Director: Benjamin Christensen
Date Watched: 10-3-2024
Where: Eastside Cinema, Austin, TX
Rating: 7/10
This was not what I expected, although to be honest I had no particular expectations at all before going to see this tonight. It turns out that this film, which I own on Blu-ray but had been putting off watching in hopes of catching it in a cinema, is a treatise on the history of witchcraft, punctuated by still images and short live action sequences. It’s wordy, but informative, and often unintentionally funny. Whenever the devil shows up he’s sticking his tongue out and wiggling it, which can be sinister, but can also be comical, and sometimes he’s at your window rapping impatiently and expecting you to come give him some sugar.
It’s an interesting artifact of the silent era, and a film I’ll eventually revisit as a part of my All the Movies project, and it was nice to see it in a theater. Plus, I learned that häxan is a Swedish word that means “witch.”
The film was accompanied by David DiDonato, who I’d heard play over Metropolis earlier this year. This time, he had a female companion who narrated the film. The subtitles were all in Swedish, and she spoke them in English, acting as she did so, which added a great deal of life to the film.
