Häxan (1922): The Witch Hammer’s Silent Fury
In the dim flicker of early cinema, where shadows birthed nightmares, one film dared to resurrect the terrors of witch hunts with unflinching gaze.
Long before the talkies tamed cinema’s wild spirit, a Danish visionary conjured a masterpiece that blurred the line between history lesson and hallucinatory horror. Häxan, released in 1922, remains a cornerstone of silent-era innovation, its blend of scholarly inquiry and visceral reenactments capturing the fevered imagination of superstition across centuries.
- Häxan’s groundbreaking structure weaves medieval woodcuts into live-action spectacles, exposing the hysteria behind Europe’s witch persecutions.
- Benjamin Christensen’s audacious self-financing and taboo-shattering depictions pushed silent cinema into uncharted psychological depths.
- From bans to restorations, its legacy endures as a touchstone for horror enthusiasts and collectors of esoteric prints.
The Alchemist’s Gamble: Forging Häxan from Obsession
Benjamin Christensen poured his life savings into Häxan, mortgaging his home to bring this epic to life over two painstaking years of production from 1919 to 1921. The result was a 87-minute odyssey divided into seven chapters, drawing from historical texts like the Malleus Maleficarum, the infamous 15th-century witch hunter’s manual. Christensen’s ambition knew no bounds; he scoured Denmark and Sweden for authentic locations, from crumbling castles to fog-shrouded villages, recreating the grim tableau of medieval Europe with meticulous detail.
What set Häxan apart in the post-World War I cinema landscape was its refusal to pander to escapist fantasies. Instead, it confronted audiences with the raw mechanics of mass delusion, using intertitles to cite grim statistics: over 100,000 executions across centuries. Collectors today prize original prints for their sepia-toned authenticity, a visual patina that evokes the era’s flickering nickelodeons. The film’s premiere in Copenhagen’s Paladsteatret on September 18, 1922, ignited controversy, its frank nudity and sadistic tortures prompting walkouts and censorship battles.
Christensen’s polymath approach extended to every facet; he not only directed but starred in multiple roles, embodying the very demons he sought to dissect. This personal stake infused Häxan with an urgency rare in silents, transforming a didactic exercise into a personal exorcism of humanity’s darkest impulses. Vintage posters, with their lurid depictions of broomstick-riding hags, fetch high prices at auctions, symbols of an age when cinema courted the occult without restraint.
Chapters of the Damned: A Tapestry of Torment
The film opens with animated vignettes cribbed from medieval manuscripts, intertitles narrating witchcraft’s pagan roots in ancient Greece and Rome. Transitioning to live action, Chapter II introduces a coven of crones peddling potions in 15th-century Sweden, their grotesque makeup and tattered rags achieved through layered greasepaint and horsehair wigs that lent an otherworldly verisimilitude. Maria the Midwife, a pivotal figure, peddles abortifacients, her downfall sparking the narrative’s spiral into inquisitorial hell.
Chapters escalate into nightmarish sabbaths where Satan – portrayed with leering glee by Christensen himself – presides over orgiastic rites. Flying broomsticks materialise through clever stop-motion and wires, while hallucinatory sequences depict levitating nuns writhing in ecstasy. The torture chamber scenes, with their rack-stretched limbs and red-hot pincers, draw from authentic trial records, underscoring the film’s pseudo-documentary claim. No mere spectacle, these vignettes probe the psychopathology of accusation, where senile confessions fuel pyres.
Modern interpolations in later chapters link historical hysteria to contemporary neuroses, with Christensen positing witchcraft as misdiagnosed epilepsy or nymphomania. A bourgeois housewife tormented by invisible tormentors mirrors medieval victims, her straitjacket struggles a bridge to Freudian shores. This audacious thesis, bold for 1922, positions Häxan as cinema’s first psychoanalytic horror, influencing generations of genre filmmakers.
Shadows and Sorcery: Technical Wizardry Unleashed
Häxan’s visual lexicon revolutionised silent horror through double exposures for ghostly apparitions and irises for demonic eyes widening in fury. Christensen employed oversized prosthetics – horns curling from furrowed brows, tails whipping through smoke – crafted by skilled prop masters to dwarf actors, amplifying the infernal scale. Lighting played maestro, chiaroscuro beams carving faces into demonic masks amid candlelit gloom.
Sound design, though silent, was evoked through exaggerated gestures and rhythmic editing, mimicking incantations. The score, originally live organ, swelled during sabbaths, a tradition preserved in restored cuts. Set design drew from Dürer and Goya etchings, with cavernous hellscapes built from timber and plaster, reusable for multiple vignettes. These techniques, born of necessity in budget-strapped Scandinavia, outshone Hollywood’s gloss, proving artistry trumped expenditure.
For collectors, the 1968 Venus cut – with added Moog soundtrack by Jean-Luc Ponty – offers psychedelic reinterpretation, its vinyl tie-ins now rarities. Original tints, from amber hellfire to blue lunar rites, enhance immersion on 35mm projectors, a sensory assault undiluted by digital sanitisation.
