The Phantom Carriage (1921) on Netflix
NR19211h 47mDramaFantasyHorror
Dying Salvation Army Sister Edit wants to speak with David Holm on New Year's Eve. David, a drunkard, sits in a graveyard telling two drinking companions the legend of Death's carriage.
- Netflix3.5/5
- IMDb8.0/1016,016 votes
- Rotten Tomatoes100%
Trailer
Plot summary
Edit, a dying sister of the Salvation Army, has one wish: to speak with David Holm before she dies. She asks Maria, a colleague, and her mother to call David to her deathbed. David, a drunkard, sits in a graveyard on New Year's Eve with two drinking companions, telling them about the legend his old friend Georges passed on to him. The legend says that whoever dies last in a year must drive Death's carriage and gather the souls of those who die in the year that follows. Georges died the previous New Year's Eve. Gustafsson, who works with Edit, finds David among the graves, but David refuses to go to her. When the two companions try to drag him away, a fight breaks out.
Cast
- Lisa Lundholmas Maria
- Simon Lindstrandas David's Companion
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Phantom Carriage (1921)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Cinematographer Julius Jaenzon and lab executive Eugén Hellman built The Phantom Carriage's ghost effects from in-camera double exposures, layering several images so a ghost could pass behind a foreground object and then walk in front of it, semi-transparent. The hand-cranked cameras had to be cranked at exactly the same speed in every exposure or the result looked unnatural.
- The script for The Phantom Carriage took eight days to finish, and in April 1920 Victor Sjöström travelled to Selma Lagerlöf's mansion Mårbacka in Värmland to present it, reading and performing the whole thing aloud for two hours. Lagerlöf answered by offering him dinner, which Sjöström took as her approval.
- Ingmar Bergman used the figure of Death in The Seventh Seal, where calling him a "strict master" refers to The Phantom Carriage, and cast Victor Sjöström in the lead of Wild Strawberries, which also references the film. Bergman said he first saw The Phantom Carriage at 15 and watched it at least once every year.
- Selma Lagerlöf wanted The Phantom Carriage filmed on location in Landskrona, the southern Swedish town that inspired the film's set design, but Victor Sjöström chose to shoot it in the studio for technical reasons.
