Häxan (1922) has lost little of its ability to shock and awe almost 100 years after its original release. I remember when I first saw Benjamin Christensen’s masterwork when I was in high school. Few films have ever evoked the medieval period in such Romantic detail. I was so blown away by the production design. Seeing the film again after its 2016 restoration is even more inspiring than before.
Häxan is a cinematic fantasia, the kind that just can’t exist in the world of sound film. With Häxan Christensen makes explicit, via the juxtaposition of narratives and narration, the relationship between author and image, image and sequence. Häxan remains cohesive as a result of all these varying contrasts where links aren’t born out of story but the images themselves.
