Documentaries weren't clearly defined as a genre in the early days of film, but film historians cite Nanook of the North (the 1922 film about an Eskimo hunter) as the first. Benjamin Christensen's bizarre 1922 film about witchcraft, H�xan, could also be considered loosely as another pioneering documentary although the director stretches the boundaries with reenactments of occult practices.
Christensen, who suffered from nervousness that struck down his early operatic and stage acting career, astutely learned effective film narrative techniques from D.W. Griffith and other pioneers to put together this entertaining film. He wrote seven other scripts and directed fourteen other movies, but Haxan (Witchcraft through the Ages) is his most well known and is the only one easily accessible, thanks to the Criterion Collection.
Divided into seven sections, the first is straight schoolhouse lecture material, utilizing slides of woodcuts and figurines starting from ancient Persia to illustrate the historical origins of Satanic ritual and witchcraft, and briefly explore the world view of earlier periods to explain over-reliance on superstition. The stills are at times difficult to decipher along, but the extras on the DVD help clarify these tremendously�an updated 1968 sound version enlarges many of these visuals and a separate section allows you to examine the pictures at your own pace.
The illustrated lecture serves as necessary background for the next sections, which are the re-enactments from the Middle Ages, cited as the period that became obsessed with witchcraft and superstition. In fact, Christensen declares that eight million souls were executed for the practice over a two hundred year period. In another excellent bonus feature of the Criterion DVD, the filmmaker faces the camera and lectures, citing four types of witches illustrated in his docu-drama:
1. Professional witch: they often knew medicinal values of plants or had clairvoyant talents.
2. Physically deformed: "inconsequential" souls that were often the first offered to judges when local witchcraft was suspected.
3. Hysterical women: may be insane or temporarily driven insane under pressure (including torture)
4. Average women: unjustly accused souls often named when others are tortured to reveal cohorts that traffic with the Devil
The film serves as excellent source material on witchcraft, and certainly Arthur Miller could have drawn upon Christensen's conclusions as he crafted The Crucible (concerning the Salem witchcraft trials). Created thirty years before the McCarthyism frenzy of the fifties, Christensen's concluding section draws parallels between the ancient superstitions and modern times where people seek fortune tellers and where the insane are brought before courts or committed to asylums instead of being dragged before the church for judgement. Despite the preaching, the final section is certainly a valid assessment that applies even eighty years later and doesn't spoil the highlights of the instructional film from the middle sections.
Christensen presents his factual matters with extremely entertaining scenarios in the five middle areas. For a faster moving version with Beat poet William Burrough's deep voice narration and more modern expressions, be sure to check out the 1968 version also contained on the Criterion disk. Instead of the first witch concocting a love potion of "dove hearts and cat feces," the boiled midnight brew contains the more straightforward ingredient of "cat shit." You can also catch glee in Burrough's voice when he transforms the original kiss to the Devil's behind to "kissing his ass." Gotta love the 1960s!
Christensen's Middle Age reenactments imaginatively mix fact with fantasy. An elderly witch pulls the severed hand of a thief (rotten from being too long on the gallows) to snap off a finger for medicinal brew, and prepares another potion with live snake and jumping toads. Christensen himself plays a large frightening demon, complete with a tongue that would make Regan (The Exorcist) jealous; this demon also resorts to excitedly engaging in pseudo-masturbatory behavior while gazing at naked women. Another freaky scene shows a woman giving birth to an array of demonic creatures.
Before you think the filmmaker is one sick dude, he also develops scenarios to show how innocent women are deceived and trapped into witch accusations and demonstrates a good sense of humor. The obese clergyman struck with love potion (at least the small amount left after spitting most out from disgust) chases his object of affection around the table, superimposed flying witches are a hoot (check out the even more hilarious outtake with the director acting out this part), and hysterical wacky nuns cavorting around the chapel will have you in stitches.
It took Criterion nearly two years to compile the material for the ultimate rendition of Christensen's Haxan, but the resulting disk is well worth examination. The only thing truly pedantic is much of the audio commentary by University of Copenhagen silent film scholar Casper Tybjerg, obviously reading from a prepared script. It's worth going through once for the facts, but the well-researched visual presentation is far more graphic about witchcraft and superstition than you'd expect from a 1922 silent film.
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