Körkarlen (1921 film)

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Körkarlen
Director Victor Sjöström
Directed by	Victor Sjöström
Produced by	Charles Magnusson
Written by	Selma Lagerlöf (novel) Victor Sjöström
Starring	Victor Sjöström Hilda Borgström Tore Svennberg
Cinematography	Julius Jaenzon
Distributed by	AB Svensk Filmindustri
Release date(s)	1921
Running time	93 min.
Country	Sweden
Language	Silent film
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IMDb profile

Körkarlen is a classic 1921 Swedish silent black and white film. It is also known as The Phantom Carriage, The Phantom Chariot, The Stroke of Midnight, and Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness.

Made in 1921, it was directed by and starred Victor Sjöström, and also starred Hilda Borgstrom, Tore Svennberg, and Astrid Holm. It was based on a novel of the same title Körkarlen (1912] by Selma Lagerlöf.

The film is a drama, telling the tale of a legend that the last person to die in any year, if he or she is a sinner, will for the next twelve months drive the Phantom Chariot which takes the souls of the dead. This seems to be the destined fate of the films anti-hero, a drunk (played by Sjöström) left for dead after a fight in a graveyard and taken aboard the Phantom Carriage as the clock nears midnight on the last night of the year. Here he is taken to witness how his vicious behaviour has affected those around him, including his abandoned wife and children and a dying Salvation Army girl (Astrid Holm) who has unavailingly tried to save him.

The film was a great influence on the later Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman who also utilised the figure of Death in The Seventh Seal. Bergman's penultimate work for the screen The Image Makers (2000) is an historical drama depicting the making of The Phantom Carriage.

[edit] External links

• IMDb page

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