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Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

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Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922)

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Released in 1922 Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages was debateably one of the first documentaries. However, despite the film’s attention to history and analysis, the film also makes heavy use of re-enactments, many of historical practices but also some ahistorical and fantastical events. During these sequences, the film leans towards the style of expressionistic horror/drama of the time, including the German expressionist classics Nosferatu (1922) and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920).

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-Häxan was filmed between 1919 and 1921.

-The film was a Swedish and Danish coproduction.

-It was intended to be the first part of a trilogy that never came to light.

- Benjamin Christensen was inspired to make the film upon reading The  Malleus Maleficarum a book justifying the persecution of witches to Christondom throughout the witchtrials.
-1922 was an important year for the documentary form as it saw the release of Nanook of The North.
-The time of the film's release was also a time of great scientific and psychological advancement.

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What type of documentary does Häxan fit into?

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What type of documentary does Häxan fit into?

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Poetic
-Foregrounds the role of the filmmaker by showing Christensen in the opening.
-Allows for audience interperatiation and involvment in unpicking the film.
-The process of filmmaking is important, down to the colour tinting and practical effects used.
-The audience is aware of the artificiality of the film's construction.
-Tone is stressed throughout.

Reflexive
-Makes use of anti realist techniques such as those found in the expressionist genre.
-Suggestion over fact. This is discussed in Erica Tortolani's piece.

Expository
-Argues  the mental health reading of the witch trials.
-Deliberate shooting choices.
-"Voice of God" addresses the viewer through the film's intertitles.
-Varied sources from throughout history.

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Week 2 Reading What types of documentary are there

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Information
Author: Heinrich Kramer
Release Date: 1486
Genre: Nonfiction/Demonology
Country of origin: Germany
Why is it important to Häxan
-A fundermental book in the persecution of witches during the witch trials.
-The book represents witches as fact.
-When making the film Christensen was obsessed with the book.
-It certainly inspired his depiction of witches as existing within our world.
-The book is also heavily sexist, depicting sorcerers as exclusively women, which is also the case in Christensen's film.

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Director: Robert J. Flaherty
Release Date: 1922
Genre: Documentary
Country of origin: United States
Why is it important to Häxan
Regarded as the first documentary, releasing the same year as Haxan. However, much like Haxan, its status as a documentary has been debated.

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Nanook of the North (Flaherty, 1922) — High Quality 1080p

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-Expressionism was an experimental film genre which began to become popular in the earlier 20th century.
-It was at odds with realism.
-Most films today have a mix of expressionism and realism.

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The Golden Age of German cinema began at the end of the First World War and ended shortly after the coming of sound. From The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari onwards the principal films of this period were characterized by two influences: literary Expressionism, and the innovations of the theatre directors of this period, in particular Max Reinhardt.

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Context- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

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Context- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)

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Director: Robert Wiene
Release Date: 1920
Genre: Horror/Expressionism
Country of origin: Germany
Why is it important to Häxan
Caligari is important for its groundbreaking use of expressionism in the fantasy and horror genres. It was one of the first films with a fantastic topic to make use of lighting, shadow, tinting and distorted mise-en-scene.

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About
Tinting applied to silent films, specifically The Cabinet of Dr Caligari.
Key Passage
-"little to no attention has been paid to the colors applied to the film"

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Context- The Golem - How He Came Into The Worls (1920)

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Context- The Golem - How He Came Into The Worls (1920)

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Information
Director:  Paul Wegener, Carl Boese
Release Date: 1920
Genre: Horror/Expressionism
Country of origin: Germany
Why is it important to Häxan
This is one of the forrunners of expressionistic horror. In my opinion it is the closest visually to Häxan. The film makes heavy use of tinting to give a sense of atmosphere, it also uses warmer colours much like Häxan. The Golem is also adorned with religious and folkloric imagery, not unlike Häxan.

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The Golem, dir. Carl Boese, Paul Wegener, 1920 Full Movie, English Subtitles

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Director: F.W Murnau
Release Date: 1922
Genre: Horror/Expressionism
Country of origin: Germany
Why is it important to Häxan
While Nosfuratu is clearly part of the German expressionist movement it is lacking some of the expressionistic elements present in films like Caligari and The Golem. In many regards Häxan is more expressionistic in its use of lighting, set and costume design than Nosfuratu, thus bringing the film further into the realm of fantasy rather than fact.

