Monday

Last night's after midnight October movie was Danish filmmaker Benjamin Christensen's legendary Häxan (1922),* a quasi-documentary, or maybe dramatic reenactment, of certain aspects of witchcraft throughout the ages. It begins with a fairly direct collage presentation of various medieval concepts of evil and hell. Laid-back, casually conversational intertitles are punctuated by devilish woodcuts, intricately designed orreries explain the positions of good and evil. Next, dramatic vignettes are used to illustrate typical understandings about witches and their ways. An old woman enters a barn carrying a dead thief bundled in sticks. Someone drops frogs and snakes into a pot. A customer orders a potion guaranteed to capture the affections of her round little clergyman. Throughout, the Horned Beast stalks the souls of the tainted. The movie then settles into a multi-chapter look at the horrors of inquisition: a young hausfrau distrusts the look of a passing beggar and reports her. She has evil eyes! The old woman is then subjected to the tortures that will condemn her by coercing an account of midnight broom flights, profane kisses, and dancing skyclad while fauns play little horns. Her testimony must also out the rest of her coven, women who are, in turn, coerced into naming new names. The accuser attempts to recant her cruel epidemic, but the authorities have proven the beggar a witch already. So the hausfrau's new tune rings conspiratorial, and she is also burned at the stake. Häxan is stunning for its frank and moody imagery: cackling crones swooping over village houses, writhing bacchanals amid sulfurous mists, dancing nuns encircling a leering, horned Satan. While its revelations are fairly predictable today, it is impossible to overvalue this film's visual punch. Banned for years, truncated, re-edited and re-titled, Häxan's triumphant realization of all those Goya paintings is something extraordinary. [Cavin]