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Overview
The video script discusses the 1922 Swedish silent film ‘Haxan,’ directed by Benjamin Christensen. The film, a documentary-style recreation, explores themes of witchcraft and mental illness and is noted for its impressive production quality and vivid imagery. It was controversial at release due to scenes of torture, nudity, and anti-clericalism, leading to bans in many places. ‘Haxan’ has influenced various cultural works and is preserved by the Criterion Collection. The script mentions the involvement of Astrid Holm and notable admirers like Guillermo del Toro. Future episodes will cover other classic films like ‘The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A4xan
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0013257/?ref_=ext_shr_lnk
Trailer
Watch It
https://youtu.be/0GfWMAyqqI8?si=Okw1T7MZWbswTlE3
https://archive.org/details/haxan_202205
https://archive.org/details/Haxan_tinted_and_subtitled
YouTube
Transcription
Stephen: [00:00:00] Whenever you are ready. Yep. Yep. All right. We’ll pass the potatoes. I interrupted and screwed it up already. Go ahead.
Rhys: All right. Wait a second, pass the potatoes. It’s time for another side dish. What are we talking about today? Steve,
Stephen: you are much more creative than I am in these introductions.
Today we’re talking, which is it’s hacks and very good. I’ve heard multiple people say that’s a great one. So we’re going to talk a little bit about witches from Sweden.
Rhys: Yeah it’s got all kinds of little weird quirks about it. It’s from 1922. It’s a silent film. It’s Swedish.
Stephen: It
Rhys: was the most expensive Swedish silent film ever made.
Stephen: And when you watch it, you can see that. It looks really good. The devil’s cracked me up,
Rhys: to make matters even more entertaining. It’s a documentary. Basically. Yeah. [00:01:00] Yeah. It’s a documentary.
Stephen: It’s a documentary recreations.
Rhys: Yeah. It was written and directed by a guy named Benjamin Christensen.
And he’s in it plays the devil. He also plays Jesus in one part, which I think is an interesting kind of dichotomy. If you’re going to cast yourself in two roles,
Stephen: There goes our theologians discussion for today about Lucifer being a fallen angel. There’s a lot there.
Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. He also he wrote this after he came across a copy of the Malus Maleficarum.
Stephen: Yes. And that’s what he based it on. And a lot of our followers probably know that one. It’s a 15th century German guide for inquisitors.
Rhys: Yes. Written by Heinrich Kramer. It translates to the hammer of witches, which is an interesting translation.
Um, the guy was just making stuff up when he put it in the book. So it’s, it’s just eh, you know what if you have a mole on your face, yeah, let’s, we’re going [00:02:00] to drown you.
Stephen: Yeah. And that’s one of the things I loved about the, this whole quote unquote documentary film is it’s a documentary, but it’s, all made up stuff, it’s based on yes, the stuff about the inquisition and the witches, that’s basically true, he made a lot of it up cause they weren’t filming these really happening 200, 300 years before him.
So I, it’s very interesting because he. Near the end focuses a lot on mental health, which is surprisingly way early to be even discussing anything like that in regard to witches in a film.
Rhys: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He saw it as a witchcraft being the effects of. Mental illness and the persecution of them being perfectly misguided.
He spent 2 million Kronos on this, which if you put today’s inflation on, it makes it $9.4 million.
Stephen: Yeah I did the same thing. A little different, but yeah, it’s about it. Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. But it [00:03:00] has at least one familiar face in it. Oh, really? Yes, it does. Besides the devil. Yeah, because the devil is him, but Astrid Holm, who played the damsel in distress in the phantom carriage is the wife of the man who dies, who accuses the lady of witchcraft and then ends up being accused herself.
Stephen: Okay. Nice.
Rhys: And, I guess it wasn’t too surprising. They both had very large casts. They’re both Swedish films. They’re about a year apart. Actually when I started looking at them, like I’m surprised she’s the only one that we don’t have, that we have crossover on, but I did actually go through and check every person who was listed and she was the only one.
But yeah, if you want to hear more about ask your home, go listen to our full phantom carriage episode.
Stephen: Make a link. We didn’t do this just to promote the other. All right. Episode, but if it works, so one of the things with this, that seems a little [00:04:00] almost odd. Now, some of the imagery is very vivid.
