It's easy to see where the great Swedish director Ingamar Bergman got his sense of humor in this film that informs in many ways his future work. Bergman was more than clear about Victor Seastrom's influence and The Phantom Carriage illustrates this with its stark death and redemption theme from the outset.
On New Year's Eve, Edit, an urban missionary worker lies dying from consumption. She makes a request to see a notorious drunkard David Holm ( Seastrom ) one more time but he refuses to honor her request. He opts instead to remain with his drunken pals and tell the story of The Phantom Carriage that impresses the last person to die in the year to go around to pick up the dead. When Holm rebuffs the entreaty of Edit's co-worker his bottle buddies beat him to death and much to his grief he gets the job of the collector's assistant.
The Phantom Carriage is one dark Christmas Carol. Filled with vices and virtue to the extreme it is a relentless treatise on pain, suffering and salvation with Seastrom's brutish unrepentant Holm blinded by drink and cynicism stewing in his own juices most of the way . Director Seastrom lays the dissipation on with a thick humorless brush with no let up and the gloom of this cautionary tale becomes monstrously oppressive and with it comes a repetitive monotony.
The impact on such Bergman's classics as The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries (Sjostom actually played the lead) is more than evident throughout but so is the overwhelming stoicism that slows The Phantom Carriage to a crawl much of the time.
On New Year's Eve, Edit, an urban missionary worker lies dying from consumption. She makes a request to see a notorious drunkard David Holm ( Seastrom ) one more time but he refuses to honor her request. He opts instead to remain with his drunken pals and tell the story of The Phantom Carriage that impresses the last person to die in the year to go around to pick up the dead. When Holm rebuffs the entreaty of Edit's co-worker his bottle buddies beat him to death and much to his grief he gets the job of the collector's assistant.
The Phantom Carriage is one dark Christmas Carol. Filled with vices and virtue to the extreme it is a relentless treatise on pain, suffering and salvation with Seastrom's brutish unrepentant Holm blinded by drink and cynicism stewing in his own juices most of the way . Director Seastrom lays the dissipation on with a thick humorless brush with no let up and the gloom of this cautionary tale becomes monstrously oppressive and with it comes a repetitive monotony.
The impact on such Bergman's classics as The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries (Sjostom actually played the lead) is more than evident throughout but so is the overwhelming stoicism that slows The Phantom Carriage to a crawl much of the time.