Not surprisingly, some of the most important proto-horror films came from Europe, which had hundreds of years of history, myth, and folklore on which to draw, as well as the recent horrors of the First World War. In Germany, several filmmakers drew on Expressionism to create their own strain of psychologically attuned and highly stylized proto-horror with films like F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922), an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Robert Weine’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919). However, some of the most interesting and provocative proto-horror films emerged out of Scandinavia, a region whose silent film auteurs displayed a natural penchant for creepy-elegant visuals, moody tones, and an obsession with death, the supernatural, and the afterlife.

Preeminent among these is Victor Sjöström’s masterful The Phantom Carriage (Körkarlen), a film that is probably best described as a spiritual melodrama. Based on the 1912 novel by Nobel Prize-winning writer Selma Lagerlöf, who was inspired by various strains of European folklore, The Phantom Carriage uses the supernatural as a backdrop for a moving parable about grief, guilt, and redemption. The central character is David Holm (played by Sjöström, who often cast himself in the lead in his own films), a complex man who is simultaneously sympathetic and despicable. Although he can be charming and boisterous, he is also selfish and cruel, his inner demons fueled by alcoholism and a bitterness toward life that becomes a constantly self-fulfilling prophecy. Having been deserted by his exasperated and fearful wife (Hilda Borgström), he spends one New Year’s Eve sleeping off his drunkenness at a Salvation Army shelter, where a young volunteer named Edit (Astrid Holm) becomes determined to help him. He viciously rebukes her efforts to help him, most directly by tearing up the coat she has mended all night at her own risk (he is sick with tuberculosis and doesn’t mind coughing in the direction of anyone who comes near him).

Following Lagerlöf’s novel, Sjöström’s script does not follow the story chronologically, but rather nests it in flashbacks that only gradually reveal the various relationships and interconnections among the characters. Sjöström resists demonizing David (as both director and actor), but instead portrays him as being trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of being both victim and victimizer. This seemingly inescapable situation is best exemplified in the sequence when David returns from prison expecting to find his wife and children waiting for them, but instead discovers that they have left him. It is hard to blame them, of course, given the abuse they have suffered at his hands, but at the same their desertion forestalls David’s turning over a new leaf and instead leads to his becoming even more bitter, vicious, and cruel.

Sjöström also builds in the backstory of Death’s Driver (the körkarlen of the original Swedish title) via Gustafsson (Tor Weijden), a drinking buddy of David’s who tells of his fear of dying on New Year’s Eve because of his belief that the last person who dies at the end of the year must spend the following year in the afterlife driving Death’s carriage and picking up the souls of the departed. Sjöström conveys this grim supernatural occupation with an elegant and impressive use of multiple exposures that render the driver and his carriage slightly transparent, so they take on a ghostly presence as they move about the world, literally pulling the souls of the recently departed out of their earthly vessels and carrying them away. Sjöström draws on folkloric imagery by having the driver’s face largely obscured by a hooded cloak and having him carry a scythe for no functional purpose except to associate him with hundreds of years of Grim Reaper tradition. The in-camera multiple exposure technique used to create the ghostly illusion is one of the oldest special effects in cinema, dating back to the late 19th-century trick films of Georges Méliès, yet I cannot recall a film in which they are used so effectively to convey the coexistence of life and the afterlife.

Unlike so many direct horror films of today, The Phantom Carriage has a deep spiritual weight that adds true depth to its horrific imagery (it is not surprising that the English translation of the original novel was titled Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!, a title that was also affixed to the film when it was released in the U.K.). It helps that the film is so beautifully shot by veteran cinematographer Julius Jaenzon, who employs extraordinary contrast and darkness in ways that evoke comparisons to Expressionism, but feel in the moment entirely natural. Sjöström keeps us connected to the characters via long-held close-ups, and he conjures up some truly unsettling images that are simultaneously beautiful and disturbing (this is particularly true of the long shots of the carriage set against a vast dark landscape). Yet, despite all the creepiness on display, the film ultimately affirms not the emptiness of death, but rather the importance of life. By giving us a protagonist who wastes his life in hatred, bitterness, and self-pity and then has the opportunity to relive his horrible decisions and recant them, The Phantom Carriage has much in common with Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol and its many descendents (notably Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life) in using the specter of death not as an end, but as a chance for a new beginning.

Copyright ©2011 James Kendrick

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