Who Gets Slapped" with Lon Chaney and "The Scarlet letter" with Lilian Gish. Both are masterpieces and if you see these movies you will recognize Sjöströms mark. Some say he left Hollywood, disappointed, after having seen Stiller been treated bad by Hollywood's "industry". Legend or not, he did leave.

Ingmar Bergman gave Sjöström a tender and loving exit part; a beautiful homage; in his legendary "Wild Strawberries" from 1957. Sjöström played old professor of medicine, Isaac Borg, traveling through Sweden and at the same time through the memories of his life. Wild Strawberries in turn is another legendary film...but that's another story.

---

---

Page 1 of 4:

[1] [2] [3] [4]

Add another review

---

Related Links

Plot summary	Ratings	External reviews
Plot keywords	Main details	Your user reviews
Your vote history