For me, this was a masterpiece. I watched a beautifully restored Criterion Collection version that really highlighted the movie’s special effects as well as the really stellar silent acting. The acting in American silents can often feel for me stilted, melodramatic, and theatrical (which it was, obviously)–but there was a noticeable shift in acting style here hooked me from the start.

“Lord, please let my soul come to maturity before it is reaped.”–David Holm

This Swedish film by Victor Sjöström is really interesting narratively, using nested flashbacks (ahead of its time) to tell the story of David Holm, a drunk who dies and is confronted with his life’s choices by the steward of Death (the driver of the carriage.) In less skilled hands this could have been a maudlin morality play, but here it became so much more. The emotion stirred here was genuine–I can’t think of another silent movie from this era that feels less dated or more modern. The ending, involving a near-suicide/filicide was really gut-wrenching. (And sidenote: very strange to spot the second pre-reference to The Shining’s axe scene in a week.)