Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages
People often see the Silent Movie era with sparkling bright eyes and nolstagia as people grasped the idea of being on screen. Doe-eyed starlets would romp around or do their little flapper thing as they overtly place their hand on their forehead to feign shock. These were the people who built the world of cinema as we know it. From the romance with Hollywood to the technology they developed. The ‘dos and donts’ and the stories they inspire, Silent Movies will continue to be the Grandfathers and Grandmothers of our cinematic world.
Including the fucking bat-shit insane ones such as Un Chein Andalou and this – Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages.
Haxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages is an enhanced documentary from Danish film-maker Benjamin Christensen. Playing the devil himself, rather excellently as well, the director takes you through segments and eras of witchcraft, how it enraptured women and pointing a red elongated finger at religion.
The surrealism imagery would definitely be the precursor of hippie drug induced horror. In fact, if you were to lace yourself with LCD or acid, and watch this film, it all seems to become crazier. Christensen enhances his scenes with different colours that are completely engages with tone. The colour palette is striking, this burn reds and cool blues that shape a hellish story of mysticism make the film an entrancing film. There’s a mixture of puppetry, some great effects for the time and these eerily haunted pictures. Juxtaposed against this lecture and documentary style, the movie is highly intelligent and wonderfully stylised for its age.
Hidden beneath it is this internal misogyny that is outted and developed. If you were to strike that thematic resonance (moving far far past The Devil churning thy butter and disappearing like a Powerpoint effect) then it’ll be this one. Through the different mediums and ages, the director is able to establish voice and viewpoint of his feminine characters, scrutinizing the men rather than the women who are tempted away by The Big Red. Christensen focus on the elaborations that guilty men pursue and how their infidelity is transformed into the culpability of “wicked women.” This is where true horror lies, not in the wicked imagery that is terrifying as well, but because of what humans are capable of.
It’s a film extraordinarily ahead of its time, birthing a generation of horror fanatics whilst also giving a hefty lesson in the paranoia of witchcraft before people realised that this was all ridiculous. It even took an astute eye and wielded it upon female hysteria (though it does comment that this may be the reason why women were perceived as witches and we all know that female hysteria was kinda bullshit). The point is that if Christensen did this today, he’d probably get the Oscar. Yet back in 1922, it was unfortunately banned. While it seems tame now, even full of laughter, the faint hearts of the Roaring Twenties couldn’t deal with it. (That being said, when he isn’t making your Flora, The Devil is chilling.)
It’s a great shame, because it is phenomenal and ground-breaking cinema.