“The Phantom Carriage” was advanced and ground-breaking in both technical and narrative terms. Sjöström, inspired by the novel’s themes of conversion and morality, its supernatural elements and its complex narrative structure, created a filmic version with complicated flashbacks, dissolves and double and triple exposures. The acting provided by Victor Sjöström, Hilda Borgström and Astrid Holm, incredibly realistic for the time, contributed to the captivating end result.

“The Phantom Carriage” has long been placed in the upper echelons of the international film canon, and is considered one of the central works from the golden age of Swedish cinema, which began in 1917 with Sjöström’s “A Man There Was” and ended with Mauritz Stiller’s “The Saga of Gösta Berling”, featuring Greta Garbo.