La charrette fantôme (Der Geisterwagen)

Since its premiere, the film has been unjustly overshadowed by Viktor Sjöström's Körkarlen (1921), the first film adaptation of Selma Lagerlöf's novel The Carter of Death. Duvivier breaks away from the complex flashback structure of the original and the previous film and concentrates much more on the Christian motifs of the story in his linear narrative about the "ghost wagon", which the last person to die before the turn of the year has to pull for a year in order to collect the souls of the deceased. This time, this fate will befall the drifter Georges (Louis Jouvet, who already looks like the living death), the drinking buddy of David Holm (Pierre Fresnay), who in turn has found refuge in the newly opened Salvation Army asylum with Sister Edith (Micheline Francey), who recognizes a soul to be saved in the sick and fallen glassblower. Duvivier sometimes quotes the aesthetics of expressionist silent films without restraint and at the same time creates a late high point of poetic realism. (Frederik Lang)