Häxan (1921)

Thank you for reading these posts, I realise there is a lot of content on Substack these days. I am looking back at some of the research I did for Constructing a Witch (Bloodaxe 2024), so search back on Substack if you’d like to see more.

I’d like to introduce you to the extraordinary hybrid essay/docudrama Häxan. (pronounced HEK-sen and meaning “witch”) This 1922 silent Danish-Swedish film was written and directed by auteur Benjamin Christensen. It was groundbreaking - defying genres of the time - but arguably creating several in its wake, including Horror and the sub-genre, Folk Horror. Inspired by historical research and texts such as the deeply misogynistic Malleus Maleficarum ( translated as The Hammer of the Witches - Kramer, 1486), Häxan proposes that the medieval witch-hunts may have been triggered by misunderstandings of mental disorders which went on to create mass hysteria.

Christensen appears at the beginning of the film like a school master with a series of slides to explain that “The belief in evil spirits, sorcery, and witchcraft is the result of naive notions about the mystery of the universe.” It’s an extremely painterly film which uses other story telling methods such as stop-animation, dioramas and it juxtaposes actors with special effects inside richly constructed mise en scène. At the time of making Häxan, Christensen was all about experiment. He wrote: “I would like to know at this time whether a film is able to hold the public’s interest without mass effects, without sentimentality, without suspense, without heroes and heroines—in short, without all those things on which a good film is otherwise constructed. My films consist of a series of episodes that—as part of a mosaic—give expression to an idea.”

The film is divided into seven parts and in the sixth part, Christensen cast himself as The Devil. He appears very much to relish the extremely sexualised role (see the film still below) and this became the starting point of my poem. In an earlier scene Sister Cecilia seems trapped in convent life and I interpreted the advent of the Devil as an invitation for this young woman to kick up her heels, so to speak. The dancing and reeling spreads through the convent as a contagion and the nuns themselves look to me like bats - creatures of the night.

I do urge you to see the film for yourself if you have a curiosity - the whole thing is on YouTube. It’s also on Prime. Make sure you do not first watch the severely edited/depleted 1968 version subtitled Witchcraft Through the Ages. The intertitles (the cards in silent films) have been removed, and instead there is a trippy commentary by Beat writer William S Burrows and a jazzy soundtrack. This is the version I first found and in my opinion it utterly undermines the integrity of Christensen’s very singular vision. Häxan is a vivid cinematic depiction of the blurring boundaries between objective reality and hallucination, where the real world might at any time open up to irrational beliefs; might open a portal for the Devil to snake through.