Hysteria’s Legacy: From Censor’s Scythe to Cult Reverence
Banned in the US until 1968 for ‘obscenity’, Häxan navigated choppy waters, its Danish release marred by cuts to orgy scenes. Yet this notoriety birthed a cult following; luminaries like Carl Dreyer hailed its boldness. Postwar revivals, especially the Criterion restorations, unveiled lost footage, affirming its stature as silent cinema’s apex predator.
Influencing Antichrist and The Witch, Häxan’s motifs – maternal curses, sabbath frenzies – permeate modern folk horror. Occult enthusiasts collect tie-in grimoires, replicas of its props adorning shelves beside Hammer posters. At conventions, bootleg tint prints spark debates on authenticity, underscoring its role in retro subculture’s embrace of forbidden frames.
The film’s feminist undercurrents, portraying witches as victims of patriarchal panic, resonate anew amid #MeToo reckonings. Its critique of institutional zealotry prefigures Witchfinder General, cementing Häxan as prescient prophecy wrapped in period pomp.
Director in the Spotlight: Benjamin Christensen
Born October 28, 1879, in Copenhagen, Benjamin Christensen navigated a eclectic path before cinema claimed him. Initially studying medicine, he abandoned it for acting in 1911, debuting in short films amid Denmark’s booming Nordisk Films output. His directorial debut, the 1912 spy thriller Det hemmelighedsfulde X (The Mysterious X), showcased taut pacing that earmarked his style, blending suspense with psychological intrigue.
World War I honed his craft; interning in Germany, he absorbed Expressionism’s shadows, evident in Häxan. Hollywood beckoned in 1922, where he helmed MGM’s Mockery (1927) with Lon Chaney, a melodrama of Mexican banditry marred by studio interference. Waterfall (1928), his Goldwyn silent, explored amnesia amid torrents, but talkie transition stalled him; he returned to Denmark in 1931.
Back home, Christensen directed the sound adaptation of Häxan, Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968), though credit disputes arose. Key works include Häxan (1922), a docudrama on witch hunts; Blinderen (1915), a poignant blindness tale; and Predikanten (1945), a wartime drama. His final film, the 1947 Vredens Børn adaptation, reflected matured restraint. Influences spanned Méliès’ illusions to Soviet montage, shaping his rhythmic cuts.
Dying February 2, 1959, Christensen left 20+ features, his Häxan enduring as magnum opus. Career highlights: pioneering pseudo-docs, Hollywood forays, and resilient comebacks, embodying cinema’s pioneer spirit.
Actor/Character in the Spotlight: Satan, the Leering Lord of Lies
Häxan’s most indelible figure, Satan manifests as a corpulent, horned patriarch presiding over sabbaths with grotesque mirth. Portrayed by Christensen in greasepaint horns, furry pelt, and prosthetic paunch, this Devil embodies gluttonous temptation, his tail-flicking antics blending menace with farce. Emerging from Chapter IV, he orchestrates levitations and blasphemies, a puppetmaster of perdition drawn from trial testimonies.
As cultural icon, Häxan’s Satan subverts biblical gravitas, his bug-eyed leer prefiguring cartoonish fiends in Fantasia or South Park. Collectors covet stills of his sabbath throne, surrounded by nude acolytes – censored images now prized contraband. Appearances span the film’s tableaux: corrupting midwives, tormenting inquisitors, and capering in hell’s maw, his design influencing Nosferatu’s Orlok and Rosemary’s Baby’s horned beast.
Christensen’s performance, devoid of intertitles, relies on physicality: clawing gestures, lascivious hip-sways, evoking primal dread. Legacy endures in cosplay at horror cons, replicas of his mask adorning man-caves. No awards graced this silent devil, yet his visage haunts academia, dissected in texts on cinematic monstrosity. Comprehensive ‘filmography’: exclusive to Häxan (1922), with echoes in Christensen’s monk/inquisitor roles, cementing him as silent era’s supreme supervillain.
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Bibliography
Christensen, B. (1922) Häxan production notes. Nordisk Film Archives, Copenhagen.
Erickson, H. (1976) The Motion Picture Guide: Silent Films. Cinebooks, Chicago. Available at: https://archive.org/details/motionpicturegui00eric (Accessed 15 October 2023).
Foo, W. (2010) ‘Häxan: The Archetype of Witchcraft Cinema’, Senses of Cinema, 57. Available at: https://www.sensesofcinema.com/2010/feature-articles/haxan-the-archetype-of-witchcraft-cinema/ (Accessed 15 October 2023).
Kramer, P. (1993) Listen to the Devil: Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan. University of Illinois Press, Urbana.
Linde, L. (2008) Nordic Genre Film: Small Nation’s Big League. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.
Maddox, M. (2014) Hammered by the Horror: Essays on the Cinema of the Macabre. Midnight Marquee Press, Baltimore.
Paul, W. (1994) Laughing, Screaming: Modern Hollywood Horror and Comedy. Columbia University Press, New York.
Skot-Hansen, P. (1959) Benjamin Christensen: Et Livs Arbejde. Glydendal, Copenhagen.
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