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Arguement
-Baxtrom and Meyer discuss Häxan's place as both a documentary as well as fantasy.
-They compare it to the witch, a figure of both the real world and the fantastic.
-They also discus the films singularness, expressing how it is truly unique.
-It is argued that the way Christensen brings his subjects to life through the film further complicates Häxan.
-The scientific ideas of the time are also explored here, bringing Häxan into the 20th century in its views on science and superstition.
Key Passages
-"it is fair to ask what precisely this masterwork is, because of its troubled and often clandestine status in the years since its initial release, and also because it resists easy characterization. It is typically associated today with the horror genre and simultaneously with proto- documentary or nonfiction fim, but neither designation fully captures the film’s unique character."
-"Häxan is, perhaps more than any other work in the medium, a singular film"
-"Christensen’s vision for Häxan was quite radical. Eschewing typical notions of “drama” and “plot,” the director described his pro ject as follows: “My film has no continuous story, no ‘plot’—it could perhaps best be classified as a cultural history lecture in moving pictures"
-"cultural history to throw light on the psychological causes of these witch trials by demonstrating their connections with certain abnormalities of the human psyche, abnormalities which have existed throughout history and still exist in our midst.”  In unambiguous terms, Christensen expresses his thesis and his method in this short statement prior to the release of the film."
-"Yet there is so much more in Häxan as Christensen struggles to realize his thesis"
-"Häxan exists as one of the most innovative films to emerge during the silent era. The film also affords a fascinating view into wider debates in the 1920s regarding the use of film in medical and scientific research, the evolving study of religion from historical and anthropological perspectives, and the complex relations between popular culture, artistic expression, and scientific ideas. Häxan therefore bears a unique relation to all these areas and yet is not reducible to any one of them."
-"The formal characteristics of cinema as a medium of expression provide Christensen the means to ultimately exceed the power of his historical source material—to breathe life into his subjects. We argue that this excess makes Häxan’s status complicated"
-"does not so much unmask the witch or the hysteric as he brings these figures and the power that animates them to life on the screen"
-"In short, bringing the witch to life “objectively” is a contradiction in terms"
-"in light of innovations in psychoanalysis and the biological sciences, Benjamin Christensen advances the thesis that the appearance of witchcraft in Europe during the late medieval and early modern periods was actually due to unrecognized manifestations of clinical hysteria and psychosis"

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Arguement
-They begin to look at Häxan through the context of the time.
-They analyse it through releases such as Nanook of the North as well as Nosferatu.
-The importance of travel films as proto documentaries is also stressed.
-They also take a look at the scientific advances of the time of the film's release, such as new approaches to psychology.
-However, the old fashioned views of the time are also adressed, in that the people of the time still held belief in invisible and spiritual forces.
Key Passages
-"Häxan was released in a year when innovation was in the air. The year 1922 saw the release of one of the fi rst “ethnographic” films, Nanook of the North"
-"concerns with others, the super natural, the recesses of the mind, and even evil itself were coming to be addressed by new means, with fresh commitments and a new set of anxieties about the capacities of observation and science coming to the fore"
-"Even if Häxan had been able to avoid the difficulties of censorship and the limited viewership that arose due to its controversial subject matter, the film faced a great deal of competition for notice: 1922 was the year when now classic films such as Nosferatu and Phantom (both F. W. Murnau), Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler (Fritz Lang), Foolish Wives (Erich von Stroheim), and Cops (Buster Keaton) were released"
-"In Nanook, Flaherty produced a film within a genre that did not yet exist, exhibiting the definitive “creative treatment of actuality” that John Grierson would famously attribute to the documentary"
-"For all of the problems that Nanook raises in terms of the “truthfulness” or “facticity” of its depiction of Inuit life, Rotha’s grand claim is not so far- fetched"
-"Even in 1922, in the midst of scientific and technological advancement, the hidden, invisible forces that bedevil everyday living continued to hold a central place in the human sciences. Understood in this way, Christensen’s project in Häxan is not as distant as it seems at fi rst glance from the work of Malinowski or Flaherty appearing at the same time "

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Arguement
-The arguement is made that some of the films labels have been applied reterospectivley.
-They express specifically that the horror label, as well as the film's supposed importance to the horror genre has been added in retrospect.
-This is due to the films limited release.
-They also assert that they believe it should be viewed as a precursor to the documentary form, if not one itself.
Key Passages
-"to argue for Häxan’s direct influence on films such as Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) and Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931) would be wishful thinking, if for no other reason than Christensen’s film went largely unseen at the time of its release"
-"Within this context we can group the film among those which in the first half of the 1920s called into question the ways cinema could provide an empirical, truthful account of phenomenon located in the “real” world. Alongside films such as Nanook of the North"
-"Häxan is almost never directly acknowledged as a precursor to nonfiction works such as these; it is our contention that it should be"

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Research- Journal of Historical Fictions Häxan

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Research- Journal of Historical Fictions Häxan

