FOR DYING OUT LOUD 666

ALL DISQUIET ON THE EUROPEAN FRONT



THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE (1921)
Victor Sjöström, Astrid Holm, Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg, Tor Weijden, Einar Axelsson, Concordia Selander
Directed by Victor Sjöström
St. Sylvester's Night (New Years Eve). Sweden. A pious Salvation Army sister named Edit, suffering from consumption (tuberculosis), is on her deathbed and calls for David Holm (played by Sjöström). He however, is in a cemetery with 2 drunken pals and he tells them of his deceased friend Georges, whom recounted to him the legend of how a ghost chariot materializes every year to carry off those who will die near the start of the brand new calendar. The last sinner to die on Dec 31st before the clock strikes 12, becomes the new coachman who carries out the task for the full 365 before the reins are handed over to the next unfortunate doomed soul to fulfill the annual tradition. David is found in the graveyard and told of Edit's last wish to see him but he refuses to visit. When his wino friends try to take him to her, a brawl breaks out and he is accidentally killed when hit on the head with a bottle. As Georges died at the end of the same holiday night the year before, the old friend shows up, hooded and scythe-wielding, in the horse-drawn buggy to collect David, whose spirit rises from his body. David was a happy family man with his wife, Anna, and their 2 kids but Georges was a bad influence, and through flashback we are led through David's vice-ridden past deeds and see how his chronic drinking, and being mean & hateful both corruptingly ruined his life and destroyed his family -- with glimpses of him being thrown in jail for rowdiness, his brother sentenced to prison for drunkenly killing a man, and David returning to an empty poverty-stricken apartment to find his wife & kids gone and swearing revenge to find them. In his search, he arrived at the Salvation Army where he met Edit.

She sewed his filthy torn coat and he promised to come back and see her in a year as a follow-up, but he returned the act of kindness with cruelty by ripping out the stitching for pure spite, of which he took pleasure. Tender but naive Edit sees her mission as that of a savior who makes it their quest to please God. Her supreme task is to succeed in helping David overcome his personal demons. In a strange metaphysical way, her failure to prevent his pathetic self-destruction sees her contracting his same illness from contact alone, almost as a punishment (and thus reducing him, further and lower, to a literal walking disease). Making him keep the promise against his will, Georges takes David in the carriage to see Edit. In another flashback, David is shown at a bar and then a Salvation Army meeting with Edit pleading for him to give up booze but he is callous and unaffected. When Anna later tells her of the worry she has about his love of liquor, Edit plays mini-marriage counselor and the couple do alright for a little while but in no time at all, his inebriation drives her to total despair. Begging him for the sake of the children, she locked him in the kitchen and attempted to take off with the kids for safety, but fainted as he chopped through the door with an axe. When he awoke her with a cup of water, he immediately berated her. Georges enters Edit's room with David in tow. She blames herself for his welfare and family troubles, and seeks his forgiveness. Deeply remorseful for all his wrongdoing and kissing her hand, from this sincerity and having remained hopeful and virtuous to the end, she dies peacefully. Georges tells David that others will collect her, and then shows him that Anna, also afflicted from consumption and having lost the will to carry on, plans on poisoning the children & herself.

David begs Georges to stop her but he has no power over the living. Having regained consciousness in the cemetery, does David have a desperate last act of decency or for that matter, any selflessness left? With innocent lives in the balance, can he heroically prevent a terrible act of tragedy from taking place? Can he ultimately save himself from utter damnation? THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is adapted from Selma Lagerlöf's 1912 novel, 'Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!' (In 1909, she became the first woman to win the Nobel Prize for literature). With the Swedish name translating as 'The Wagoner' for this silent and spooky fantasy-horror movie, it also went under Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness!, The Phantom Chariot, and The Stroke of Midnight. Whatever the titles in trying to capture the genre, at heart is a morality tale of memory and warning, filled with modern issues of domestic abuse, abandonment, depression, misanthropy, alcoholism, addiction, abstinence, and rehabilitation -- all of which help give a sense of timelessness. Alongside his parallel with German directors like F.W. Murnau and Fritz Lang, this specific Sjöström offering was a watershed moment in early Swedish cinema and so immensely influential on fellow director Ingmar Bergman, that Bergman reportedly said after first seeing it at age 15, that he went on to watch it every New Year's Eve, and had viewed the movie well over 100 times. He died in July 2007, at 89. As well, Bergman's character of 'Death' in his 1957 film, THE SEVENTH SEAL, was inspired by Sjöström's meditative presentation, and he further cast Sjöström in his other 1957 film, THE WILD STRAWBERRIES (which also references THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE). Sjöström (aka Seastrom during his MGM years in the USA) died in January 1960, at 80.

