Haxan: 
Witchcraft Through the Ages
The Criterion Edition
 (1922)
review by Head Cheeze

The silent film era's horror entries are far and away some of the best films in the genre, with Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, Phantom of the Opera and many more classics topping many a fan's list. However, hundreds of other films have been lost in the shadow of these better known titles. Haxan, the notorious and controversial docu-drama from legendary Danish filmmaker Benjamin Christiansen is just such a film, however, thanks to the folks at Criterion, Haxan has been given the deluxe treatment for a whole new generation of fans to discover the work of this cinema pioneer.

Broken into several vignettes, Haxan is an exhaustively researched look into the world of witchcraft throughout history showing it as an allegory for the treatment of women who defied their social status of the times. Christensen presents the paranoia surrounding the dark arts as the male solution to keeping a woman in her place, alluding to the fact that the men of the time used witchcraft to explain away any desires for equality on the part of women, and punished them accordingly. By the end of the film, as the stories take on more conventional themes, the director draws parallels between rampant diagnosis of mental illness as ways to address these same desires. The film's liberal views of the woman as second rate citizen are decades ahead of it's time, and even though some of the ways Christensen presents his views may be considered exploitational bordering on the pornographic, it's precisely this approach that makes the material so powerful and still valid and shocking after nearly a century.

Criterion presents this wonderful film in a jaw droppingly beautiful red and blue hand tinted transfer from the film's vault materials, and while their is noticeable wear on the film that is to be expected. The film is presented in two forms; Haxan, the full length feature, with a new soundtrack by film score specialist Gillian B. Anderson made especially for this release, and Witchcraft Through the Ages, which is a shorter version of the film, narrated by William S. Burroughs that features a sort of beatnik jazz score.

The Haxan version is presented in 5.0 Dolby Digital and is the best way to watch the film upon first viewing, but the Witchcraft.. version's Burrough's hallucinatory narration is great for fans of the author and makes for an entirely different viewing experience.

No Criterion Edition would be complete without a load of bonus materials, and Haxan doesn't dissappoint, with the aformentioned two versions of the film,Audio commentary by Danish silent film scholar Casper Tybjerg, a Christensen introduction from the film's 1941 re-release, Outtakes and test footage, and the Bibliothéque Diabolique stills gallery.