- Director: Benjamin Christensen
- Writer: Benjamin Christensen
- Stars: Benjamin Christensen, Elisabeth Christensen, Maren Pedersen
- Run Time: 1 Hour, 31 Minutes
Synopsis
We start out with a dedication from the film’s creator, thanking various people and stating that this is a documentary with moving pictures. The belief in witchcraft is as old as mankind, we are told. We then go to Persia, where we see old drawings of men with animal heads. There are still photos of archaeology relics and drawings of “supernatural creatures” such as Anubis. There are dioramas showing beliefs of what the stars really are. It really is… a documentary. We see the Earth, the planets, the stars, as well as Heaven and Hell, along with their respective locations.
There is literally an explanation on the various title cards and then pencils and pointers indicating what part of the picture we should be focusing on. There is explanation of witches and their behaviors. It is explained (shocking!) that in the past, people slept naked in their beds! In a black mass, Satan gives all the participants “Devil’s Names.” There are numerous pictures of what goes on in this Black Sabbath.
We move on the the next part of the film, with live action instead of drawings and art. We see a scene in 1488 with an old woman cooking over a pot. Some men bring in the dead body of a thief. They decide his finger is too dried out, so they have to moisturize it before cooking. There are toads, worms, and other live ingredients in the witch’s pot.
A woman comes to the door wanting a love potion, and Karna the witch fixes her right up. We see the woman giving her man the drink, and he’s suddenly very frisky. She asks for a stronger potion, and Karna obliges. This time, he chases her around the room and out into the field before catching her.
Two men bring in another dead body. They cut open the body to learn the sciencey-goodness hidden inside. A woman watches them through the window and calls for help against those two witches. The devil is everywhere, and can take any shape. We see this demonstrated in several vignettes where the devil crawls into people’s bedrooms and lures them outside. We then see Karna the witch again, this time summoning Satan’s helper, Apelone, to deal with an old woman with a drinking problem.
We then switch over to talking about the inquisition, which I didn’t expect. We are then shown a witch trial re-enactment. A man is on his deathbed, and the wife says a witch must be behind her husband’s sudden illness. The doctor comes in and waves molten lead to help him recover. This “lead man” also blames a witch for the man’s malady. Maria the weaver comes in, and she’s a scary-looking old woman. Guess who gets the blame for being a witch?
They grab the old woman literally throw her into a cage. Hey search her for “witch powder.” They put old Maria in the stocks and question her repeatedly using “good cop bad cop” techniques. She won’t confess to being a witch, so they continue the torture.
To avoid the pain, she finally admits to giving birth to demonic children and we get a great shot of that actually happening. Then she talks of flying on her broom and we see dozens of witches flying over the town. We then get a flashback to her dancing in the woods with devils and demons; even the devil’s own grandmother was there. She cooks up a meal of toads and dead baby’s blood for everyone to enjoy. Then as the party was winding down, all the witches got to kiss the Devil’s behind. Naturally, Maria says she saw several of her own accusers there as well.
This, naturally, causes a chain reaction of accusations in the town. “If you oppose the capture of a witch you must be a witch yourself.” We see the young priest have nasty thoughts about the wife of the sick man, and he gets whipped for it. Still, the young woman must be using witchcraft to tempt the young priest, right? As expected, she confesses with the right pressure.
They burn all the witches, and then the judges move on to the next town. We are told that over a period of years, that 8 million, women and children were burned.
We then move on to other things, and watch how a witch could distort pregnancies by tying knots in ropes. We see the instructional, visual tutorial in the use of many torture implements.
We then see the devil tempting nuns to commit crimes. “Sister Cecilia is conniving with the evil one!” Admittedly, it looks really easy to stir up the nuns in that particular convent.
We move to the present day, where the devil hangs out in nursing homes. We see many old women in a nursing home. Women with hump backs, the shakes, one eye larger than the other are all signs of the devil. We then look at what a modern (1921) woman believes about seeing the devil in the world.
We see an actress portray many types of mental disorders.
Sleepwalking pyromania, she couldn’t keep from lighting fires when asleep. He compared the devil’s possession to what we now called “hysteria”. Instead of the devil, now doctors, actors, and other celebrities come to call on women at night in modern times.
Next, we see the same actress with kleptomania. She blames her condition on her husband dying in the war.
In modern times, we don’t sit in church in literal fear of the devil or of witches, but superstition is still rampant. We see an old woman “reading the cards” for a client. And again, we see the hysterical woman in the clinic.
Commentary
Haxan means “The Witch,” the main theme of the film focuses on witchcraft, detection, punishment, and the way accusations spread.
Well, all I can say is that documentary film making has come a long way. Once the live action portion began it got a lot more interesting. At one point early on, I paused the film to make a note and mentioned to Kevin that where I had paused looked like artwork. They put a lot of effort into the visuals. There are drawings, paintings, live action, stop motion, and every visual effect known at the time.
I was really surprised at how graphic this was. There’s blood, nudity, obvious sexually suggestive situations, and plenty of torture.
It may be the least educational documentary I’ve ever seen, but there’s no arguing that it was entertaining. They put a huge amount of effort into the costumes and scenes, and there’s also no arguing that they were really pushing the envelope in a time before censorship was even a thing.