The most fascinating thing about Häxan is that it is old enough now (at over a century) to be looked at with the same lens that it itself uses to examine the Middle Ages. Just as it posits that the apparent witches of centuries ago were simply women with "hysteria" that the people of that time didn't understand or care to diagnose, we now know hysteria itself to be a pseudo-scientific understanding of mental illness derived from juvenile psychology and plain old misogyny more than any accurate medicinal basis.
It is still an intriguing and utterly mesmerizing film though, perhaps because of this fact that so squarely places it in history by its own measure of historiography. But it's also spontaneously fun and wild in a way that dispels any misconception that the silent era was drab and boring. This is a movie about witchcraft and demons, that depicts torture and hell, features nudity, sacrilege, and the Devil constantly flicking his tongue perversely, masturbating a butter churn, and having followers literally kiss his ass. And it is a movie that purports a certain honesty in this imagery, drawn from real beliefs of the era, but also perhaps just an excuse for Danish director Benjamin Christensen (who himself dons the costume of the devil) to film and edit together a lot of strangely hypnotic and provocative scenes as a Boschian (Hieronymous that is) tapestry of medieval Catholic superstition.
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The movie is almost a prototype video essay on the history of witchcraft and the religious beliefs associated, beginning on essentially a lecture using visual aides of various paintings and frescoes of the medieval and Renaissance eras (with a helpful pointer stick in frame for emphasis) -and one bit, showcasing the medieval view of the Earth and heavens, a single expressionist shot of what appear to be a few dozen extras that really feels evocative of the imagery in Méliès movies. There is narrative to the film eventually, but it takes the form of re-enactment -a series of sketches designed to support a theme, and of course the greater thesis of the movie; depicting things like the Devil tempting a married woman away from her husband, a witch using a potion for the seduction of a monk, and a nun being moved to desecrate various religious sacraments.
Most notable is a long sequence depicting the ways women accused of witchcraft were treated by religious authorities, and it plays out not unlike The Crucible and just as pointedly. An elderly weaver named Maria (Maren Pedersen) is accused of using witchcraft to kill a local printer and is subject to much scrutiny and abuse by the church officials, who are seen to scheme ways of tricking her into a confession. They do the same towards the printer's wife Anna (Astrid Holm) when she too is accused.
Christensen very clearly intends a lot of audience sympathy towards these women -opining their innocence while stopping short of completely discrediting witch hunts as anything more than simple misogyny and sexual bigotry. But this and the vehement depiction of church officials as corrupt and malicious made Häxan radical for its time even beyond the shock value of its imagery. Catholic dogma then and now legitimises witchcraft and reveres the clergy, and this movie attacks both those tenets, with the priests working to intentionally frame innocent women, one just because she happened to be attractive to one of the younger, less disciplined monks. And the film makes a habit to point out how ludicrous the church's methods were, including the very same witch test gleefully mocked fifty-three years later in Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
These sections of the film age wonderfully, both in their expressed values and their expressed artistry. The crispness to the images stands out, the old-fashioned cinematography and lighting that accentuates a design or a face -all of Maria's wrinkles are illuminated in bronze. It does at times evoke, without being so distinct, the look of something like The Passion of Joan of Arc -which is a hell of a thing to say for a film that also includes a dream sequence of men in giant cat costumes sneaking past giant rat-costumed guards. But in the lattermost sections where Christensen attempts to tie up his analysis, linking witchcraft to "hysteria", that the film inevitably dates itself -though in a way more quaint than offensive.
Still, modern social commentary pales to the extravagances of demons and devils and dark magic spotlighted in illusions that make for the movie's most daring and fun excursions -and I do believe the reason Christensen made this as a movie rather than a mere published dissertation. Apart from simply the bewildering nature of it all, it's so wildly creative and visually thrilling, impressive especially given the resources of the time. So much is put into making these sequences disturbing in that very Catholic way -a dog skeleton hanging over a cauldron, a nude woman surrounded by antiques being groped by talon-like hands, a dance of demons accompanied by Pan -every one of them decked out in frightful elaborate make-up. It paints an inspired picture of Hell that Christensen is surely a little attracted to, immortal and freaky, and Häxan's deserved legacy.
Criterion Recommendation: The Witch (2015)
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Well, sticking to a witching theme, a movie that depicts the witchcraft panic of a few centuries later and is one of the best modern movies on the subject, Robert Eggers's first film The Witch is honestly a semi-regular Halloween watch for me now. Drenched in a period detail so few other movies take to, it is the story of a Puritan family during the early days of colonial settlement in New England who are kicked out of their community to abide by their fundamentalism in a farm alone by a forest, where the eerie and evil powers of the ancient environment slowly wreak havoc on the family's tranquillity. Written in the vernacular of the age and derived entirely from recorded superstitions of Puritans of the time, it is a uniquely transporting movie that renders its horror in brooding and disturbingly fatalistic ways. Featuring a cast of character actors led by Anya Taylor-Joy in her breakout role, it is strikingly performed as well; and the freakiness of its ending is part unsettling, part liberating -as the film goes to great lengths highlighting the visceral suppression of women in this age and religious context. A spectacular moody piece of folk horror.
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