::: FiM Presents ::: HÄXAN (1922)

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Förening Film i Malmö presents

HÄXAN

Dir. Benjamin Christensen

Silent era film

1922 / 1968

87min

Suggested donation 30-100kr

This legendary silent film, much admired by the Surrealists, is a spellbinding brew of ingredients that don’t naturally mix, at least not in modern cinema. Combining the scholarly and the outlandish, the fact-based and the supernatural, Häxan is simultaneously a documentary on witchcraft and a collection of wildly fanciful visions. Banned or censored in many countries on its release in 1922 for its candid depiction of nudity, sexuality and torture as well as for its strong anti-clerical tone, the film has retained a sulphurous aura to this day.

We have to remember that at the time the film was made there were no clear boundaries between documentary and fiction. In the yet uncharted waters of the nascent film art, the aim of director Benjamin Christensen was to make an educational, informative film that would also have artistic value. Christensen himself embodies the paradoxical position of the film, poised between objective and subjective, rational and irrational. The director is the first-person narrator in the titles and as such he is the voice of rationality that coolly comments on the mass delusion that gripped ancient, barbaric times. But in an intriguing personality split, Christensen – who started his film career as an actor – also plays the lewd, tongue-wagging Devil that represents the violent, uncontrollable irruption of the irrational in the human mind.

Virginie Sélavy Electric Sheep