THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921, Blu-ray released September 27, 2011 – MSRP $39.95)

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The Phantom Carriage is not only one of the most influential Swedish films ever made, it’s also a genuinely chilling and moving tale of redemption. The new Blu-ray edition of the film from The Criterion Collection is not without it’s weaknesses but sports some nice special features and the best transfer available on home video.

“The last person to die on New Year’s Eve before the clock strikes twelve is doomed to take the reins of Death’s chariot and work tirelessly collecting fresh souls for the next year. So says the legend that drives The Phantom Carriage (Körkarlen), directed by the father of Swedish cinema, Victor Sjöström. The story, based on a novel by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, concerns an alcoholic, abusive ne’er-do-well (Sjöström himself) who is shown the error of his ways, and the pure-of-heart Salvation Army sister who believes in his redemption. This extraordinarily rich and innovative silent classic (which inspired Ingmar Bergman to make movies) is a Dickensian ghost story and a deeply moving morality tale, as well as a showcase for groundbreaking special effects.“

I’ll admit it. I was hoping that The Phantom Carriage would be more of a spooky ghost story and less of a morality tale. Sadly, for my preconceptions, it’s vastly more of the latter, but in the best, most effective manner possible. The tale, adapted from the novel, Körkarlen, by Nobel Prize winner Selma Lagerlöf, owes a ton to Dickens‘ A Christmas Carol, as a great deal of the narrative plays out in flashback, the audience and ne’er-do-well protagonist David Holm (Sjöström) led from previous misdeed to misdeed by a spirit from his past. There aren’t very many scenes of the overtly supernatural but the few images in the film – Death’s coachman driving his otherworldly cart, for instance – are striking and iconic. The human drama, which comprises most of the film, is equally as effective, however, eliciting moments of great pathos – Holm’s teary redemption – and terror – a manic, raging Holm, in a scene that no doubt inspired Jack Nicholson in Kubrick‘s The Shining, splintering the door of his home with an axe to get at his wife. This timeless fable might not have effected me as deeply as it did the young Ingmar Bergman but it’s certainly one I won’t soon forget.

The Phantom Carriage is the second silent film to be released on Blu-ray in the last few months by the Criterion Collection. And like People on Sunday, the film has received a high-def transfer at 1080i. I have no firm idea why these European silents can’t be afforded progressive transfers from 35mm. It doesn’t make much sense to me but I’m sure there’s a good technical reason for it (DVD Beaver believes it’s a result of frame-rate conversion.) Anyway, it looks pretty good here, for a ninety-year-old film, exhibiting a film-like appearance throughout, with lots of detail and solid contrast.

From the booklet:

“The restoration of The Phantom Carriage presented here was originally undertaken by the Archival Film Collection of the Swedish Film Institute. A new film master was created from two source elements, an incomplete black-and-white nitrate print with Swedish intertitles and an incomplete color-tinted nitrate print with English intertitles. From these source elements, a new black-and-white duplicate negative with Swedish intertitles was completed in 1975. New 35mm polyester viewing prints were then struck from the restored negative, using the color-tinted nitrate print as a color reference.

This new digital transfer was created on an ARRISCAN film scanner in 2K resolution from the new duplicate negative, at the Chimney Pot in Stockholm, using the same color-tinted print from the Swedish Film Institute as reference. Thousands of instances of dirt, debris, scratches, splices, warps, jitter, and flicker were manually removed using MTT’s DRS system and Pixel Farm’s PFClean system, while Digital Vision’s Phoenix system was used for small dirt, grain, and noise reduction.

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Audio is present in the form of two very strong scores – the default DTS-HD Master Audio 3.0 track, an orchestral score by Matti Bye and a PCM 2.0 experimental music track by KTL (Peter Rehberg and Stephen O’Malley.) Both are well done and worth a listen. Your choice will vary with your mood, I imagine.

The special features on the Blu-ray disc are, as you’d expect from Criterion, excellent, well thought out and engaging. Casper Tybjerg‘s commentary track is packed with facts about the production and the director himself but is delivered in hushed, reverent tones that might set you off to dreamland if not properly caffeinated. An interview with Ingmar Bergman, culled from the 1981 documentary Victor Sjöström: A Portrait by Gösta Werner, runs around 15-minutes and is a treat to watch. The director reminisces and shares his recollections on his private and professional relationships with Sjöström, a man he considers something of a father figure to him. The nearly 20-minute “The Bergman Connection” visual essay by Peter Cowie is exceptional and draws a lot of specific lines between the works of the two late directors. In the course of the piece, Cowie touches on Bergman’s 2000 TV drama, The Image Makers – a dramatization of the events surrounding the making of The Phantom Carriage. At 99-minutes it would have been hefty to cram it onto the disc but honestly, that film is the bonus feature this Blu-ray is missing, if you ask me. The disc, as it is, is rounded out by 5-minutes of archival footage of the construction of the studio where the film was made and an 18-page booklet.

Special Features:

• New digital transfer, restored in collaboration with the Archival Film Collections of the Swedish Film Institute
• Two scores, one by acclaimed Swedish composer Matti Bye and the other by the experimental duo KTL
• Audio commentary featuring film historian Casper Tybjerg
• Interview with Ingmar Bergman excerpted from the 1981 documentary Victor Sjöström: A Portrait, by Gösta Werner
• The Bergman Connection, an original visual essay by film historian and Bergman scholar Peter Cowie on The Phantom Carriage’s influence on Bergman
• New and improved English subtitle translation
• PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by screenwriter and filmmaker Paul Mayersberg
• More!

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