It is still hard to imagine that this film was produced in the early-1920s! Haxan also illustrates the vitality of Swedish film at this time--and what a time. We can bemoan the quality of commercial film-making today, but it should be understood that the period after WWI was unique in the history of the medium, as quite a lot had yet to be done. Watch this film, and you will see the source (along with Murnau's seminal, "Nosferatu" of the same year)of a LOT of contemporary horror imagery. Most of our popular-images of witches, demons and horror-film monstrosity comes from this era, and Haxan is surely a great-contributor to this reservoir.
Of-note, I think Ken Russell must have seen this film before making his magnum-opus, "The Devils" (1971). Incidents of sexual-hysteria in Convents/nunneries are well-documented in Christensen's film (and scholarly-writings), and the connection between it and "outbreaks" of "posession" and "witchery" are solid. And yes, that's a Freudian-analysis, because he wasn't always "wrong." While we may have to strain to understand this hysteria that infected communities, we should observe that so-called witches are regularly murdered in Africa, India and Asia-in-general. It is a feature of most primitive, peasant-societies.
This is still an excellent introduction to the history of witchcraft-persecution in the West, and extremely watchable. The Criterion edition is superb, you can do no better as it contains the Anthony Balch/William S. Burroughs cut of the film with the Burroughs-narration. Also, the image-quality of the 1922-cut is astounding, and must come from the camera-negative, a real treat. 1920s film-technology, we find, was very-good in the right-hands. One can even watch a film like this--or other equally-pristine films--and see that this was not so long-ago. In many-respects, we have changed very-little since the 1920s in America! With "Satanic panics," "recovered-memories," "alien-abductions" and other social-panics, we can see the roots of such reactions (and iconography) surfacing even today. A must-have for Halloween-parties!
Of-note, I think Ken Russell must have seen this film before making his magnum-opus, "The Devils" (1971). Incidents of sexual-hysteria in Convents/nunneries are well-documented in Christensen's film (and scholarly-writings), and the connection between it and "outbreaks" of "posession" and "witchery" are solid. And yes, that's a Freudian-analysis, because he wasn't always "wrong." While we may have to strain to understand this hysteria that infected communities, we should observe that so-called witches are regularly murdered in Africa, India and Asia-in-general. It is a feature of most primitive, peasant-societies.
This is still an excellent introduction to the history of witchcraft-persecution in the West, and extremely watchable. The Criterion edition is superb, you can do no better as it contains the Anthony Balch/William S. Burroughs cut of the film with the Burroughs-narration. Also, the image-quality of the 1922-cut is astounding, and must come from the camera-negative, a real treat. 1920s film-technology, we find, was very-good in the right-hands. One can even watch a film like this--or other equally-pristine films--and see that this was not so long-ago. In many-respects, we have changed very-little since the 1920s in America! With "Satanic panics," "recovered-memories," "alien-abductions" and other social-panics, we can see the roots of such reactions (and iconography) surfacing even today. A must-have for Halloween-parties!