Starring Victor Sjostrom, Hilda Borgstrom, Tore Svennberg, Astrid Holm, Concordia Selander
Directed by Victor Sjostrom
(actor & director credits courtesy IMDB.com)
After being the last person to perish on New Year's Eve, a drunkard is condemned to drive Death's chariot for a year, and revisits the choices that led him down a terrible path.
Sjostrom delivers a gripping Swedish fantasy, with a script somewhat similar to Dickens' A Christmas Carol, but with characters all its own. At its heart is a legend that whoever is the last to die on New Year's Eve must drive Death's chariot for the next year, collecting the souls of the departed by lifting the transparent spirits from the corpses and carrying them to the back of the chariot. We're so used to seeing the visual of ghosts emerging from dead bodies in other media, but I've read some accounts this was the first time it was ever done on film, and it's expertly done so. You can really see the backgrounds through the spirits as they walk across the shot and vanish through solid walls. The characters are all archetypes, well-acted and memorable, including Sjostrom's filthy drunkard David Holm, spreading his illness of consumption to whoever he pleases, Astrid Holm's virginal Salvation Army nurse who risks her own life to bring him back to a nobler path, and Borgstrom's long suffering wife who's ready to give up on him. There's also a fine beauty to Julius Jaenzon's cinematography, and especially the tinting, with a sepia tone for indoor scenes, and an eerie blue for exterior night scenes, adding spookiness to the carriage's appearances. I felt my heart stir during many scenes, especially during the climactic moment when David Holm realizes he may be about to witness others paying the ultimate sacrifice for his own misdeeds.
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