OrgaNova Cinema Symphony / The Phantom Carriage / The Tale of the Phantom Driver - NOSPR

In the silent era, Scandinavian cinema was a ‘cultural brand’. It inspired filmmakers across Europe and found equal success across the Atlantic, winning the enthusiasm of audiences and critics alike. Vivid – like the Scandinavian landscape itself; austere – like Protestant ethics; yet always open to artistic exploration – it set standards that continue to shape the history of cinema to this day.

As you watch The Phantom Carriage, the 1921 Swedish film, remember another giant of world cinema – Ingmar Bergman. Why? Victor Sjöström was not only a director but also an outstanding actor, and thirty-six years after making The Phantom Carriage, in which he appeared as the unsettling David Holm, he gave a great performance as Professor Isak Borg in Bergman’s Wild Strawberries (1957).

Another towering figure of Swedish culture among the creators of Sjöström's film was Selma Lagerlöf, the Swedish Nobel Prize winner in Literature. Her 1912 novel Körkarlen, inspired by a folk legend, provided the basis for the screenplay. It is a work of such literary maturity that capturing its atmosphere on screen posed a formidable challenge. Sjöström rose to it. In terms of its narrative, the film transcends the era in which it was made. It moves effortlessly between dream and reality, confronting the harsh reality of the poorer strata of society with scenes created, through the language of cinema, out of haunting dream imagery and spectral visions. Flashbacks, multiple exposures and the superb composition of the image captivate with their dark allure. The phantom carriage drifts across the screen, still evoking a shiver of metaphysical unease.

Anita Skwara

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