The Phantom Carriage

WOW. Such a great movie! I see it 95 years in late, but I can assure that is one of the best movies I ever saw. It's really in advance for his time, the acting is almost like today and didn't come from opera or theatre like it was usual in the beginning of cinema. The music is just awesome, she translate exactly the character's emotions and the mood of the scene, a real plus in a silent film, and have noises (making with the instrument). The story come from the novel " Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!" and we can think about Scrooge but it's darker. Victor Sjöström is an awesome actor, but he show that is one of the best directors of his time too! And what a surprise to see that the legendary Shining's scene of Jack Nicholson breaking the door with an axe already existing a half of century before Kubrick's masterpiece!

For me, this was a masterpiece. I watched a beautifully restored Criterion Collection version that really highlighted the movie’s special effects as well as the really stellar silent acting. The acting in American silents can often feel for me stilted, melodramatic, and theatrical (which it was, obviously)–but there was a noticeable shift in acting style here hooked me from the start. “Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped.”–David Holm This Swedish film by Victor Sjöström is really interesting narratively, using nested flashbacks (ahead of its time) to tell the story of David Holm, a drunk who dies and is confronted with his life’s choices by the steward of Death (the driver of the carriage.) In less skilled hands this could have been a maudlin morality play, but here it became so much more. The emotion stirred here was genuine–I can’t think of another silent movie from this era that feels less dated or more modern. The ending, involving a near-suicide/filicide was really gut-wrenching. (And sidenote: very strange to spot the second pre-reference to The Shining’s axe scene in a week.)