Every summer, Ingmar Bergman would settle down to watch his personal print of The Phantom Carriage, the flickering images once more transfixing him. “It was my first really big cinematic experience,” he explained. “Even now I can’t really make out what it was that captured me so utterly.” Directed by Victor Sjöström, who Bergman would so memorably and meaningfully cast as the aged professor in Wild Strawberries, this mournful, magical horror story eyeballs malicious drunkard David Holm (Sjöström) as he’s killed in a brawl on the stroke of New Year. For him, though, it’s just the beginning, his filthy spirit charged with loading souls into the titular chariot.
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