The Sunday Morning Movie Presents: Häxan (1922) Run Time: 1H 45M

Welcome gentle readers to another installment of the Sunday Morning Movie. Today it’s a hybrid horror movie-documentary from the early twentieth century, Häxan:

https://youtu.be/Jl6NvqUM5IM?si=sUBxmQ4ikZbkgIq1

and next week’s movie, The Lathe of Heaven:

Reviews of Häxan:

BBC says:

Yet, Häxan is not simply a documentary or docudrama. Christensen’s skill in special effects and sheer visual panache means that as soon as the film shifts from its essayistic stance, Häxan punches as hard as any horror film from its era. Its imagery is some of the most unnerving made in the silent period as it conjures up depictions of occult practices and scenarios, from people cavorting with devils to child sacrifice. “It perfectly balances the beautiful and the grotesque and there are some scenes that are truly bizarre,” says artist and founder of the Folk Horror Revival project Andy Paciorek.

The Dead Pixels says:

For a film made over a century ago, one of the most remarkable things about Häxan is how surprisingly modern its technique feels. It’s incredibly prescient; the mix of archival imagery with a guiding, didactic narrative voice (conveyed through intertitles and the occasional wooden stick pointer on screen) is strikingly similar to the style of a contemporary video essay you’d find online today – just obviously more low-key due to the technology available at the time. There are a variety of visual tricks and techniques used including reversing film footage, stop motion and some early animation to convey the information in interesting ways so the 1 hour 45 minute runtime whizzed by.

The Craggus says:

In this way, Häxan feels less like a historical study and more like a fever dream – a visual nightmare where the line between reality and fantasy becomes blurred. It’s a technique that would go on to influence generations of horror filmmakers, from the German expressionists to surrealist directors like Luis Buñuel and the body horror of directors like David Cronenberg. Häxan was doing in 1922 what we now take for granted in horror – immersing the audience in grotesque, disturbing imagery to provoke an emotional, visceral reaction.

One of the reasons Häxan remains so fascinating nearly a century later is its willingness to critique the systems that perpetuated the witch hunts. While Christensen’s depictions of witches and demons are lurid and exaggerated, the real horror of the film lies in its depiction of institutional violence – how religious and political authorities used fear to control and manipulate people. The film suggests that the witch hunts were less about rooting out evil and more about enforcing patriarchal power and social conformity.

My take:
A really wild ride of a film. It’s scary in that way that only silent film can be. The special effects are surprisingly effective given when it was made. A rubber dead baby is tossed into a witch’s cauldron. Ill-gotten coins flow backwards when the film is reversed. Animated clay demons claw their way through a door.

As noted above, the real terror is the authoritarianism of the powers that be and the paranoia that gripped the common folk. An old woman’s ramblings become the basis of arrests and executions. I couldn’t help but think that we aren’t as far away from such dark times as we might like to think. I’m awarding it ⭐⭐, definitely worth another watch or two.

Director: Benjamin Christensen

Plot (Spoilers!): The film is divided into seven parts. The first part is a kind of academic lecture about the history of demons and witches in human cultures. Still images and moving models are used to illustrate the points discussed.

The second part is a series of vignettes portraying medieval people partaking in witchcraft rituals and Devil worship. Parts three through five show the wages of such sins: accused witches are dragged off to jail by the authorities, tried, and painfully executed. Finally, parts six and seven present modern takes on the medieval perceptions of witchcraft. Instead of possession and spellcasting, the fear of torture and mental disorders are used to explain behavior.