HÄXAN (1922) • Frame Rated

Many people’s first encounter with the title of Benjamin Christensen’s extraordinary 1922 film Häxan will have come tangentially via a much later movie, The Blair Witch Project (1999), whose creators operated through a company called Haxan Films. Indeed, Häxan itself may still be a film that’s more known than seen, and it’s only relatively recently that it has emerged from obscurity—a surprisingly large number of the books on horror film on my shelves completely fail to mention it.

Still, it has amassed a significant following among critics and connoisseurs over the years, particularly since Criterion’s DVD release in 2001 and then two more recent restorations by the Swedish Film Institute. The latest (from 2016) of these is showcased on this impressive new Radiance set, which is much more than “a film on Blu-ray”; it’s a collection of different cuts of Häxan that have appeared over the years, though admittedly none of the later ones are as effective as Christensen’s 1922 original, with some decent supplementary material too.

Attention like this has helped Häxan the movie finally become better-known than Haxan the company. But the linkage to The Blair Witch Project is no accident: like that film, although in a very different way, Häxan (known in English as The Witch and in some of its incarnations as Witchcraft Through the Ages) blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy, documentary and fiction.

Häxan was produced before horror really emerged as a distinct genre, although of course there were films on horror topics: there had been witch movies at least since 1908’s The Witch, for example, and several more about the Salem witch trials followed between then and 1922. It is nevertheless powerful and horrifying even a century later. The writer Adam Scovell, in his history of folk horror, suggests it may be the very first film of that type, and identifies how its portrayal of the 15th century as a real but very alien place contributes to its effect: “The horror of the past is not just occultism… but our very own lack of understanding.”

It was seemingly intended as the first of a trilogy on religious/spiritual issues, the remainder of them never produced; the rest of Christensen’s work is now pretty much forgotten, and if his first film The Mysterious X (1914) still has a few followers, his later Hollywood work like The Haunted House (1928) and Seven Footprints to Satan (1929) doesn’t.

His masterpiece had torpedoed Christensen’s career in Europe. With a budget of around $9M in today’s money, Häxan had been the most expensive of some 500 fiction films produced by Sweden during the silent era (it was a Swedish production, though Christensen was Danish and it was shot in his home country), a record reflected in the huge range of sets and elaborate effects. But its strongly anti-religious overtones and graphically brutal (for the time) torture scenes ensured firm opposition from censors, and even those critics who admired it often opined that it was unsuitable for general release.

The title Häxan simply indicates a witch. That used for the 1968 US re-release and still quite frequently cited as an alternative—Witchcraft Through the Ages—is very misleading, because Christensen’s film isn’t in fact a history of witches or witchcraft at all. It focuses almost exclusively on late medieval western European witchcraft involving The Devil, paying virtually no attention to the role of the witch as a practitioner of folk medicine and none at all to witches in other cultures; a briefer final section, the film’s weakest, draws some not quite convincing comparisons between the treatment of witches in 1488 and the treatment of women in European society in the 1920s.

Although the bulk of it is dramatised, Christensen styles it a “historic-cultural lecture” and divides it into seven chapters (one per reel). This is slightly arbitrary—chapters 3 to 5 all cover the same story—but, coincidentally or not, this structure echoes the seven sections of Heinrich Kramer’s Malleus Maleficarum of 1486, the most famous of all handbooks on witch-hunting and a text which Christensen acknowledged as a source of inspiration. (One of many sources—first-run audiences for Häxan received a bibliography, which you can’t imagine happening with most modern horror movies…)

Häxan opens with a kind of 1920s PowerPoint presentation, almost entirely based on still images, complete with a pointer drawing our attention to particular parts of the frame. Here Christensen covers early cosmology as well as beliefs about the structure of Earth, spirits, devils and so on, underlining how literally beliefs in witches and The Devil were held. A steam-powered (clearly not medieval) “strange old mechanical description of Hell” with moving figures, now in the collection of the Swedish Institute, is a highlight here.

For the second part of the film he switches to live action for a series of short stories illustrating medieval witchcraft, or at least medieval notions of what witchcraft involved. Though these are narrative, they’re more about atmosphere, and the people are much more “live illustrations” than genuine characters; but the scenes of witches going about their business are hypnotic and quite spooky at times.

The main narrative part of the film spans parts 3 to 5 and focuses both on the tribulations of a poor weaver called Maria (the almost 80-year-old Maren Pedersen) who is accused of witchcraft, and on the family of a printer—especially his wife Anna (Astrid Holm)—who make the initial accusation but are then suspected of witchcraft themselves. Also featuring prominently in this story are a number of friar-inquisitors who conduct the investigations into alleged witches, but while Christensen makes some attempt to present Maria and Anna as believable people, these friars are essentially representatives of oppression rather than individuals.

