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Lang in the same year has the fable's Teutonic determinism (Der Müde Tod), its astringent Scandinavian side falls to Victor Sjöström. "You gentlemen aren't afraid of ghosts, I hope?" New Year's Eve, Salvation Army sister (Astrid Holm) on her deathbed and wretched wife (Hilda Borgström) slumped on a corner, the hard-drinking misanthrope is at fault. From there a dense tangle of causes and consequences and bodies and spirits, contemplated by tramps amid tombstones. Legend has it that the last man to die before the stroke at midnight must conduct the eponymous coach, scythe in hand "at the service of a strict master named Death." The lout finishes the tale within the tale and is summarily knocked out, the spectral chariot pulls up with the old enabler (Tore Svennberg) in the driver's seat, ready to pass the cloak of limbo over to him. Cathartic like the Dickens, "a single night as long as one hundred" (cp. Capra's It's a Wonderful Life). A flowery meadow for the carefree past, stark bareness for the dismal present (prison cells, an abandoned household), roisterous taverns and crowded congregations sculptured with multiple planes of action later noted by Sternberg. The double photography throughout is a remarkable achievement in itself, an incantation of overlapping realms and a visualization of the characters' growing awareness of the links between the corporeal and the spiritual. (Superimposed over crashing waves, the carriage glides to the bottom of the sea for the souls of drowned victims.) Anchoring the bitter phantasmagoria is Sjöström's supreme performance as a lower-depths Scrooge, with a heart "frozen to its very core" and a tubercular cough wielded like a pistol. A layered image for a plainspoken hymn, "Please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped." Bergman pays multiple tributes, though not before Deren (Meshes in the Afternoon). Cinematography by Julius Jaenzon. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |