Häxan (1922)
aka Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages
Genre: Horror | Documentary | Fantasy | History
Country: Sweden| Director: Benjamin Christensen
Original Version
Language: Music with Swedish Intertitles
Audio 2: Commentary by Danish Film Scholar Casper Tybjerg
Subtitles: English (Optional, embedded in Mkv file)
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1 | Length: 105mn
Bdrip H264 Mkv – 1280×720 – 23.976fps – 2.22gb
or
1968 Re-edited Version
Language: English | Subtitles: None
Aspect ratio: 1.33:1 | Length: 76mn
Bdrip H264 Mkv – 960×720 – 23.976fps – 2.65gb
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013257/
About the 1968 Version: it’s a collaboration between jazz musician Daniel Humair and beat author William S. Burroughs that recuts and reinterprets the 1922 silent film “Haxan” with a Burroughs’ dark and wryly comic tone.
The writer and director Benjamin Christensen discloses a historical view of the witches through the seven parts of this silent movie. First, there is a slide-show alternating inter-titles with drawings and paintings to illustrate the behavior of pagan cultures in the Middle Ages regarding their vision of demons and witches. Then there is a dramatization of the situation of the witches in the Middle Ages, with the witchcraft and the witch-hunts. Finally Benjamin Christensen compares the behavior of hysteria of the modern women of 1921 with the behavior of the witches in the Middle Ages, concluding that they are very similar.
Imagine Tod Browning and Jean Cocteau making a film together and you might begin to get an idea of what you’ll see in this film. It’s rather disjointed in its storytelling but who cares? Where else can you see witches kissing the ass of Satan, boiling non-baptized babies, and giving birth to demons? Not to mention getting a full tour of the state-of-the-art in medieval torture devices! The film is really no more a documentary than “The Blair Witch Project” but certainly in the 1920s it must have been considered as such. Today, it makes for great Halloween viewing, giving us a chance to re-live the chilling legends that kept us afraid of the dark as children. The otherworldly glow of 1920s cinematography will retain each creepy image in your mind like musty cobwebs. A must-see for classic horror fans!
Häxan (1922) 1968 Re-edited Version
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