Häxan (1922)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Very best movie i ever watch

So much average

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Benjamin Christensen directed, wrote, and even acted (as both the devil, *and* Christ) in this appropriately bleak, really creepy docu/ horror, about magic, Satanism, witchcraft, the occult, legends, folklore, and superstitions, filled with grotesquely beautiful images, and deep red tinting, for even creepier sweat-inducing tension and unease.Paving the way for the Mondo films decades later, its surprising bursts of nudity, violence, and torture, especially for a film from this time period, is all the more frightening and unsettling. Watch this at night, and with the lights turned out, and you will be awake all night.The original print, with colour tinting and subtitles, is highly recommended, but the shorter black-and-white print, with William Burroughs narration, is rather gimmicky, and is completely lacking in intensity.

The concept of Haxan is deceptively simple. It's a dramatization of witchcraft throughout the ages providing reenactments largely based on the Malleus Maleficarum a 13th century witch-hunting manual. There isn't really a formal narrative though director Benjamin Christensen himself becomes the reoccurring character of the devil throughout the film's various vignettes. It's split into four acts: one setting the standard for what witchcraft is, two giving the audience rhetorical and increasingly surreal "evidence" of witchcraft and the last giving us a pat explanation for witchcraft in a modern context.What sets Haxan apart from other surviving films of the silent era is it's attempt to construct a central argument and support it with "evidence" in the form of its reenactments. It doesn't work but the visual intelligence and editing of Haxan is leaps and bounds above anything Edison Manufacturing ever released. The comparisons between D.W. Griffith and Christensen are certainly well founded as Christensen provides coherence and insight amid the film's proto- surreal cinematography. He even provides some silhouetted animation that channels Lotte Reiniger's The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926).Yet just like Luis Bunuel's L'age d'Or (1930), Haxan sells itself as a documentary of sorts. The first act of the film struts across the screen with all the authority of an anthropology professor, dully pointing at this and that as evidence of witchcraft. There are still images of paintings and woodcarvings in addition to a moving diagram of the heliocentric solar system; all signalling to the existence of witchcraft in all its ugly, foul and murderous forms. As the other acts take over, so do our emotions. Only the "bad guy" as it were, becomes hypocritical clerics and gullible townsfolk. Are these poor desperate women victims of he times or are they truly accessories of the devil? It's clear the film wants to have it both ways.The film ultimately deconstructs the act of witchcraft from one of maleficence and devil worship to one of mental illness; cheer- leading for the current time's rational thinking winning out against superstition. It's this last act's classroom lecture-like prognostications, that stringently frames what we just saw in an un- disputable context, that ruins the film. It's as if we were put into a somnambulist trance; images of an almost existential nature filling our head with complex thoughts. Then like a blunt hammer, the film knocks us into reality and asks "what did you learn?" Plus, considering the film was released in 1922, we're experiencing a "modern" rationality that included the concepts of hysteria and electroshock therapy so Haxan isn't exactly the bastion of progressive thinking it thinks it is.From a historical perspective, Haxan is an interesting little relic that provides some stunning visual tableaux that rivals Nosferatu (1922) in the horror genre. Yet as a narrative, the film is an absolute mess. It ruins any credibility it has by constantly employing heavy-handed metaphor, and at times outright saying "look how backwards we once were."

Fictionalized documentary showing the evolution of witchcraft, from its pagan roots to its confusion with hysteria in modern Europe.Two versions of this film are floating around, or if you have the Criterion edition (which you should), you can watch either of them on the same disc. We have the earlier, silent version as it was intended to be seen and the re-cut version with jazz music and William Burroughs doing narration. Generally speaking, it is not a good idea to tamper with a classic, but how can you say no to Burroughs? Whether you consider this horror or a documentary, it is definitely worth seeing. Heck, it is worth owning. The imagery here is hard to beat, something that can only be imitated today, and probably imitated poorly.

A Wow Inducing Silent Movie that was, to say the least, Ahead of its Time. A Docu-Drama Study/Presentation of Witchcraft. It Presents in Wild Abandon, Bizarre, Sharply Defined, Horrific, and Surrealistic Images of Satan and His Dominions Performing Diabolical Acts that were and are Impressive, Repulsive, and Highly Entertaining. Things on Screen Rarely Seen and were Never Remotely Approached after the Code.It Adopts a Back and Forth Style of Title Card Information on the Subject, Combined with some Straight Forward Dramatizations of Witches, Clergy, and the Inquisition. Heavily Stylistic Scenes with Pseudo-Animation and Tons of Makeup combine with Disturbing, Ugly, and Pathetic People. There is some Artful Model-Work with Broom Flying Witches that was Liberally Cribbed by Disney in Fantasia (1940).Incredibly Influential and a Phantasmagorical Treat that has been Restored and can be Enjoyed by those who Normally Stay Away from Silent Films. It is a Halloween Perennial for Hipsters and it is one of those that Defies Description. The Criterion Collection Contains two versions that are Equally Inviting with many Insightful Extras.