La charrette fantôme

Since its premiere, the film has been unjustly overshadowed by the first film adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf's novel "Thy Soul Shall Bear Witness," Viktor Sjöström's Körkarlen (1921). Duvivier breaks away from its complex flashback structure and that of the book to concentrate in his linear narration much more on the Christian motifs of the story about the "phantom carriage," which the last person to die before the turn of the year has to pull for a year, to collect the souls of the dead. This fate will befall the drifter Georges (Louis Jouvet - who already looks like the living dead). His fellow drunkard David Holm (Pierre Fresnay), an erstwhile glassblower who is sick, finds refuge in a newly opened Salvation Army asylum with Sister Edith (Micheline Francey), who recognizes a soul in need of rescuing. Duvivier quotes the aesthetics of expressionist silent film without restraint and at the same time creates a late highlight of Poetic realism. (re/fl)