Häxan, Bitches! Er… Witches!
It’s been what, a couple weeks since we last mentioned how fantastic Archive.org is? Just in time for Halloween, here’s another choice bit o’ public domain from their vaults:
Click Teh Debbil (performed by Häxan director Benjamin Christensen himself!) to be taken to the downloading page.
Häxan (a.k.a. The Witches or Witchcraft Through The Ages) is a lavishly strange Swedish/Danish silent film which, upon its release in 1922, received critical acclaim in its homeland and moral outrage just about everyone else, thanks to the many graphic depictions of nudity, torture and sexual depravity. Yum! An inspired mixture of documentary and lurid dramatization, it wouldn’t be too far off the mark to name Häxan as one of cinema’s first “shockumentaries”.
For all its butts and boobies and devils, Häxan is actually quite a rational study of how superstition and medieval ignorance of mental illness led to the the hysteria of the European witch hunts. Director and writer Benjamin Christensen plotted much of the film around his personal study and criticism of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, a 15th century German guide for inquisitors. You can see echoes of Christensen’s blunt, cavalier, often darkly humorous first-person narrative style in the documentaries of Werner Herzog. Luis Buñuel applauded its fractured “WTF is going on” cue-less edits.
In addition to being a bit of a mindfuck, much of the film’s imagery is just drop dead stunningly beautiful. From the Criterion release feature notes:
Under any title and with any modifications, Häxan endures because of Christensen’s tremendous skill with lighting, staging, and varying of shot scale. The word “painterly” comes to mind in watching Christensen’s ingeniously constructed shots, but it is inadequate to evoke the fascination the film exerts through its patterns of movement and its narrative disjunctions. Christensen is at once painter, historian, social critic, and a highly self-conscious filmmaker. His world comes alive as few attempts to recreate the past on film have.
Apparently, there was a version released in 1967 that featured a narration by William S. Burroughs and a jazzy score led by percussionist Daniel Humair and featuring violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. Any of you guys happen to have a copy of that?
October 28th, 2009 at 5:00 pm
I have a bootleg of the 67′ realese on video , got it at a show. It’s pretty trippy,I preffer the Criterion version.
October 28th, 2009 at 7:43 pm
The version available on Netflix is the one with the Burroughs narration. I put the audio on cd since it’s so fun to listen to.
http://www.netflix.com/Movie/Haxan_Witchcraft_Through_the_Ages/60021603
October 28th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
You can rent it on netflix now. With Bill Burroughs’ narration included.
October 28th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
To clarify: the Criterion edition (which is the edition available on Netflix) has both the original version of Haxan and the ’67 version, retitled Witchcraft Through The Ages (in what I guess was a play for the Mondo market). The Burroughs narration is great and the score is fun but doesn’t really fit the movie very well, so I usually just watch the original. Speaking of praise for the public domain, here’s some gorgeous production photos from Haxan:http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/dgkeysearchresult.cfm?keyword=haxan
October 29th, 2009 at 12:22 am
I’ve also created an (open tracker) torrent of the .avi version of the movie, and seeded it here:
https://www.zetatracker.net/index.php?page=torrent-details&id=b749946feb7fdce88292fe29a8c2f1457d183b08
Fausty
October 29th, 2009 at 1:58 am
Thanks, everyone!
Alas, Pawel, they do not have Netflix in New Zealand. Maybe I’ll invest in the Criterion edition… I very rarely regret paying through the nose for their amazing DVDs.
DB, those photos are incredible. Such timeless, gorgeous production value.
October 29th, 2009 at 3:44 am
I thought I was ordering it but when it turned up it was just the original – oh well.
For any fans of drone metal/electronica there’s also a version of Phantom Carriage with a score redone by KTL which I got at the same time.
October 29th, 2009 at 4:25 am
oooh, pouncing on this! how i heart thee, archive.org.
October 31st, 2009 at 11:12 am
I actually have an amateur video set to Rasputina music to thank for discovering this. Witches, nudity, AND old-timey cinematography? Not much to improve upon, is there?