Häxan

Lore & Background

The movie was produced by Swedish AB Svensk Filmindustri but shot in Denmark in 1920–1921. With Christensen's meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and its lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made at the time, costing nearly two million Swedish kronor. Although it received some positive reception in Denmark and Sweden, censors in countries such as Germany, France, and the United States objected to what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity, and sexual perversion, as well as anti-clericalism.

The film is structured in seven parts. The first part is a scholarly dissertation using photographs of statuary, paintings, and woodcuts, along with large-scale models of the Solar System and Hell. The second part presents vignettes dramatizing medieval superstitions, including Satan tempting a sleeping woman, terrorizing monks, and murdering another woman. Parts three through five follow a narrative set in the Middle Ages: a printer named Jesper dies, and his family accuses an old woman, Maria the weaver, of witchcraft. After torture, Maria confesses and names other supposed witches, leading to the arrest and burning of Jesper's widow Anna. The final segments contrast medieval beliefs with modern understandings, suggesting that accused witches may have suffered from mental or neurological disorders, such as hysteria, somnambulism, pyromania, or kleptomania.

Reader's Guide

Häxan is significant for its innovative blend of documentary-style exposition and dramatized narrative, a pioneering approach in silent cinema. The film's proposal that witch-hunts resulted from misunderstandings of mental illness anticipates later historical and psychological analyses. Its meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and high production cost made it the most expensive Scandinavian silent film of its time. The film's censorship in several countries due to graphic content highlights the boundaries of early 20th-century film regulation. The 1968 US re-release with narration by William S. Burroughs introduced the film to a new audience. Since its initial release, Häxan has undergone three restorations by the Swedish Film Institute (1976, 2007, and 2016) and has been praised for its visual imagery and storytelling, often called Christensen's masterpiece. Academic interpretations note its quasi-feminist examination of witchcraft as a tool for oppressing women and the poor, as well as Freudian themes of sexual repression linking possession to hysteria.

Did You Know?

• The film cost nearly two million Swedish kronor, making it the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made at the time.
• Censors in Germany, France, and the United States objected to its depictions of torture, nudity, sexual perversion, and anti-clericalism.
• The 1968 US re-release, titled Witchcraft Through the Ages, features English-language narration by William S. Burroughs.
• The film's original Swedish-language version has undergone three restorations by the Swedish Film Institute: in 1976, 2007, and 2016.

A Monument of Scandinavian Ambition

Few silent films of the early 1920s matched the sheer financial and logistical ambition of Häxan. Conceived and helmed by Benjamin Christensen, the project was financed by Sweden's Svensk Filmindustri yet actually filmed on Danish soil between 1920 and 1921, making it a genuine Swedish-Danish collaboration. Christensen's obsession with historical accuracy drove the production to extraordinary lengths: he painstakingly recreated medieval settings, and the lengthy shooting schedule pushed the budget to nearly two million Swedish kronor, a sum that made it the costliest Scandinavian silent picture ever produced up to that point. The film's intellectual foundation drew in part on Christensen's personal study of the Malleus Maleficarum, the fifteenth-century inquisitor's manual originating in Germany. That scholarly grounding gave the project a gravitas unusual for genre filmmaking of the era, positioning it less as mere entertainment and more as a visual treatise on one of history's darkest obsessions.

Weaving Fact and Fantasy Across Seven Segments

Häxan's most distinctive formal choice is its refusal to settle on a single mode of storytelling. Across seven segments, Christensen alternates between what reads as scholarly exposition—complete with photographs of medieval statuary, paintings, woodcuts, and large-scale models illustrating period concepts of the cosmos and Hell—and fully staged dramatic sequences. The early portions present a quasi-academic survey of how demons and witches appeared in primitive and medieval culture, crediting the work of Assyriologist Henry Rawlinson and Egyptologist Gaston Maspero. The middle sections plunge into theatrical vignettes: Satan luring a sleeping woman, a love-potion scheme, a weaver named Maria tortured into confessing to birthing children by the Devil and attending a Witches' Sabbath. The final segments pivot toward modernity, arguing that behaviors once attributed to demonic possession—somnambulism, pyromania, kleptomania—are better understood as neurological or psychological conditions. Intertitles assert that over eight million people were burned as witches, a staggering claim that anchors the film's central thesis of mass hysteria born of misunderstanding.

A Film That Offended the World

Despite its success in its home markets of Sweden and Denmark, Häxan became a lightning rod for international censors. In Germany, France, and the United States, authorities objected to what they deemed gratuitously graphic portrayals of torture, scenes of nudity, and depictions of sexual perversion. The film's openly anti-clerical stance—its unflinching portrayal of Inquisition judges as instruments of cruelty—added a further layer of controversy that religious and governmental bodies found intolerable. The result was a complex distribution history: the picture circulated relatively freely in Scandinavia while facing cuts or outright bans elsewhere. It would not reach American audiences in its original form until 1968, when Metro Pictures Corporation re-edited the material and issued it under the new title Witchcraft Through the Ages. Even then, the film carried the weight of nearly half a century of censorship debates, its unapologetic imagery and anti-authoritarian arguments making it a persistent thorn in the side of those who preferred history told without its ugliest details.

Enduring Legacy and the Burroughs Connection

Häxan's afterlife has been shaped as much by preservation and reinterpretation as by its original 1922 release. The Swedish Film Institute has undertaken three major restorations of the original Swedish-language cut—in 1976, 2007, and 2016—ensuring that the film's visual texture and narrative integrity survive for new generations. A particularly striking chapter in its legacy came in 1968, when Metro Pictures Corporation re-edited the material for American release and commissioned William S. Burroughs to deliver an English-language narration, lending the century-old footage an unmistakably countercultural voice. Critics have consistently singled out the film's seamless interweaving of documentary and dramatic modes, as well as the power of its visual imagery, and it is frequently described as Christensen's undisputed masterpiece. Film scholar Chris Fujiwara has drawn particular attention to the way the picture places factual exposition and fantastical sequences on the same cinematic plane, arguing that Christensen was self-consciously likening his own act of directing to the inquisitors' methods of coercion—a layer of meta-critique that keeps the work unsettlingly relevant.

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