One is made up and shot exactly like a conventional silent-movie villain; and when a younger friar inadvertently confesses to sexual feelings (“how wonderful, it burnt me like fire, when the maiden grabbed my arm”) it’s to illustrate what Christensen sees as religious hypocrisy and the way that the friars regard women as dangerous “others”, rather than to encourage us to see him as a human being. Women are, it’s implied, a source of fear for these friars—at another point a “witch” is forced to enter her interrogation backwards so she cannot use magical influence on the judges—and this fear feeds their paranoia about witches.

Throughout, too, Christensen makes no secret of his distaste for the witch-hunting establishment and its supporters. Intertitles refer to “honest” ladies with quote marks; “two men of honour” (who look more like rascals) interrogate an accused witch in what’s essentially a good cop/bad cop routine. “Those who oppose the arrest of a witch are of course themselves witches”, subjected to an “infallible test” and put at the mercy of an “excellent judge”—more quote marks, more sarcasm—before, almost inevitably, being found guilty. “Each witch informs on ten others”, and in the case of Maria these are patently just people who have annoyed her rather than actual witches; she knows she’s doomed and so she’s going to take them down with her. Over two centuries, according to Christensen, eight million witches were executed.

This is an enormous over-estimate, possibly based on a flawed calculation in the late 18th century by Gottfried Christian Voigt which has persisted as a myth. Modern scholarship puts the total far lower, perhaps 1% of the figure Christensen presents, and indeed Häxan isn’t to be trusted on historical detail. The 1488 setting, for example, was far from the height of the witch-hunt craze as Christensen implies—it was really only the very beginning, though he may have chosen it as almost exactly the publication date of the Malleus Maleficarum—and he seems unbothered by the different periods from which the items shown in the first section date. Many historians would not even call 1488 medieval, preferring to see it as early modern. But “the past”, for Christensen, is apparently a largely undifferentiated swamp of ignorance.

Yet this does not let the film down in the way it might a more straightforward documentary, because the most striking and memorable elements of Häxan are not the supposedly factual points—or the narratives, either, for that matter. Some of the storytelling is eloquent, certainly: notably the plight of Maria, and an episode where a friar tries to trap a woman into revealing magical practices by promising her freedom if she only helps him. But a lot of it is not particularly easy to follow and the intertitles don’t do much to elucidate exactly what’s happening to who at any given moment.

So, while it’s not impossible to get involved in the narrative elements if you pay close attention, where Christensen really excels is in bringing to life a belief system that incorporated demonic witchcraft as a fully real part of everyday life.

Whenever the film moves away from the relatively realistic to scenes that now (and even in 1922) are completely incredible—the birth of The Devil’s monstrous children, witches riding their broomsticks, a long and fantastical Witches’ Sabbath—Christensen refuses to acknowledge that anything has changed, just as medieval art often portrays a quasi-realistic Devil intruding into a scene of normalcy. These passages are, for obvious reasons, much more dependent on special effects than the more naturalistic ones, and they tend to be literally darker simply because they are set at night, but there is no abrupt shift of style to imply that we have moved into the realms of fantasy, nor is there any “it was only a dream” moment when we return to realism.

The Devil himself (played by Christensen) appears just as a normal character would. The sheer amount of time given to the supernatural implies that it is not an aberration in a rational world, but a full, normal part of the world. And that is certainly a fair way to represent a medieval worldview, even if Christensen is unconcerned with precise historical accuracy.

After the end of Maria’s story, Häxan loses impetus a little. Part 6 dwells for a while on implements of torture (though the laughter of the friars during the torture of Maria is, if anything, more disturbing than the physical details) and Christensen then leaps forward to the 20th century, trying to draw parallels between past treatment of witches and contemporary treatment of women as “hysterics” (a connection also made by Freud). This final section will inevitably come across to modern audiences as less damning than it might have seemed in 1922; we may not have moved completely beyond patriarchal attitudes, but at least we are not quite so quick to lock women away in sanatoria at the slightest transgression or idiosyncrasy.

Häxan then ends with a very brief return to the 15th century. The implicit comparison between the stake where the medieval witch died and the warm shower to which the 20th-century “hysteric” is subjected seems stretched, but the final image of three burning pyres is haunting and chilling. And it is appropriate that this ending is purely visual rather than narrative or documentary, because so much of Häxan’s intensity is achieved purely through image. Christensen not only employs liberally the familiar technical repertoire of the 1920s director—lots and lots of iris shots, for example—but also goes far beyond the norm, producing the sinister, the lyrical or the startling with techniques like silhouette and double exposure, as well as more complex special effects.

