RetroClips

Sjöström shot the same footage twice and combined it in-camera to get this translucent, layered ghost effect -- no opticals, no lab tricks available yet in 1921, just precise double exposure. Ingmar Bergman called it one of the films that made him want to make films at all, and screened it every year on his birthday for most of his life; the hooded Death figure here is a direct ancestor of Bergman's own in The Seventh Seal.