Haxan
(Benjamin Christensen) 1922
Filmed in 1922, Benjamin Christensen‘s witch documentary Haxan is an interesting part of film history. It is ostensibly a documentary, but the majority of the film is comprised of dramatizations based upon historical facts. Clearly, the lines between fiction and nonfiction film had not been as firmly established then as they are now. Now thanks to the fine folks at Criterion, who have seen fit to re-release the film in a wonderfully comprehensive DVD, we can judge the venture using modern standards. The film opens with a lecture about the belief systems of pre-Renaissance times, and how those beliefs fostered the creation of the witch myth. After about fifteen minutes of this, however, it launches into its longest segment: a staging of one town’s visit from the traveling witch inquisition set in 1498.
This segment lasts nearly half of the film’s running time, and it is rather interesting. The preceding footage was rather straightforward documentary footage, which combined narrating intertitles with shots of old illustrations and models. The dramatization doesn’t exactly shake the earlier narration, but the film seems to suddenly become more interested in the entertainment and titillation of the audience than its education. Several clear narratives emerge here. A woman buys a love potion from the local sorceress to seduce a pious man. A family, torn by grief, accuses a beggar woman as a witch when their patriarch falls ill; only to be later implicated themselves by her. A young friar begs to be whipped, so he may cleanse himself of impure thoughts. It’s devilishly enjoyable stuff. The documentary setup seems to have been created mostly to legitimize the proceedings, and we don’t much mind. The film is clearly skewering religion, showing it as a gluttonous boy’s club, and it’s only by claiming to be the bearer of fact that it seems able to justify itself.
These scenes also show many sequences that speculate about the witch’s behavior. These fantastical, effects-filled bits are one of the film’s true highlights. Like Cocteau’s work, they manage to create a legitimate illusion with the simplest effects. The Devil (played here by the director!) is shown taunting and seducing the witches as they dance naked around him, and kiss his ass in reverence. There’s a great deal of playfulness in these scenes, and it’s not functioning merely on a campy level. In the film’s 1941 re-release, it was accompanied by an introduction by the director in which he says he feels the silent film is much better than the sound film in creating a fantasy world. After all, he says, who can create a voice for the Devil that surpasses that in the viewer’s imagination. I think, to a degree, he is right. The film hasn’t dated nearly as badly as one might suspect.
The concluding segments show, respectively, a convent in which a group of nuns have succumbed to the Devil’s madness, and the (ahem) modern explanations for witchcraft. The convent scenes are genuinely disturbing, and are probably the film’s most successful sequence. The so-called possession feels as if it has sprung from the convent’s religious fervor, and the Devil seems a convenient excuse to end repression. The modern day segment, which tries to explain the witches’ behavior as a combination of sleepwalking and hysteria hasn’t aged quite as well. Clearly, the average viewer today is better equipped to explain the phenomena than an expert from 1922. Another aspect of the film, taken from the included director’s 1941 introduction, looks even more foolhardy in retrospect. He asserts that the witch trials were humanity’s greatest tragedy, but were also the result of an unenlightened, long-gone people. He suggests nothing similar could happen in modern times, although the concurrent Holocaust proved that was clearly not the case. Nonetheless, the film stands as a fascinating historical document, and, more surprisingly, as a thoroughly watchable film.
The film’s new DVD version stands mostly as a testament to the abuse that the work has received over the years. Included is a 74-minute 1968 version of the film, narrated by William S. Burroughs that seems to view the film as a campy romp. An informative commentary by Danish film scholar Casper Tybjerg reveals the film went through a similar fate in its German release. This re-edited version seems to titter at itself as it spruces up the translation of the intertitles to make them more titillating. It expects us to giggle when Burroughs curses, and replaces the film’s solid scoring with inappropriate jazz music. Not surprisingly, it’s this version of the film that feels more dated. Christensen’s original production still seems quite vital.
*** 1/2