Rent Häxan (1922)

Ahead of its time - at the time - Häxan review by NK

Interesting dramatised documentary contrasting the witch hunts of the middle ages, with everyone denouncing everyone else as the witch-finders raked in the money, to the modern-day psychiatric approach ("modern day" of course being 1922). I'm sure audiences at the time were probably wowed by some of the special effects. For clarity, this DVD contains both the original 1922/1941 version and the 1968 release with William Burroughs narrating - the 1968 version also has a way-out jazz score.

Grotesque and Often Very Funny With It - Häxan review by griggs

Someone spliced a demonology lecture into a horror film a century ago, and it's still one of the odder things cinema has produced.

Häxan starts dry — the opening stretch plays like a lantern-slide lecture on medieval witchcraft, and I caught myself checking how much runtime was left. Stick with it, though, because once Benjamin Christensen moves past the lecture and into the reconstructions, the whole thing wakes up. The witch-trial sequences are nasty: accusation, interrogation and torture form a system built to produce exactly the confession it wants.

Christensen also plays Satan, and he looks like he's loving every second — all leering tongue and claws. The demons are grotesque and often very funny with it. Christensen commits completely to the madness.

The final act links historical witch-hunts to early twentieth-century ideas about hysteria and mental illness. The science hasn't aged well, but the underlying point still lands: societies have a nasty habit of punishing people they don't understand.

Patchy in places. Worth it anyway.

A Danish Cinematic Essay about Witches from 1921 with Images that'd get Trigger Warnings now - Häxan review by PV

I loved this. I watched the 1921 Danish version with subtitles. The option on the DVD Witchcraft Through The ages is the same whole film again, with a William Burroughs narration and a jazz score. I watched 10 minutes of that, but prefer the authentic Danish version with a score which tries as hard as possible to replicate what was heard at the November 1922 premier in Copenhagen.

Not a narrative film; more vignettes, a series of essays with still and moving pictures, in 7 chapters, some better than others. The actors are great and the costumes and scenes and special effects - theses are clearly all theatre actors and seem to be having a ball! The director plays the devil.

I loved the imagery - some so extreme TV would not allow it now. Reminded me of the best version of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT from 1930 in that. Just shows what priggish prudish hysterical puritans we have become.

One thing about this 1921 film is the medical belief of then which were 'modern' - a believe in HYSTERIA which it talks about as a definitive explanation of people behaving oddly. Our modern medicine has rejected that utterly of course. One little mention of the effects of THE WAR (1914-18 Great War of course) reminds us this was made in 1921.

Excellent and fascinating stuff!