My particular favorite was the mechanical toy device type thing that showed hell with all the demons moving and stuff. That was pretty cool. The sets the costuming was all really fantastic for a hundred year old film. Now And it’s all practical. Yeah. Yeah. All practical. And it, and the witches flying was a similar effect as the phantom carriage.
Except he used a carousel to get them moving so they could fly. And I thought that was a, ingenious for what they need to do. I, this was. Banned in so many places when it first came out that it didn’t he didn’t really even see The results of it till later. It’s got a huge fall out now be and it was because of the torture the nudity the sexual perversion and what they call the anti clerical ism Of it,
Rhys: Given the time that he was talking about, you [00:05:00] should have had an anti clerical stance, to be honest.
Stephen: Yes. One of the quotes I ran across looking this up in variety magazine from 1923, it said wonderful though. This picture is, it is absolutely unfit for public exhibition. Oh my. Yeah, that’s in variety. And, uh, so it, it was released in several places through the years, it got re mixed re edited in 68, which include in England and it included a narration from William Burroughs.
So they, yeah, they edited it and mixed it and released it. So it was more palpable for consumption with this voiceover. So people wouldn’t have to read subtitles, I’m assuming. So
Rhys: yeah, more than likely.
Stephen: There we go. Go for the original. And this is one of the few early silent films that has been preserved through the Criterion collection, which I think actually we may have seen that copy first.
I found it [00:06:00] on Internet Archive, but it didn’t have the subtitles, but it was very clean. It looks really good through Criterion. And I think HBO might actually have most of the Criterion collection. So it’s probably up there.
Rhys: That might be where I watched it from actually,
Stephen: which I’m assuming if you have the DVD or streaming, you do get subtitles, the one that was on in an archive did not,
Rhys: He had seen this as part of a trilogy and yeah, and because his returns were so late, he just never got around to the other two.
Okay.
Stephen: What else?
Rhys: It’s Guillermo del Toro likes this film that shouldn’t surprise anybody as did the creators of the Blair Witch Project again, shouldn’t surprise anybody.
Stephen: Didn’t they name their film company witches or through the witch? Hexan Films. Okay. Yeah. I knew it was related to something.
Yeah.
Rhys: Yeah. And it’s also in the Steve Schneider, a thousand and one movies to see before you die.
Stephen: It is. [00:07:00] Yeah. He’s famous.
Rhys: He is.
Stephen: The devils reminded me of throughout the whole thing was the Rob Zombie Dragula video.
Rhys: Yeah,
Stephen: it was a lot like that.
Rhys: You can see a lot of influence from this throughout like cult history.
I don’t mean like cult, like church cult cult entertainment, the rod zombies of the world, Rob zombies of the world and things like that.
Stephen: It definitely, and a lot of people talk about it. I wouldn’t necessarily say if you’re like, Oh, let’s get some popcorn and watch a great movie.
This would be the first choice. Cause it is, it’s dry. It is dry. It’s documentary like, and because some of the music was crazy, you get this happy, go lucky music and they’re like torturing somebody, and the nuns in their hysteria that was cracking me up. It was like a street brawl with these nuns and then they get all happy.
And. That’s so weird.
Rhys: I’m trying to think there is a movie from the seventies, a British [00:08:00] film that is it was banned forever. Oh, it was it called the devils? But it deals specifically with nuns in a convent who just go off the wire. Yeah, I highly recommend that one too. But.
Stephen: All right and so what’s next
Rhys: Steve
Stephen: next?
I was jumping around. I think I shared the document with you I rearranged things with a little bit. I was thinking the cabinet of dr Calgary
Rhys: the very famous one and been redone a couple times. Yeah.
Stephen: Yeah Actually, I was going to do that to some of these good ones, like the cabinet the carnival of souls.
Some of these have been redone. We’re going to talk about the public domain, but I’m probably also going to watch the remake just to see how that looks. Colin and I have been doing that with Nosferatu since it’s about to come out in the remake. It’s interesting to see. Taking a hundred year old silent film or close to the silent film era and remaking it in [00:09:00] two thousands, how they approach things different and which one holds up.
Rhys: Yeah.
Stephen: All so there’s hacks and I will put a link to it since it’s public domain. Everybody can go check it out.
Rhys: Yep. Enjoy it.
Stephen: Enjoy the witches. Maybe we’ll put a link to the Rob zombie, Dragula. That kind of fits.
