Perhaps the most famous of all Swedish silents, Körkarlen has been restored many times. A black-and-white inter-negative was made from a tinted nitrate print in the late 60’s, and this negative has been the source for all further prints. In March 2003 a new tinted print was struck using the Desmet method, which brings a sharper contrast to the images compared to the older, filter-tinted prints.

New Year’s Eve night. The entire range of delusions and hopes in life comes into focus for a brief instant. Drunks in the cemetery. The past begins to move in people’s minds. In superimposition, we see the ocean, the drowned man, death’s chariot coming to pick up the bodies; in the background, the “Grim Reaper” lifts a shadow while the body remains at the bottom of the sea: there is something truly supernatural in these images, there is figurative poetry, the largest, most surprising element in the film. The imagination is not just a glimmer or a trick, but a deep-rooted fact in the foundations of the real world.

Peter von Bagh