FILM FILM - University of Macau Library

48 Transition and Transformation
I really don’t know... Everything here strikes me so... These posters, horses, animals,
which I passed when I was looking for you... And finally, you, a clown in a circus! [...]
Could I expect it? It is true, when everybody there decided you were dead, I was the
only man who did not agree with them. I felt that you were still alive. But to find you
among such surroundings – I can’t understand it. 16
Forslund also states that Sjöström’s revision of the original play was, above all,
related to the end – as Consuelo and “He” both die in the play, as a result of him
poisoning her. 17 But a change that, in retrospect, turns out to be just as important
is the fact that two characters in the play – the so-called Gentleman who
had stolen his work and his wife, and Baron Regnard who is intending to marry
Consuelo – are changed into one and the same in the film version. This testifies
not so much to a simplification of the story as to a more complex character portrayal,
and could thus rather be seen as a development of the kind of complex
split personalities that Sjöström introduced in 1916 in The Kiss of Death.
However, another interpretation might be made from the revision of the end.
In Lagerlöf’s novel,The Phantom Carriage, the mutual love between Sister Edith
and David Holm is the main reason for him wanting to make up for his evil
deeds, and her support from the other side, together with his hopes for their
future reunion beyond death, is the driving force that leads to his final conversion.
Sjöström, however, downplays this sublime aspect. In contrast to Lagerlöf,
he insists on the reunion of the husband and wife. The unearthly love has to
give away to the earthly, and the lyrically sublime is replaced by lyrical intimacy.
“He” poisons Consuelo in the play because he wants to rescue her from the
evil Baron and he believes that only her death will achieve that goal. He hopes
that they will be reunited after death and describes to her future scenes of happiness.
To her question: “Is that the ring?”, “He” answers: “No, it is the sea and
the sun... what a sun! Don’t you feel that you are the foam, white sea-foam, and
you are flying to the sun? You feel light, you have no body, you are flying higher,
my love!” 18 And, as the Baron shoots himself, “He” is disappointed: “You
loved her so much, Baron? So Much? My Consuelo? And you want to be ahead
of me even there? No! I am coming. We shall prove then whose she is to be forever.”
19 However, just as in The Phantom Carriage, Sjöström, both in his
script and in the final film, gives priority to the earthly love between Consuelo
and Benzano over the unearthly love between “He” and Consuelo described in
the play, and therefore changes the ending.