幽灵马车

被狠狠震撼到，这时1921年，斯约斯特洛姆就导出了如此成熟的长故事片。同时期，我国1922年张石川郑正秋合作拍出的《劳工之爱情》，还是作为短故事片的成熟代表。 虽然视听语言上，《幽灵马车》还不算成熟:没有特写镜头，中近景较少，大多是全景，拍摄人物关系时也存在越轴情况，但这些无法掩盖它在叙事方面的优秀。 倒叙、故事里套故事、回忆闪回、台词悬念、前后照应，让人直呼绝绝子！再加上KTL Stephen O'Malley and Peter Rehberg的配乐，电影体验感飞升直上（第四幕的小提琴曲实在太好听了！！！ 角色塑造上，大卫汉姆的转变过渡得相对自然，在救妻子和孩子的那场戏里，导演将故事时间不断拉长，创造出文本时间大于故事时间的效果，加强了观众的紧迫感，加以此时高潮迭起的配乐，体感绝佳。这段大概借鉴了格里菲斯“最后一分钟营救”技巧（在1916年《党同伐异》母与法篇体现得最为突出）。 尤其赞叹汉姆夫人的演技，她通过眼神变化，肢体动作，把角色的欢欣、纠结、苦痛、绝望、悲伤、希望表演得出神入化。 太过值得五星。

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大卫·霍姆活在三重世界里，过去的世界、现实的世界与死灵的世界。这三者之间如何穿梭，属于电影的剪辑选择是闪回，镜内特效是双重曝光，都是对这种语言极其成功的应用。与同期默片相比，配乐和调色对于情绪与环境的表现也非常精确。但本质上帮助这个故事的技术还是来自戏剧，类似是五幕的结构，故事的设计套路也来自尤金·奥尼尔那一派剧作模式，“角色的性格中必然潜藏着陈年往事，当前发生的事就是去逼他回忆整个前史，真相大白后便可被救赎或是毁灭”。全都是没有任何纵深可言的二维调度，营造的舞台感令人无法沉浸，比如墓地或酒馆聊天时三个人面对观众位置而坐的姿势，还蛮让人出戏。哪怕是那个经典的、被《闪灵》继承的长斧劈门，都没有出现很好的空间表现，景别和角度有些贫乏。临终前的仰望与狂呼尽管后来被伯格曼学去，仍具备一种话剧演员站桌子吃人的浮夸之势。当然，并不是在说电影模仿话剧就一定不好，只是目前个人喜好上相对排斥像舞台一样的影片。

死神的形象承前启后，镰刀斗篷从不露脸，再加上辆幽灵马车；而这个关于死亡的游戏规则在当时颇具想象力，所谓的神仅仅是个车夫而已，在任期间受尽磨炼，甚至还是撞时间碰运气的继任制。农历也把岁底叫年关，猛兽吃人，不知道是否关于死亡的设定尽作巧合。结尾有些意外，首先在于没有照顾修女的视角，她作为最后唯一死去的人，魂归何处。圣母姿态还是让我觉得非常有启迪性，从没有哪一瞬间比这一瞬间更爱他，活着时也从未有哪天比临终前更备这种净化恶人的使命感。大卫的死而复生是高潮点，他的祈求得来了响应，他会变成好人后再行赴死，点明题眼那句让我在灵魂被收获前成熟起来；对于他来说，活着一定还是比死去要辛苦，正如每个人那样。然而，即使抛开违反死神继承规则这件事不谈，大卫的忏悔和妻子的原谅都不够真诚，又十分突兀：谁会相信一个醉鬼在清醒时许下的承诺呢？

叠化刚出现时是我最惊喜的时刻，死神把人搬上马车，无比安静。总体来说，依然是其影史成就和我的喜爱程度无甚相关的一次观影体验。往未来看，这部影片中显影最多的是英格玛·伯格曼，我们看见了《野草莓》，看见了《处女泉》，看见了《第七封印》。而往过去看，能够意识到的是——狄更斯果真当得起这世上电影人的祖先。

Made nearly a century ago, THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is one of Victor Sjöström’s many pictures adapting Swedish novelist Selma Lagerlöd’s works, the very first female Nobel-winning writer, and it has been restored to its optimal condition with a freshly contemporary and throbbing score confected by electronic duo KTL. Beginning in medias res, the narrative takes place on a New Year’s Eve, as the young Sister Edit (Holm) of Salvation Army is in extremis after being contracted with consumption for one year, her dying wish is to speak to David Holm (Sjöström himself), a ne’er-do-well middle-aged drunkard. Cross-cut is expeditiously applied to facilitate the unfolding story in company with layered flashbacks to introduce the urban legend of Death’s carriage, and the one who dies in the last minute before the New Year, will have to drive the carriage and collect dead people’s souls for the next year. And during a dust-up, David is struck dead right before the midnight, and his apparition rises above his prostrate body when the incumbent driver George (Svennberg), a friend of David, arrives with the said carriage and announces that he will be his successor. Further flashbacks show David’s blissful life with his wife Anna (Borgström), their two toddler children and his brother (Axelsson), which is shattered into pieces when he is imprisoned for drunken and disorderly, his brother commits murder under both his and alcohol’s pernicious influences, a distressed Anna severs the tie and skips town with their kids. When he is released from the jail, an aggrieved David swears vengeance to Anna and roams the whole country to look for her, finally fetches up in the town where he is taken as the first visitor of Sister Edit’s Salvation Army mission on the previous New Year’s Eve. David’s unrepentant obduracy doesn’t dissuade Edit from seeking out any smidgeon of goodness in him, even she contracts consumption from him, Edit’s holy halo never descends into the rank of an ordinary being, she is consecrated for her unmitigated devotion and benevolence, at one point, even claims David is the love of her life, certainly she doesn’t mean carnally, but that overstretched sanctity and do-goody righteousness can sound jarringly sanctimonious a century later when ethos has been long shifting from that interwar time. While this prim-and-proper, spiritualistic parable has no trouble proselytizing its sage moral tenets to and eliciting cordial commiserations from its audience (Ingmar Bergman credited it most influential for his oeuvre, he also made WILD STRAWBERRIES with Sjöström, the latter’s crowning swan song), THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE is, more influentially in retrospect, acclaimed for its avant grade special effects of the dead walking through closed doors and passing by oblivious living beings, by arduously utilizing double exposures to achieve a consistently flickering, superimposable effect. Also we might locate the progenitor of the galloping horror from a hatchet hacking on a closed door. Enabled by an affectively skilled cast - Sjöström effuses a fierce intensity with David’s duality dangling between cynical callousness and abject repentance; Astrid Holm and Hilda Borgström are also exceptional in their respective physical expressiveness, and Tore Svennberg’s scythe-wielding, cloak-donned imagery is certainly the inspiration of our collective imagination of the Grim Reaper - and a tempo that keeps its story engaging (especially the nail-biting climax), THE PHANTOM CARRIAGE comes off as one of the pioneer works of early cinema grandeur, an unalloyed Nordic wonder that can rival any Hollywood commodity of its time, and run away with it. referential entries: Ingmar Bergman’s WILD STRAWBERRIES (1957, 8.9/10); F.W. Murnau’s SUNRISE (1927, 9.0/10).