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Arguement
-Tortolani argues that Haxan is not a documentary but rather differing form of factual filmmaking.
-She points out that it makes a nuanced look at history.
-She draws upon the historiocity found within the text, yet also points out the peculiarities of the film.
-Much focus is placed on the character of Maria, who was not real in herself but is instead a surrogate for all the victims of the witchtrial.
-She also tackles the mythical and fantastical scenes, explaining them as the product of what the people of the late middle ages believed to be happening.
Key Passages
-"Häxan blurs the lines between reality and fiction, history and storytelling, which, at first glance, delegitimizes its positioning as a documentary film, and thereby undermines its historical representations. To the contrary, Häxan should instead be placed in a different category of nonfiction, one that is not bound by the limitations of documentary filmmaking as we have come to know it"
-" the narrative trajectory of Häxan alternates frantically between fact and fiction, hallucination and objective reality"
-" provide a more nuanced look at history as a whole, one that accounts for ideological, political, religious, and cultural facets of daily life.’"
- "historical artefacts, include excerpts from writings like the Malleus Maleficarum and The Nuremburg Chronicle, as well as two- and three-dimensional artworks, each of which were hand-selected by Christensen himself during the film’s pre-production"
-"religious and mythological content, includes depictions of cosmogonic myths and the genesis...of witchcraft and the occult. As discussed earlier, Christensen appears to collapse and conflate a number of different topics throughout his film, with religion and myth being no exception"
-"Christensen utilizes in Häxan consists of narrative re-enactments, which take the historical artefacts and religious themes featured in earlier parts of the film and use actors to portray them. Christensen adds in storylines, characters, and scenes that are not known to have existed in real life, but that make the plot of the film more compelling"
-"It is no question that hundreds of women like Maria existed, and were persecuted, over the course of the European witch trials; nevertheless, there is less of a chance that Maria herself was a real person"
-"Maria is, therefore, a vehicle for Christensen to draw an emotional response from his audience, humanizing the witch trials and justifying the criticism that he elicits throughout his analysis."
-"The narrative re-enactments during the second portion of the film do not stop merely with fictional portrayals of potentially nonfictional material – on the contrary, Häxan recreates mythic tales of ritual, sacrifice"
-"this and similar re-enactments help to illustrate in part the religious and cultural environment of those living in the medieval era"
-"By showing onscreen what their accusers thought witches were doing, Christensen offers viewers a glimpse into their mindset"
-"Given this blatant oscillation between real/historical and fabricated/fictional content, it is safe to say that Häxan does not align with a more formal conception of documentary filmmaking"
-" Christensen ignores the conventions of documentary film-making that developed in the 1920s, and would later become standardized in the 1930s"
-"Documentary films that are (or, aim to be) mimetic and objective align squarely with historical analyses that depict the past as stable, monolithic, and wholly linear"

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Research- The Ultimate Horror Movie Guide

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Research- The Ultimate Horror Movie Guide

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Passages
-"starts unpromisingly enough"
-"The film's approach is intelligent, informed and resolutely non-exploitative"
-"As an exploration of the social and psychological roots of witch hysteria Häxan is peerless, but Christensen is too much of a showman to stop there"

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Week 1 Reading Documentary as a statement defining old genre in a new age-1

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Baxstrom, R. and Meyers, T. (2015) Realizing the Witch: Science, Cinema, and the Mastery of the Invisible. Fordham Univ Press.

Bills, N. (2017) Introduction to documentary. Indiana University Press.

Cardullo, B. (1982) Expressionism and the Real" Cabinet of Dr. Caligari". Film Criticism, 6(2), pp.28-34.

Christensen, B. (1922) Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages [Film] Sweden: AB Svensk Filmindustri.

Eisner, L.H. (2008) The Haunted Screen: Expressionism in the German cinema and the influence of Max Reinhardt. Univ of California Press.

Flaherty, R.J. (1922) Nanook of The North [Film] USA: Pathé.

Flueckiger, B. (2015) Color analysis for the digital restoration of Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari. The Moving Image: The Journal of the Association of Moving Image Archivists, 15(1), pp.22-43.

Kahana, J. (editor) The Documentary Film Reader: History, Theory, Criticism. USA: Oxford University Press.

Kramer, H. and Maxwell-Stuart, P.G (Translator). (2007) The Malleus Maleficarum. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Marriot, J. and Newman K. (2018) The Ultimate Horror Movie Guide. Fourth edition. London: SevenOaks Limited.

Murnau, F.W. (1922) Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror [Film] Germany: Prana Film.

Smith, N and Rock, J. (2014). Documentary as a statement: defining old genre in a new age. Journal of Media Practice, 15:1, 58-62.

Tortolani, E. (2020). Troubling Portrayals: Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (1922), Documentary Form, and the Question of Histor (iography). The Journal of Historical Fictions, 3(1), 24-41.

Wegener, P. and Boese, C. (1920) The Golem: How He Came into the World [Film] Germany: PAGU.

Wiene, R. (1920) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [Film] Germany: UFA GmbH.

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Smith, N and Rock, J. (2014). Documentary as a statement: defining old genre in a new age. Journal of Media Practice, 15:1, 58-62.

Tortolani, E. (2020). Troubling Portrayals: Benjamin Christensen’s Häxan (1922), Documentary Form, and the Question of Histor (iography). The Journal of Historical Fictions, 3(1), 24-41.

Wegener, P. and Boese, C. (1920) The Golem: How He Came into the World [Film] Germany: PAGU.

Wiene, R. (1920) The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari [Film] Germany: UFA GmbH.