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Home > World Cinema > Scandinavian Film > Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968)

 

 

 

Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) DVD, 1922

£7.99

RRP: £19.99
You save £12 (60%)

 

Availability
This product should be despatched within 3-4 working days. Despatched from the UK. Delivery timesUsually 2-3 days to reach UK addresses. Europe takes around 2 days longer and International destinations take 1-2 weeks

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Costs to other countriesWestern Europe: £2.00
Rest of the world: £3.00

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MovieMail's Review

Benjamin Christensen’s film of witchcraft through the ages is an extraordinarily individual work by any standards. It begins as an illustrated lecture with demonstrations by means of engravings, mechanical models and dioramas, but before long has shifted into a film re-enactment of a medieval witch’s kitchen, with the preparation of potions and the hand of gallows’ corpse arriving in a bundle of faggots. Then it’s on to an extended witch hunting sequence in which sadistic judges torture and trick crones and young women alike into confessing participation in diabolical rituals – with these same rituals brought to life in lurid reconstructions. Throughout, Christensen himself plays the devil with lascivious, tongue-waggling relish, frightening monks, tempting wives from their beds and providing the blatantly phallic impetus to old women's dreams.

As well as providing entertainment, finding a rational explanation for the witch craze underpins Christensen’s approach, and he draws parallels between symptoms of witchery and those of 20th century ‘hysteria’. A self-reflexive commentary makes for a mix of registers in the film which a modern audience can readily appreciate

 

Graeme Hobbs on 12th July 2007
View all 262 of Graeme Hobbs's reviews

Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968)

 

 

Film Information

Director - Benjamin Christensen

Produced - 1922

Main Language - Silent with English subtitles

Countries & Regions - Scandinavian Film

 

 

DVD Details

Certificate: 15 Publisher: Tartan Video Region: 2
Length: 104 mins Aspect: 1.33:1 Cat No: TVD3758
Format: DVD B&W Subtitles: English

 

 

DVD Extras

  • Digital speed-corrected version of the Swedish Film Institue's tinted restoration
  • Original Danish Premiere sountrack
  • New Brontt Industries Kapital soundtrack
  • New Geoff Smith soundtrack.

 

 

Film Description

A darkly humorous, genre-defying silent 'documentary', in which witchcraft through the ages is presented in a series of dramatic vignettes that explore the contention that witches of the middle ages suffered a hysteria similar to that of modern psychiatric patients. Director Christensen presents an audacious mixture of fact, fiction, lecture and hallucinatory recreation in his one-of-a-kind film. He himself plays the devil, notably in a terrifying sequence with a monk!

Also includes Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968), narrated by William S Burroughs with a soundtrack featuring Jean-Luc Ponty.

 

 

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Film Stills

Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968) Haxan (1922) / Witchcraft Through the Ages (1968)

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Customer Reviews

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Barry Forshaw on 15th November 2007

This remarkable exploration of the supernatural and religious gullibility has both shocked and entertained audiences since its premiere in 1922. Christensen’s enthusia... more >

 

 

 

Also Available from Director Benjamin Christensen

View all Benjamin Christensen films

 

 

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