The Long Dark Marathon of the Soul 2014: Haxan: Witchcraft through the Ages (1922), directed by Benjamin Christensen

     

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Is Everybody In?", by William S. Burroughs feat. The Doors

     Maybe it’s a personal thing, but silent movies have always kind of freaked me out. Maybe it’s the ghostly, pallid hue that everyone has, maybe it’s the way that everyone seems to speak but there’s no sound except for the creepy accompanying music, or maybe it’s because you can’t gain much of any context from the sounds of the movie so you have to give your full attention to it and thus focus on the first two things, I don’t know. Despite the aversion to silent cinema however, I have seen several in that classification, most of which resided in the horror genre. I’ve seen Nosferatu of course, as well as The Golem from 1915 (one of the only occasions to feature a golem as the monster) and Vampyr, which involves some freaky supernatural stuff.  All of those movies were of the German expressionist genre by the way, which just goes to show that the Germans have always been weird.

      Technically an exercise in Swedish expressionism rather than German, Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan: Witchcraft through the Ages was at the time of its release the most expensive Scandinavian film ever made (thanks wikipedia). A documentary of sorts, Häxan explains partly through pictures and partly through vignettes the attitudes and public perception of witchcraft through the middle ages, how witches concocted the spells they used and the methods by which the Inquisition used to torture them. The educational portions are educational at the very least, but it’s the acting portions where things take a leap off the deep end. There is some downright disturbing imagery going on in Häxan, and I don’t mean disturbing for a uptight, less advanced 1920’s movie audience, I mean disturbing in general. Torturing women, eating boiled babies, satanic orgies, Satan himself (played by our esteemed director) jacking off a butter churn, the kind of nightmares are made of. That’s what this movie feels like, not like you’re watching a coherent, structured film, but as if you’re experiencing sleep paralysis or something. Strange and bizarre things appear that frighten you, but you have no control over how those things appear, and even when they do you’re only subjected to more. I don’t know if you could call it a horror movie as such, because genres usually have specific memes or whatever to define theme, but this movie is far more unsettling than most I’ve seen. This is the kind of shit you’d find in H.P. Lovecraft’s attic.

      There are several different versions of this film you could watch, as is the case with many silent movies, with different runtimes and musical backing and such. The version I watched was restored by Anthony Balch and released in 1968, featuring a free jazz soundtrack and narration by beat writer William S. Burroughs (the scariest man in literature). The idea of free jazz may turn off some people, but the dissonant soundtrack only enhances the overall surrealism of the film in my opinion, and Burroughs’ droning croak of a voice is the iron smoothing out the wrinkles in your brain. Probably not a fun movie to watch on acid, but perhaps a movie you’d like to watch on Halloween.