Edit’s Hand: Music to The Phantom Carriage

Abstract

When I first saw sister Edit gently and tenderly put her hand on the drunken David Holm’s soiled coat in the film The Phantom Carriage (1921), her hand lingered there for a moment which became an eternity, and this changed my view of the silent film radically. In this lingering gesture her hidden feelings for this man to whom she was, against all reason, so strongly attracted, were suddenly revealed. There was a sensitivity and an expressiveness in Victor Sjöström’s artistic direction that before this I did not know existed in silent film. This was art with a visual poetry and a natural creation so subtle and nuanced that I was amazed. Before that I had accompanied as a pianist a large number of silent films but thought that most of the films I accompanied had something superficial and exaggerated in their expression, which often left me unaffected afterwards, even if the films themselves were fascinating with many fine details. In the film The Phantom Carriage, I saw something that changed me as a silent film musician because I saw a drama that was told in a timeless style with an empathetic warm tone and with such a careful and personalized voice, which at the same time was clear, individual and distinct. The story and the film experience were not a nostalgic trip but felt of current interest. It was universally human and real. (If you missed that scene in The Phantom Carriage you missed something important in early film history — the sensitivity evident in small nuances of imagery.) The movie experience made me henceforth always defend silent film in an overprotective manner against those who thought that early films were only theatrical and excessive. Watch The Phantom Carriage! I said euphorically to the uninitiated.