La Sorcellerie à travers les âges

After many tribulations and false starts (including having my Order cancelled by the retailer due to lack of funds on my Credit Card and having the DVD stolen - by some stingy customs official, I presume – when it was finally shipped!), I recently managed to sit down and watch in its entirety, The Criterion Collection's DVD of Benjamin Christensen's HAXAN.

What an amazing film! What a fabulous disc! Apart from featuring a beautifully restored, tinted version of the original, full-length semi-documentary and its 1967 'revamping' for US audiences (redundant perhaps, but it is still nice to be able to compare the images in black and white), it also contains one of the best Audio Commentaries I have ever listened to. It is the work of Casper Tybjerg who also recorded an equally impressive one for the Criterion DVD of Carl Theodor Dreyer's THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC.

I think it is opportune that I mention the Dreyer film at this point because there are undeniable similarities between Christensen's film (released in 1922) and Dreyer's 'symphony of faces' (from 1928) and also his DAY OF WRATH (1943). HAXAN features two lengthy interrogation scenes involving devious clergymen and an old crone accused of witchcraft, which accusations turn out to have been true (as in DAY OF WRATH) and another one where an innocent waif is trapped into admitting her guilt (as in THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC). This is not to say that Dreyer 'lifted' these passages from Christensen's film – actually Dreyer is one of my favorite film directors and I consider THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC to be one of the greatest films ever made – but rather that he admired his work enough to pay homage to him in his later films. HAXAN also features an extensive use of close ups in its interrogation scenes, which were of course the hallmark of Dreyer's entire Joan of Arc film. Its influence may also be traced to the narrative structure of Luis Bunuel's anarchic classic of surrealism, L'AGE D'OR (1930), which testifies that Benjamin Christensen is a major artist, one who was held in high esteem by his peers in his day, but whose work was subsequently unjustly forgotten and vastly under-appreciated, due in part to its utter unavailability for serious evaluation.

HAXAN contains several incredible sequences depicting devil worship in a very vivid manner which still retain their power to shock today eighty years later. I do not know how Christensen was allowed to get away with it back then – and indeed the film was heavily censored in its initial showings around the world – but I guess it was evident that the director's aim was not to wallow gratuitously in sensationalism but to portray as realistic a tableau of witchcraft through the ages as was possible at the time. There are some scenes which make you wince once in a while (like the slaughter of the child with blood pouring down its legs into a chalice beneath it), but there is enough going on visually to take your mind off its undercurrent of gore and depravity. One cannot underestimate the fact that without HAXAN there would probably never have been such horror film touchstones like Rex Ingram's THE MAGICIAN (1926), Edgar G. Ulmer's THE BLACK CAT (1934), Jacques Tourneur's NIGHT OF THE DEMON (1957), Mario Bava's BLACK Sunday (1960), John Moxey's THE CITY OF THE DEAD (1960), Sidney Hayers' NIGHT OF THE EAGLE (1961), Terence Fisher's THE DEVIL RIDES OUT (1968), Roman Polanski's ROSEMARY'S BABY (1968), Michael Reeves' WITCHFINDER GENERAL (1968), William Friedkin's THE EXORCIST (1973), Robin Hardy's THE WICKER MAN (1973), Richard Donner's THE OMEN (1976) and Dario Argento's SUSPIRIA (1976), all of which deal with diabolism or pagan worship.

It should be noted that Christensen himself gives a memorable performance as Satan, joyfully seducing a wife in bed next to her sleeping husband and gleefully terrorizing a priest during a moment of weakness. Unfortunately, HAXAN is the only film directed by Benjamin Christensen which is widely available today. But, if it is anything to go by, Casper Tybjerg's evaluation of the two movies which he directed prior to HAXAN, namely THE MYSTERIOUS X (1913; aka: ORDERS UNDER SEAL) and BLIND JUSTICE (1916) should dispel the myth that D.W. Griffith claimed the mantle of the first great film director when he made THE BIRTH OF A NATION (1915), although the latter was certainly the first great American film-maker. However the recent apparition of two major Louis Feuillade works, FANTOMAS (1913-14; on a superb two-disc Limited Edition DVD on Region 2) and LES VAMPIRES (1915-16; released by Water Bearer Films through Image Entertainment on Region 1) should go a long way in redressing the facts and giving this unsung, barely remembered master his due. Maybe one day, we will be just as lucky in being provided with the opportunity of evaluating on DVD Benjamin Christensen's work prior to and after HAXAN. At any rate, THE DEVIL'S CIRCUS (1926; with Norma Shearer), MOCKERY (1927; with Lon Chaney), the three films he made with Thelma Todd, THE HAUNTED HOUSE (1928), SEVEN FOOTPRINTS TO Satan (1929) and THE HOUSE OF HORROR (1929) and THE MYSTERIOUS ISLAND (1929; co-directed with Maurice Tourneur and Lucien Hubbard) should be worth watching if ever they turn up on DVD. I guess there's a pretty slim chance of that ever happening, but who knows in these cases?

