La Charrette fantôme (1939)
Directed by Julien Duvivier

Film Review

Victor Sjöström's 1921 film Körkarlen, adapted from a novel by Selma Lagerlöf and better known as The Phantom Carriage, is a landmark of Swedish silent cinema, a haunting morality tale that is distinguished by some superlative photography and camera effects.  Julien Duvivier's 1939 remake, La Charrette fantôme, is comparatively far less well known and has suffered by comparison with Sjöström's lyrical masterpiece.  Coming on the shirttails of some of Duvivier's best work, including La Bandera (1935), Pépé le Moko (1937) and La Fin du jour (1939), La Charrette fantôme exhibits both the best and worst aspects of the director's art and is generally considered one of his lesser works, one that, sad to say, risks being mistaken for a slightly over-enthusiastic Salvation Army promotional film.

La Charrette fantôme's lukewarm critical reception in France on its original release is perhaps easier to account for than its present obscurity.  The fantasy genre was one that never caught on in France and was all but completely absent from French cinema until a few decades ago.  By virtue of its supernatural theme, cue eerie sound effects and ghostly apparitions, La Charrette fantôme is a rarity, and therein lies its main interest value.  Like Sjöström, Duvivier uses his film to comment on the appalling social conditions of his time and effectively combines the bleak artistry of German expressionism with a social realism that is years ahead of its time.  Thanks in no small measure to Jules Kruger's stark noir-like photography and some superbly expressionistic set design La Charrette fantôme manages to be one of the darkest, most oppressive and most stylised of Duvivier's sound films.  The special effects may not be as imaginative and effective as in Sjöström's film, but the fantastic elements of the film are still convincingly realised by the old trick of multiple exposure and give the film a distinctive dreamlike quality.

At the time, Pierre Fresnay was not the obvious choice of actor to play an uncouth alcoholic, woman-beating, child-hating layabout but, as the film's unsympathetic lead character, he turns in another character portrayal that is astonishingly true to life.  Just a few years previously, Fresnay had come dangerously close to being typecast as the romantic juvenile, such was his success in the stage and screen versions of Marcel Pagnol's Marius (1931).  The far less heroic character he played in La Charrette fantôme allowed him to broaden his repertoire and attract a remarkable variety of character parts in later years, ranging from a living saint in Monsieur Vincent (1947) to a plausible immitation of Jacques Offenbach in La Valse de Paris (1950).  Fresnay also took the lead in La Main du diable (1943), the only other fantasy film of any note made in France around this time.

Fresnay's performance is, as ever, hard to fault, but it is another actor, Louis Jouvet, who steals the film, even though he only appears on screen for about ten minutes, at the start and end.   Far more at home on the stage than on film, Jouvet was never the most subtle of screen actors but his extraordinary presence made every one of his screen portrayals a memorable event.  When he turns up at the end of the film as a ghostly harbinger of death, he has a bloodcurdling reality about him and takes the film into far darker territory than a 1930s French cinema audience would ever have known.  If Jouvet had had a larger part in the film it is possible that La Charrette fantôme could have been another popular Duvivier masterpiece.  The problem is that Jouvet's character gets too little screen time and too much attention is given to Micheline Francey's far less interesting Sister Edith.  Edith's story of self-sacrificing devotion to man who patently does not deserve it closely mirrors that of the female lead in Georges Lacombe's Les Musiciens du ciel (1940) but somehow it is far less convincing, mainly because Duvivier insists on canonising his heroine, giving her a halo of sanctity in every scene.

La Charrette fantôme has a brilliant opening and an even better ending.  Where it falls down is the bit in between, which is really no more than a drawn-out good-conquers-evil redemption tale imbued with a slightly nauseating religiosity.  In one scene, which deserves to rank as the absolute nadir of Duvivier's oeuvre, a worked-up Salvation Army band accomplishes what looks like a triumphant mass exorcism on a hoard of flea-ridden sinners.  It's painful to watch, hideously phoney and pretty well undermines the entire film.  The only value it serves is to act as an ironic counterpoint for another sequence in which Pierre Fresnay gets blind drunk and is visibly taken over by demonic influences.  This latter sequence is so violently expressionistic (both in the way it is shot and edited) that it is terrifying to watch, and is by far the most striking in the film - an example of Duvivier at his most inspired.  

La Charrette fantôme has something of the film maudit about it.  Not only is it now completely overshadowed by an earlier film, it was entered in the first Festival de Cannes in 1939, an event which was cancelled owing to the small matter of a war about to break out in Europe.  It was also the last film that Duvivier made in France before his move to Hollywood, where he stayed for the duration of the war.  La Charrette fantôme may be a dark and moody piece but it has little of the bitterness and outright contempt for human nature that would characterise the director's work on his return to France in 1946.

Film Synopsis

He who hears the wheels of the Ghost Wagon knows he is soon going to die.  Every year on New Year's Eve, the Wagon, driven by Death himself, comes to claim someone at midnight...  Overtaken by sickness, David Holm becomes a wicked person.  He beats his wife and children and drinks himself into a blind stupor at the inn with his friend Georges.  On the last day of the year, Georges is killed at midnight and the Ghost Wagon takes him away.   Accused of his friend's murder, David seeks refuge at a Salvation Army hostel.  Here, he meets Sister Edith, who becomes attached to David and tries to save him.  When David is ready to leave the hostel, Edith asks him to return the following year at the same time.  But, without the kindly support of Sister Edith, David's life soon falls apart.  He does not know if his soul can be saved before the Ghost Wagon arrives to collect him...