The sfx are a stunning masterpiece of painstaking post-production with double exposures, match cuts, and multiple superimposed layering to create the dazzling ghostly transparency. Whether walking though walls or a great underwater sequence in a swirling sea, the beautifully lit haunting imagery of ethereal supernatural visions were a major, innovatively advanced, sophisticated, and superb technical accomplishment. And complicated as they were, however crude the process may be considered by present standards, to this day they nevertheless appear flawless, convincing, and still rival any current CGI. Without too much dispute, Stanley Kubrick's famous terrorizing axe attack from THE SHINING is an echo (if not an outright & overt rip off) from this picture -- which in turn could also have been Sjöström "borrowing" from a similar hatchet scene he may have seen in 1919's BROKEN BLOSSOMS by D.W. Griffith. The flashback narrative fabric of reviewing David's existence through the error of his ways and the damage he's inflicted recalls (in much bleaker manner) A CHRISTMAS CAROL's Ebenezer Scrooge, and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE's George Bailey (with Georges as both Jacob Marley, and Clarence Oddbody). But David is no mere lovable reprobate and as Death's impending but reluctant new driver, he is told that the weight of each day on earth will feel like 100yrs, and his own painful journey shown through the filter of his somber conscience (feeling like a long funeral procession) is a miserable, wasted existence of selfish obnoxiousness. Glum and guilt-ridden for all the negativity he has wrought as an intoxicated asshole, he faces reckoning before any repentance or reform. And before any atonement, we see all that was anguished and appalling.

Realistically, David certainly deserves to have the extremely unpleasant task of being 'harvesting Grim Reaper' hoisted upon him. The most difficult thing about watching silent movies are having to sit through boredom from tedious storylines, reading from flashcards from start to finish, and the exaggerated silliness of long-outdated, corny melodrama histrionics. Even for the 1920's, films were still in their infancy, rife with rough shortcomings, and there was plenty of drawn-out preaching & lecturing as THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE, too, has it's fair share of Christian overture dwelling on prayer and humility throughout. Redemption is the big theme here, but its sometimes convoluted, and the certainly old-fashioned structure will have many attention spans waning for while an ambitious plot, it's very jumpy and that distraction unfortunately displays some lack of focus. But it's the larger delivery of what is viewed here that definitely more than makes up for the faults (and debatable ending). THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE saw a 1939 French remake, a 1958 Swedish remake, and a 2000 Swedish TV play, THE IMAGE MAKERS (which centers on the meeting of Sjöström and Lagerlöf, their clashing over her wanting to film on location vs. his wanting to use a studio, and the early shooting stages of the movie as they watch scenes). Overall, the 1921 Sjöström version is a splendid gem with even Charlie Chaplin repeatedly giving it his highest praise. And in closing, the movie is a very worthy spectral entry in the non-Hollywood arena of yesteryear -- daunting, often lost fare that is sadly too easily prone to being relegated/reduced to little more than silver screen footnotes. THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is one celluloid chapter in a bygone era that should not be forgotten.




THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI (1920)
Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover, Hans Heinrich von Twardowski, Hans Lanser-Ludolff, Rudolf Klein-Rogge
Directed by Robert Wiene
In the small German mountain village of Holstenwall, a man named Francis is narrating our tale. On a garden bench with an elderly stranger, he speaks of his friend named Alan, and points to his nightgowned fiancée named Jane who passes by in a daze. In flashback, he tells of a madman named Dr. Caligari, a selfish hypnotist (and svengali-like evildoer who can mind control minions, like Dracula) and his zombie-ish sleepwalking henchman, Cesare (a fiendish Frankenstein-like Golem of sorts) who is claimed to have been in a snoozing slumber since birth for 23yrs(!) Caligari has gotten a permit from the boorish town clerk to open a curious carnival exhibit showcasing Cesare, which Francis and Alan attend. Cesare is a mindreader and foreteller of the future, and when awakened to answer questions from the audience, he forecasts Alan's death saying the doomed man will die at dawn. The shocked pair of friends leave but recover after they run into Jane, the daughter of the town physician. Both men are in love with her and are affably competing for her affection. When Alan is found dead in the morning, the baffled police investigating the alarming killing begin wondering if they have a serial killer on their hands (as the town clerk was also found stabbed in his bed), and if the deaths are connected to the arrival of the mysterious & suspicious newcomers. With Caligari running his sideshow tent as ringleader at the local fair, this prompts Francis to spy & snoop on him further, but Caligari with Cesare slyly sidesteps the police who are searching for the culprits responsible.