The flight of the witches on their broomsticks is just as convincing as it would have been in a cheap movie 30 years later… which is to say, not convincing at all to today’s eyes, but it must have been remarkable at the time. A scene where The Devil showers an old woman with golden coins and then causes them to fly away from her (the latter effect generated through reverse motion) is still something to marvel at, while the disappearance of a witch from a friar’s cell is also very nicely done.

The Devil himself seems to be a real, organic being (and Christensen was so worried about detracting from this visual representation that he refused to add sound to the film later, arguing that it would be impossible to find a believable voice for The Devil). So do his ghastly offspring, as well as some of the other demonic creatures; and if at times they do have a certain Wicker Man guy-with-a-fake-head feel, that only adds to the folk-horror ambience.

Look beyond these more sensational visual facets of the film, too, and there is much else that is more subtly satisfying. Quite often, you could pause it and be rewarded with an almost painterly composition: the scenes of the Witches’ Sabbath echo Hieronymus Bosch, for example, while some shots of the young friar in particular are reminiscent of 15th-century portraiture. At several points in Häxan, you can easily be reminded of the way that a medieval visual language infuses Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal (1957).

And then, completely different in style from these, there are some wonderfully down-to-earth moments of realism too: a friar having his head shaved, Maria the “witch” messily shoving food into her hungry mouth. It is in scenes like these that the actors—who mostly take a distant back seat to the director in Häxan—have occasional, brief chances to shine, notably Pedersen as Maria.

Häxan was an odd film in 1922 and it’s an odd film today: what the American academics Alexander Doty and Patricia Clare Ingham describe in their book on Häxan (The Witch and the Hysteric) as its “formal strangeness” permeates the experience of watching Christensen’s movie. You can never be sure whether The Devil will suddenly pop up in a naturalistic scene; equally, you can never be sure whether the story will suddenly grind to a halt for a lecture. This perpetually unsettled feeling surely accounts for part of its impact, and though in the hands of a lesser filmmaker it might be merely unsatisfying, Christensen manages to carry it off. Even the final 1920s section, so much less effective than the earlier ones, still adds to Häxan through its sheer unexpectedness.

Certainly, questions can be raised about some of the film’s logic, as well as its historical accuracy. It appears for a long time to be criticising the medieval era as irrational, unlike 1922, but then suddenly stresses similarities to the present much more than differences. The whole film has seemed built on the assumption that a modern viewer will recognise medieval beliefs as unscientific; but Christensen then proceeds to reject science too, or at least some of it.

Is he saying that science is no better than superstition, and if so, doesn’t he also fatally undermine the science-based critique of superstition? If we in 1922 are “just as bad” as believers in satanic witchcraft, how is the film’s implicit presumption of superiority justified? Or is he just saying that one particular aspect of science is as bad as superstition; and if so, why?

It’s crucial here to recognise that the attitudes toward mental health and social deviance he decries were pretty mainstream at the time of Häxan, and were considered well-founded. Can you label certain bits of science “wrong” just because you don’t like where they lead? Isn’t starting out with the desired conclusion exactly what the witch-hunters did? Today we most likely do agree wholeheartedly with Christensen on the topic of female “hysteria” and the way it was used to marginalise women, but in a 1922 context, his argument is rather shaky.

Nor is it entirely clear what Christensen is arguing for, as opposed to against. A brief section presenting a female pilot (a woman in a man’s world) in a positive light hints that his ideal is a humanistic, equal treatment of women that does not frame them as flawed or as threats—the kind of inclusiveness which we claim to have reached today—but this isn’t really made explicit enough, and another section depicting physically unusual modern women could be seen as running counter to that anyway. Is Christensen saying that these women are strange because they are not conventionally beautiful? Or is he saying that we (in 1922) wrongly see them as strange for that reason?

It’s difficult to escape the conclusion (perhaps unfair… but it’s what comes across) that Christensen was looking for a modern equivalent of past witch-hunting and seized on psychiatry without fully thinking through where to draw parallels, and where to draw distinctions.

Ultimately, though, even if Christensen does not quite succeed in achieving his ambitions for film-as-essay or film-as-lecture, none of this should matter much to the viewer in 2024. The sections of Häxan which do work—the entire middle part of the film, after the PowerPoint presentation and before the switch to the present day—do so magnificently. His film is not just such an outstanding example of early horror cinema that it deserves to stand as a landmark alongside F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu from the same year. It is also, while undeniably idiosyncratic, one of the great silent movies of any genre.

