Art History Uncensored: “Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages”

On this week’s Art History Uncensored, we’ll be diving into Benjamin Christensen’s solacious 1922 film, Häxan: Witchcraft Through the Ages. This silent-era film not only rattled a few cages with its shocking imagery, but it has also gone on to inspire countless other films. 

Written and directed by Christensen, Häxan is a highly fictionalized account of the history of witchcraft. Starting at its pagan roots and concludes with the hysteria it caused in Eastern Europe. Christensen uses several dramatic vignettes to tell this story while exploring the idea that many of these “witches” were just mentally ill. The Danish filmmaker called the persecution “one of the biggest catastrophes in the history of mankind.” 

At the time, the filmmaker was fascinated by the history of witchcraft. As a result of his research, he decided to “throw light on the psychological causes of these witch trials by demonstrating their connections with certain abnormalities of the human psyche, abnormalities which have existed throughout history and still exist in our midst.”

Christensen also didn’t seem to view it purely as a movie either. Again, in his own words, “my film has no continuous story, no ‘plot’ – it could perhaps best be classified as a cultural history lecture in moving pictures.”

Why is Häxan Offensive

The film demonstrates his point with graphic and off-the-wall imagery like holding a baby over a cauldron until it looks like it’s melting. Women kissing the butt of the devil. A woman being tortured into confessing to multiple occult activities, like having Satan’s baby, before being burnt at the stake. Not to mention more desecrations of the cross than you can shake an inverted crucifix at. 

Part of the opening is a creative reading from the Malleus Maleficarum. The book is a guide for German witch-hunters from 1486, created by clergyman Heinrich Kramer. It is a compendium, of sorts, of preexisting demonological literature. Giving insight into how to deal with any number of devilish activities. The book itself was praised as well as condemned by the catholic church. Since Kramer presented it as the church’s official stance, many members pointed out that several of the practices in this book are not in line with the teachings of the church. Others praised Kramer for calling attention to such a demonic plight. 

Censorship

As you can imagine, such graphic and blasphemous scenes did not sit well with censors in the early 1920s. Häxan was banned in Germany, France, and the United States. Mostly due to numerous scenes of torture, sex, nudity, “satanic content,” and anticlericalism. 

So, like most of the other films we’ve discussed, Häxan had to undergo extensive cuts to be shown in any of those territories. Even for its home release in Sweden, despite it being the most expensive Swedish production ever made at the time, it would spend decades in film limbo.

However, it did not languish as just a controversial film. Regardless of the upset Häxan caused, its artistic merit could not be denied. A review in Variety simply puts it: “Wonderful though this picture is, it is absolutely unfit for public exhibition.”

Edits Galore

Countless re-edits were made to appease censors in various territories. One re-release in 1941 featured an introduction by Christensen to help prepare the audience for what they were about to see. One of the most famous re-edits would come in 1967, after it had fallen into the public domain. Filmmaker Antony Balch created a shortened version with a jazz score and narration from the writer William S. Burroughs, called Witchcraft Through the Ages. Making this an early example of remixing a film. 

Thankfully, it’s also had several official restorations as well by the Swedish Film Institute in 1976 and 2007 with tinted photochemical restorations, then again in 2016 with a digital restoration. In 2019, the Criterion Collection released the 2016 digital restoration exclusively on Blu-ray in the US. So this censorship hasn’t caused Häxan to become completely lost, like so many other films of the silent era. 

Inspiration

It’s just been announced that Little Walnut Productions will be backing the new psychological folk horror film Häxan. The studio, run by Moby and Lindsay Hicks, has confirmed that Erika Linder (Below Her Mouth) and T’Nia Miller (The Haunting of Bly Manor) will star. Linder and Hicks co-wrote the screenplay, with BAFTA-nominee Tina Gharavi directing. 

The film is “inspired by the Swedish witch trials of the 17th century, blending psychological horror, relationship drama, and Scandinavian folk horror.” Both the Swedish witch trials and Malleus Maleficarum inspired the 1922 version of Häxan. While this upcoming film is more of a study on “fear, grief, misogyny, and confirmation bias through the unravelling of an intimate relationship,” in a weird way, so was Christensen’s film. Well, the fear, grief, misogyny, and confirmation bias part of it anyway. While little else is known at this time, it’s assumed to be taking inspiration from the silent-era film, at least in its naming convention. 

Production on the new feature has already begun in and around Stockholm, Sweden. Hicks, Katherine Fisher, and Erin Stehler are producing for Little Walnut. Erin Scolaro will produce for Production Coven. Moby will executive produce alongside scoring the film.

The Legacy of Häxan

Quasi-remake or not, Häxan’s legacy lives on in the hearts of fans of cult movies and film historians. Not only is it an early example of horror, many argue it’s an early found footage film. While a fake documentary may not sound groundbreaking in 2026, it was very cutting-edge in the silent era. Christensen’s choice to blend (for the time) extremely realistic effects with surrealist imagery still unnerves many audiences to this day. 

Not because they believe what they are seeing on screen is real, but because of the film’s well-crafted and all-enveloping atmosphere. Some even refer to the work as a “horror mood board” of sorts. Finely tuned atmosphere, not ignorance, is at the heart of what made Häxan so unsettling in the 1920s and for the foreseeable future. 

Join us next Sunday for another edition of Art History Uncensored.