A recently arrested criminal caught in the act of attempting to knife an old woman, is charged with the 2 murders -- which the miscreant adamantly denies. Caligari orders Cesare to kill Jane, and our proto-Goth goon (with a blend of Mike Myers' Dieter character from SNL's Sprockets) glides into her bedroom where she screams and faints from his attack. Ghoulish but unable to harm Jane due to his attraction to her (as another instance of being spellbound), the pitiful Cesare instead abducts her, making his exit by carrying the poor maiden onto a crooked trail where he is chased by a mob that was alerted by her noise. Putting the unconscious Jane down, Cesare suddenly collapses & drops dead. And from this unsuccessful kidnapping, the townsfolk make their way to Caligari's wagon abode where they find him missing, and a dummy in Cesare's casket/coffin. Caligari returns but manages to escape during the stirred up commotion. Francis hits the nearby insane asylum to dig up possible info on Caligari, and is told by an employee to see the director who it turns out is Caligari. This convinces Francis that Caligari is indeed the murderer, and with the director asleep, the would-be sleuth along with some staff check his office. Scrounging through his books, Francis finds a diary which reveals that Caligari is obsessed with a same-named 18th Century mystic who had a companion -- a hypnotized, submissive servant (also named Cesare who is trapped in telepathic trance). This predecessor perpetrated a killing spree in northern Italian towns.

The director's pages are ravings about how he must become a new Caligari of infamy, as if to absorb himself into a very ideal of power -- not unlike a position he's already abusing. Through Francis exposing the duo's foulness leading to Caligari's unveiling, the police arrive with Cesare's dead body. When Caligari returns to his office, and is confronted with the corpse, the unraveled director has a psychotic break and goes crazy trying to strangle a doctor. He is quickly fitted with a straitjacket and confined to a cell as an inmate in his own institution. But SURPRISE(!), it is Francis who is the real madman relating his story (a fabrication) to us as a mental patient in the asylum courtyard. A quiet Cesare, and Jane are also patients (with Jane believing she is a queen, and who rejects Francis). And the real Caligari is shown as the director who has no sinister bone in his body but rather is a benevolent man whom is attacked by Francis in a screaming outburst. This earns Francis his own straitjacket and cell, with Caligari intent on curing him of the demented delusions that have twisted his brain. As for the real killer? (Perhaps Francis, unable to reconcile his guilt thus concocting a falsehood?) His face was never visible, and we are left open to subjective/metaphorical interpretations that contemplate identity, victimization, jealousy, paranoia, truth and deception. Perhaps the most immediate discussion in talking about THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI is the appearance of its unusual painted backdrops...

...An abstract and bizarre landscape in a theatrical visual style filled with tilted chaotic distortion, twisted sharp points, curves & jagged edges, and diagonal, zigzag & slanting lines galore -- all evidenced in narrow passages, uneven windows & stairs, peculiar furniture, and spiked trees & thorny grass. [It's an impelling misshapen look of exaggerated asymmetry and defied gravity, whose out-of-joint weirdness, revolutionary approach, and captivating dark flair plays like a disturbing dream that has surely inspired Tim Burton]. The film has been shown in dirty yellowish brown, green, and blue tints, and along with its use of light & charcoaled shadow, iris lenses, words representing surrounding voices, and set design, its manner of framework keenly juxtaposes competing stark contrasts of insanity vs. stability, and reality vs. nightmare. The intellectual, philosophical, and psychological academic context of the film has even gone far beyond the analytical discussion of a radical discordant artform, to present scholarly theories that through symbolic teutonic obedience to authority, prevailing disorder, and corruption of the world, what we view in its entirety is a subliminal premonition/precursor/predictor of the tyrannical rise of Nazi fascism 13yrs before Hitler came to power. Arguably the world's genuinely first horror movie, we can quite literally trace the whole trope of a twist-ending, beginning with this famous and foreboding German film alone and with it's pioneering techniques, it is highly notable that this movie also introduces the clever craftsmanship of what are now-familiar premises of bait & switch reversals, red herrings, maguffins, and most specifically: unreliable narrators.

An iconic and incredible foundational landmark of huge historical importance, this quintessential film is a magnificent gold standard recommended BIG time, and is an absolute must-see, seminal classic for both film buffs and first-time enthusiasts. Fractured and still fresh with it's longest running length at 78 minutes, even if you have a strong aversion to silent movies (and especially foreign ones), you should see this atleast once in your life and all the way through. Overall, with its avant-garde expressionism, and early template for all lurking lunatics and villainous stalkers to follow, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI was an experimental and cerebral groundbreaker WAY ahead of it's time that stretches into additional referential subject matter such as modern art, the scarred psyche of post-WWI, the Weimar Republic, repressed memory, Sigmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, and film noir. And ultimately, the filmmakers couldn't have possibly imagined in their wildest dreams how much their surreal and mesmerizing, creepy creation would clear a trailblazing path to influence later horror for decades & generations afterwards. [It spawned a 1962 20th Century Fox version; a 1989 sex-driven horror comedy sequel; a 1991 rendition (with just music score and no dialogue) that was screened only during the 1992 Sundance Film Festival and never released to cinema, starring Joan Cusack, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Peter Gallagher, and Werner Klemperer; and a 2005 US indie release which is a nearly shot-for-shot remake with sound]. A century on, THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI continues to remain a fantastic, engaging, and enduring potent piece of work that brilliantly stands the test of time.