Häxan

A silent film about witchcraft. Its structure is unusual. It begins like a lecture: old drawings, maps and diagrams are shown, and how the medieval mind pictured the universe is explained. Then it moves into dramatisation. A witch preparing a potion, gatherings at night, meetings with the devil, all staged the way the period itself believed them. The third part is about the inquisition: an old woman is accused, questioned, and under torture says whatever is wanted. She gives a name, and that name gives another. In the last part the film returns to the present and states its real claim: some of the behaviour once called witchcraft is known illness, and what was done to those women continues now in other forms. The director himself plays the devil. It was made with Swedish money and was one of the most expensive films in northern Europe at the time; a long shooting period went into the sets and the night scenes. It was censored in many countries and banned in some. In the 1960s a shortened version was released again with a jazz score and narration by William S. Burroughs. Benjamin Christensen directed. Who it is for: anyone interested in silent cinema, in structures that mix documentary with fiction, and in the history of horror. Who it is not for: anyone unprepared for disturbing images; the torture scenes are explicit and the film holds them.