Imagine Tod Browning and Jean Cocteau making a film together and you might begin to get an idea of what you'll see in this film. It's rather disjointed in its storytelling but who cares? Where else can you see witches kissing the ass of Satan, boiling non-baptized babies, and giving birth to demons? Not to mention getting a full tour of the state-of-the-art in medieval torture devices! The film is really no more a documentary than "The Blair Witch Project" but certainly in the 1920s it must have been considered as such. Today, it makes for great Halloween viewing, giving us a chance to re-live the chilling legends that kept us afraid of the dark as children. The otherworldly glow of 1920s cinematography will retain each creepy image in your mind like musty cobwebs. A must-see for classic horror fans!

I found this 1922 "documentary" to be amazing in it's inovative and creative portrayal of witchcraft in the middle ages. Scenes of nudity and torture made this film very controversial in 1922 and caused it to be banned as well as greatly edited in later versions. Criterion has done a great job of preserving the film as it was intended to be seen with censored footage restored, an excellent tinted print, a corrected "projection" speed, a new score that recreates the music played at the original Danish premiere, and some interesting extras. The 1968 William Burroughs narrarated version is also included here and it's pretty ridiculous. The jazz soundtrack is just so very wrong. But still, it's interesting to see, kind of like the "Love Conquers All" version of Brazil. I think that anyone who is interested in film and film history will find this dvd facinating.

This film gives us a thoughtful look at the horrifying potential of fear, ignorance and superstition. I have to say I admire the courage Benjamin Christensen showed in making this film which not only must have offended the sensibilities of the time for the obvious reasons but also because it dared to champion reason over superstition as a way of explaining things which we do not fully understand. This film resonates with its message that those who judged others unjust may not have been just themselves.

More commonly known as "Witchcraft Through the Ages", this is definitely one of the most bizarre, visually arresting movies of all time, even nearly 80 years later. It starts out as a rather dry documentary, detailing medieval superstitions and folklore while showing ancient woodcarvings of witches and demons in various forms. Then we move on into the dramatic portion of the film. In one scene we see witches concocting potions using the body parts of corpses from the gallows. One witch walks in carrying a bundle of sticks, and undoes the bundle revealing a decomposed human hand hidden inside. Fans of "The Blair Witch Project" should take notice, especially considering that the Danish title of this film is "Haxan", also the name of the movie company that created "Blair Witch".

Director Benjamin Christensen appears as a leering, tongue-wagging Satan, with very realistic makeup. The witches are shown with the Devil and his minions performing various acts of sacrilege and perversion that must have been extremely shocking at the time the movie originally appeared, and would be offensive to many people still. The film was banned for many years because of the depiction of these acts (not to mention the occasional nudity), as well as sacrileges performed by nuns and monks. There are some stop-motion animation sequences (pre-Harryhousen, no less) that are very good, especially for the time. This is a difficult movie to describe. It really is something that you'd have to see for yourself.

The version I am reviewing is actually the re-issue from 1966, with a dubbed-over narration by beat novelist/junkie William Burroughs, and a modern, jazzy score featuring Jean-Luc Ponty. I enjoyed Burroughs' narration quite a bit, but oftimes the music is annoyingly inappropriate. Sometimes it works very well, but most of the time I was wishing for a standard orchestral, or vitaphone, score. A Klezmer score, even, would have been very effective. There are a few different versions available, some with subtitles and an orchestral score. Maybe one of these days they'll come out with a version featuring the Burroughs narration along with a more appropriate orchestral score. That would be perfect. As it is, this an impressive, compulsively watchable film that still goes further than most dare to go, even in these much more permissive times.