SWEDEN • DENMARK | 1922 | 105-106 MINUTES (2016 RESTORATION) • 77 MINUTES (1968) • 82 MINUTES (1990) • 85 MINUTES (ESOTERIC CUT) | 1.33:1 | BLACK & WHITE (TINTED) | SILENT / SWEDISH INTERTITLES (1922) • SILENT / NARRATED IN ENGLISH (1968) • SILENT / NARRATED IN FRENCH (1990) • SILENT / ENGLISH INTERTITLES (ESOTERIC CUT)

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Limited Edition Blu-ray Special Features:

A comprehensive two-disc set comprises three versions of the 2016 restoration with different scores; audio commentary for one of them; three further cuts of the film; and a number of shorter items.

2K restoration by Svensk Filmindustri. Dating from 2016, this is the most recent of three restorations made of Häxan. This is not, however, the first time the 2016 version has appeared on disc. The quality is excellent, with no obvious damage or wear, though the image is very dark at times. Running at 105–106 minutes, it’s presented with three separate scores: by Matti Bye (2006), Bronnt Industries Kapital (2007) and Geoff Smith (2007).

Bye’s is probably the best of the many scores for Häxan on these discs: calm and low-key but eerie nonetheless. Especially notable is the way Bye refuses to overstate the drama: when a “witch” curses a man, it is accompanied by gentle, slightly dissonant piano music; the treatment of the torture scenes is melancholy and tragic.

A close second is the moody, somewhat minimalist Bronnt score. Smith, meanwhile, takes an interesting approach by building the entire work around the hammered dulcimer, a hybrid string/percussion instrument widely used in medieval Europe but rarely heard there today. However, this does limit the variety he can achieve from one section to the next.
NEW Audio commentary by Guy Adams and A.K. Benedict. An absolutely fascinating new commentary—from two writers of horror fiction—which is especially valuable on the literary and cultural context of Häxan, while also paying close attention to what’s on-screen (for the most part; it does drift away into more general chat at times).
Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968). At barely over an hour and a quarter, this is a much-reduced 1968 cut of the film transferred to 2K from a 16mm dupe negative, with English-language narration by William S. Burroughs replacing the original intertitles. Burroughs starts off volubly but talks less as it goes on, eventually just introducing chapters and scenes, which on the whole is a good thing—despite his countercultural cachet he comes across sounding more like a shopping-mall developer outlining plans to the local chamber of commerce. The score by Jean-Luc Ponty is sometimes effective, for example in the scene where inquisitors attempt to trick an accused witch into a confession, and modern jazz is used well in the 1920s section; but it’s often too upbeat for the solemn material.
Les Sorcières/Witchcraft Through the Ages (1982). A French-language version with narration by Jean-Pierre Kalfon, mostly based on the original’s intertitles. The transfer from VHS is surprisingly not too bad at all. Yann Beguin and Roland Bocquet contribute an electronic score that now feels rather dated.
Häxan—The Esoteric Cut (date unknown). An 85-minute with nicely “period” English-language intertitles and a serviceable piano score by Lawrence Leherissey.
Introduction by Benjamin Christensen. An eight-minute introduction by the director—rather weirdly looking like a doctor in his surgery—for rerelease of the film in 1941. With English subtitles.
NEW Appreciation by Guillermo del Toro. A new 14-minute discussion of Häxan by the Mexican filmmaker. The combination of his accent and the absence of subtitles makes it a little difficult to follow at times, but it’s worth persevering. Among del Toro’s many insightful points is the paradox that though Häxan is a serious film, much of its attraction nevertheless lies in its luridness.
NEW For Satan: The Convert’s Guide to Häxan. A new 12-minute mini-feature by Vito A. Rowlands (signing himself as Vito Adriaensens), author of the BFI Film Classics book on Häxan, amusingly presented as a silent film with intertitles and a bit of music. Often tongue-in-cheek, and sometimes lightweight too, it’s interesting on the subject of Christensen.
Outtakes. A different kind of witchcraft is on display in this 12-minute collection of tests for a number of Christensen’s films (including Häxan), illustrating the range of production techniques and effects he employed.
Costume screen test. A two-minute fragment from 1922, recently rediscovered, looking like it might be for a Satanic version of Cats (2019).
Reversible sleeve with new artwork by Time Tomorrow.
Six postcards of original promotional stills.
Limited Edition 80-page book featuring new writing by Pamela Hutchinson, Daniel Bird, Kat Ellinger, Brad Stevens, archival writing by Tom Milne and extracts from the film’s press book.