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Swedish 1922 silent horror essay film

the film

Häxan (, "The Witch"; Danish and Norwegian Bokmål: Heksen, "The Witch"; English: The Witches; released in the US in 1968 as Witchcraft Through the Ages) is a 1922 silent horror essay film written and directed by Benjamin Christensen. Consisting partly of documentary style storytelling as well as dramatized narrative sequences, the film purports to chart the historical roots and superstitions surrounding witchcraft, beginning in the Middle Ages through the 20th century. Based partly on Christensen's own study of the Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century German guide for inquisitors, Häxan proposes that such witch hunts may have stemmed from misunderstandings of mental or neurological disorders, triggering mass hysteria. Häxan is a Swedish film produced by AB Svensk Filmindustri, but shot in Denmark in 1920–1921. With Christensen's meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and its lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made at the time, costing nearly two million Swedish kronor. In 1968, Metro Pictures Corporation re edited and re released Häxan in the US under the title Witchcraft Through the Ages. This version includes an English language narration by William S. Burroughs. The original Swedish language version of Häxan has undergone three restorations by the Swedish Film Institute, carried out in 1976, 2007 and 2016. Since its initial release, Häxan has received praise for its combination of documentary style and narrative storytelling, as well as its visual imagery, and has been called Christensen's masterpiece.

A scholarly dissertation on the appearances of demons and witches in primitive and medieval culture, the first segment of the film uses a number of photographs of statuary, paintings, and woodcuts as demonstrative pieces. In addition, several large scale models are employed to demonstrate medieval concepts of the structure of the Solar System and the commonly accepted depiction of Hell.

The second segment of the film is a series of vignettes that theatrically demonstrate medieval superstition and beliefs concerning witchcraft, including Satan tempting a sleeping woman away from her husband's bed, terrorizing a group of monks, then murdering another woman in her bed by choking her. Also shown is a woman purchasing a love potion from a supposed witch named Karna in order to seduce a monk, and a supposed witch named Apelone dreaming of waking up in a castle, where Satan presents her with coins that she is unable to hold on to and festivities that she is unable to participate in.

Set in the Middle Ages, this narrative is used to demonstrate the treatment of suspected witches by the religious authorities of the time. A printer named Jesper dies in bed, and his family consequently accuses an old woman, Maria the weaver, of causing his death through witchcraft. Jesper's wife Anna visits the residence of traveling Inquisition judges, grasping one of their arms in desperation and asking that they try Maria for witchcraft. Maria is arrested, and after being tortured by inquisitors, admits to involvement in witchcraft. She describes giving birth to children fathered by Satan, being smeared with witch ointment, and attending a Witches' Sabbath, where she claims witches and sorcerers desecrated a cross, feasted with demons, and kissed Satan's buttocks. She "names" other supposed witches, including two of the women in Jesper's household. Eventually, Anna is arrested as a witch when the inquisitor whose arm she grabbed accuses her of bewitching him. She is tricked into what is perceived as a confession, and is sentenced to be burned at the stake. Intertitles claim that over eight million women, men and children were burned as witches.

The final segments of the film seek to demonstrate how the superstitions of old have become better understood. Christensen offers the threat of medieval torture methods as an explanation for why many supposed heretics confessed to being involved in witchcraft. Though he does not deny the existence of the Devil, Christensen claims that those accused of witchcraft may have been suffering from what are recognized in modern times as mental or neurological disorders. A nun named Sister Cecilia is depicted as being coerced by Satan into desecrating a consecrated host and stealing a statue of the baby Jesus. Her actions are then contrasted with vignettes about a somnambulist, a pyromaniac, and a kleptomaniac. It is suggested that such behaviors would have been thought of as demonically influenced in medieval times, whereas modern societies recognize them as psychological ailments (referred to in the film as hysteria). The film ends with a contrast between a woman being sent away to a mental institution and a scene with burning supposed witches on the stake.

The cast of Häxan includes: He claims that the film has a "libertarian message", with demonic possession being a result of the "unnatural sexual continence that is demanded of the young nuns. The film therefore follows a broadly Freudian line in linking possession to hysteria. The basis of this idea is that repressed sexual desires are dynamic and, rather than lying dormant, actively find ways of being fulfilled in exaggerated and extreme ways." Christensen obtained funding from the large Swedish production company Svensk Filmindustri, preferring it over the local Danish film studios, so that he could maintain complete artistic freedom. Various demons are portrayed by actors wearing special effects makeup;

Häxan has had numerous different live scores over the years. When it premiered in Sweden, its accompaniment was compiled from pre existing compositions. Details of the selection, which met with the director's enthusiastic approval, have been lost, but it was probably the same documented music as for the Copenhagen premiere two months later. In Copenhagen, it was played by a 50 piece orchestra, and this score, combining pieces by Schubert, Gluck, and Beethoven, was restored and recorded with a smaller ensemble by arranger/conductor Gillian Anderson for the 2001 Criterion Collection DVD edition.

Häxan received a somewhat lukewarm, but mostly positive, response from critics upon its original release. As academic James Kendrick wrote, initial reviewers of the film "were confounded by [its] boundary crossing aesthetic." Its thematic content stirred controversy as well. A contemporary critic in Variety, for example, praised the film's acting, production, and its many scenes of "unadulterated horror", but added that "wonderful though this picture is, it is absolutely unfit for public exhibition." A Copenhagen reviewer was likewise offended by "the satanic, perverted cruelty that blazes out of it, the cruelty we all know has stalked the ages like an evil shaggy beast, the chimera of mankind. But when it is captured, let it be locked up in a cell, either in a prison or a madhouse. Do not let it be presented with music by Wagner or Chopin, [ ] to young men and women, who have entered the enchanted world of a movie theatre." Conversely, a critic for The New York Times wrote in 1929: "The picture is, for the most part, fantastically conceived and directed, holding the onlooker in a sort of medieval spell. Most of the characters seem to have stepped from primitive paintings."

Häxan has become regarded by critics and scholars as Christensen's finest work. Häxan is listed in the film reference book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die by Steven Jay Scheider, who writes: "Part earnest academic exercise in correlating ancient fears with misunderstandings about mental illness and part salacious horror movie, Häxan is truly a unique work that still holds power to unnerve, even in today's jaded era." Author James J. Mulay praised the film's makeup effects, sets, costumes, and casting, as well as Christensen's "dynamic combination of both stage tricks and innovative camera techniques [ ] [that he uses] to create his fantastical world." Peter Cowie similarly argued in Eighty Years of Cinema that it established Christensen as "an auteur of uncommon imagination and with a pictorial flair far ahead of his time." Film critic Leonard Maltin awarded the film three out of a possible four stars, lauding it as "visually stunning" and "genuinely scary". He additionally praised the director's performance as Satan. Dave Kehr of the Chicago Reader suggested that the film's "episodic, rhetorical structure [ ] would have appealed to Jean Luc Godard", and wrote that "Christensen apparently intended [Häxan] as a serious study of witchcraft (which he diagnoses, in an early pop Freud conclusion, as female hysteria), but what he really has is a pretense for sadistic pornography. The film has acquired impact with age: instead of seeming quaint, the nude scenes and scatological references now have a crumbly, sinister quality—they seem the survivals of ancient, unhealthy imaginations." Ghostwatch screenwriter Stephen Volk regards the film as "a visceral experience disguised as an erudite thesis", and sets it in the same league as Nosferatu and Vampyr.