FANTASIA OBSCURA: Meet the Original Black Magic Women
There are some fantasy, science fiction, and horror films that not every fan has caught. Not every film ever made has been seen by the audience that lives for such fare. Some of these deserve another look, because sometimes not every film should remain obscure.
Sometimes, both fact and fiction can be equally disturbing…
Haxan (1922)
Distributed by: Svensk Filmindustri
Directed by: Benjamin Christensen
Witch.
It’s a loaded term, one that says a lot about a person by how they assign meaning to it. Those who assume it’s a woman who traffics with demons and practices the black arts, are in a much different universe versus those who feel the term is used as an insult to keep a strong woman from getting out of the subservient role she’s expected to stay in. Mythology versus the patriarchy, if you will.
And in most cases, you will never see these two terms used interchangeably. At least, not since the days of silent films…
Modern iteration of what a trailer might have looked like (as putting trailers on films was not in practice at the time)
There’s a brief shot of Christensen’s face in the front of the film, suggesting Leo the Lion, before the film begins with a discussion of demons in ancient religions. The movie informs us of the presence of demons from the beginning of time that were part of human culture, with illustrations.
The fact that some of the ‘demons’ so shown include such gods of Anubis and Pazuzu, who had a more robust interaction with their cultures than just bringing pain and evil to them, shows either sloppy research or a particular troubling worldview. But we don’t get enough time to consider that, as Christensen speeds through past them to discuss cosmological models.
The film then concentrates on the main period of investigation, the Middle Ages, the period towards the end of which the Malleus Maleficarum was written. The tome in fact seems to be the main source for all of Christensen’s discussion of witches. This proves to be controversial in light of the book’s use as a reference book for how to identify and deal with witches, despite the Catholic Church’s condemnation of the work in CE 1490, three years after its first publication.
It’s also at this point that the film shifts from a straight documentary into a docudrama, as we watch an old witch, Karna, work her cauldron while her assistant harvests ingredients for spell components, such as toads, snakes, and the body parts of the condemned harvested soon after hanging. We see her put these to good use, when a maiden comes to her, looking for a potion that would entice a pious churchman to want to have his way with her.
Why him, it’s hard to see, but we don’t get enough time to question her choice in paramours, as the Devil (Christensen in full body makeup) appears in a montage to show his being everywhere.
This small flowing set of scenes leads into a longer sequence, where Christensen demonstrates the process by which a witch hunt was conducted. We watch as a printer, Jesper, is bed-ridden by dizzy spells, which his wife Anna believes had to have been caused by witchcraft. The local healer casts molten lead into a bucket of water, and “reads” the hardened ingot, which tells him that yeah, there’s witches involved here.
The inquisition shows up, kidnaps Maria the Weaver (the most likely suspect that Jesper’s family can name), and through torture get her to reveal what went on at a black mass:
Admittedly, compared to the Electric Daisy Carnival, this seems pretty tame, but going on about the events is not the main reason Maria relates this tale. She also names names, dropping a dime on anyone she ever had a beef with, who subsequently end up before the tribunal as well, suffering the same tortures she did.
We take another brief trip, this time to a convent, where one of the sisters allows the Devil to take over in her heart where Christ had been, to watch as the entire place falls down amidst hysteria.
We ultimately end up with a visit to more modern times, where we see the same behavior we saw take place in the Middle Ages, but instead of bringing out the Inquisition, leads to a visit to the sanatorium and a doctor, suggesting a different interpretation of everything we’ve seen so far. Which is hard to approach today, as he uses the discarded term “female hysteria” to explain what’s going on, a term that comes from a time that seems as far in the past as the Middle Ages are…
Which as we rap this up leaves us feeling split. On the one hand, Christensen wants us to take his film seriously as an examination of witchcraft and how attitudes towards it came about. On the other, he revels in depictions that seem as exploitative as they are fanciful, trying to evoke and titillate more than explore.
And the effort to titillate is strong, embracing its European sensibilities in a pre-Hays Code film release. In fact, the film was initially banned in the US for its first run and for many years thereafter. It only gets something close to a proper window here in 1968, with the release of a version with the title cards replaced by a narration track done by William S. Burroughs, accompanied with a music soundtrack performed by jazz musician Daniel Humair.
Original Swedish theatrical poster
One could go after Christensen for trying to have it both ways, in that he was doing a ‘documentary’ with lots of fanciful artistic choices, all of which helped shape the expectations for how witches would be portrayed in film for years to come. The carnality and chaos in his portraits would influence other depictions for years thereafter, which we’ll see as we go through other films with witches this coming month.
At the same time, by pioneering the ‘fictional documentary,’ Christensen ultimately opens the door for the (for lack of a better term) ‘exploitative documentary’ style of film to come decades later. There would be plenty of films in later years, such as The Legend of Boggy Creek, Snuff, and Cannibal Holocaust, where the line between fact and fiction was purposely blurred in order to get both the intellectual and passion-fueled sides of the audience to care about the picture.
In fact, when Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez ultimately come to make The Blair Witch Project, they would do so under the production company banner of Haxan Films, carrying on a long tradition that Christensen started…
NEXT TIME: As Season of the Witch continues, we take a long hard look at another depiction of our subject that-
Okay, I did say “long hard look” there, but eyes above the collar! Got it,
Buddy?
