A Swedish folk tale has it that the last person to die on New Year's Eve must spend the coming year as Death's carriage driver, collecting souls as a punishment for the evil they did in life. Because if you die on New Year's, clearly you were doing something wrong with your life(?). David Holm (director Victor Sjöström) doesn't believe in such nonsense so no one is more surprised than he when a drunken brawl lands him in the worst job imaginable. The outgoing carriage driver is David's old friend Georges (Tore Svennberg), who coincidentally told him the legend to begin with, and Georges pulls no punches with his buddy, becoming The Ghost of Christmas Future and the angel Clarence all at once, taking David back through the shitty decisions that led not just him to his present moment, but also the young Sister Edit (Astrid Holm), a Salvation Army volunteer that tried to get David to turn his life around and is now dying of tuberculosis that David knowingly infected her with. Yes, this one-man superspreader laughed and coughed deliberately in people's faces knowing he carried a potentially deadly disease. Georges forces David to confront the consequences of his selfishness and lack of empathy.
This was made in 1921. It is black and white, silent with dialogue cards, and it's just as relevant today. Ain't that some shit? The pacing is glacial for less than two hours running time but it's still very much worth a watch. The special effects were amazing for their time and the score is quire good. Very haunting. I do feel obliged to mention the movie shows a suicide, an attempted murder-suicide, and implied domestic violence. The Swedes were not fucking around over here. It's currently streaming on the Criterion Channel.
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