The Velvet Café

There is nothing like a good old vintage museum. You know the kind of museum that somehow slipped under the radar of the pedagogues, museums that didn’t get modernized and turned into an amusement park with a lot of “experiences” but few, if any objects.

There are very few of them left these days, but if you’ve ever been to one, you know what I mean. Then you can understand my fascination for one of my favorite museums, the zoological museum in the town where I grew up. It consisted of huge halls where thousands and thousands of items – mostly skeletons and stuffed animals – collected for centuries from all over the world were crowding in glass cupboards in what appeared to be a big mess. I don’t think they ever had the intention to educate anyone about them. They were leftovers of some long time forgotten research.

The best part of it was the floor where they kept the yucky stuff – huge glass bottles where indefinable creatures were floating in liquid, which once upon a time probably had been clear as water, but now had turned yellow. The lack of information tickled my imagination and it the atmosphere in the most remote corners of this museum was creepier than a ghost train ride.

If you too find magic in this kind of places, I think you might like the silent film Häxan from 1922.

A curious film
This is a rather curious film, which best could be described as a documentary intending to give a historical view on witchcraft. The film consists of seven pieces and uses a number of different approaches to the topic. Some parts consist of slideshows where we get to see drawings and paintings that illustrate the practice of witchcraft in the past altered with cards with explaining texts. But the more spectacular parts, the ones I’ll remember this film for, are the dramatizations, with special effects that are far better than I would have expected from a film of this age. There are plenty of scenes that I can imagine must have been tickling, not to say shocking at this time. There is nudity, there are body parts, dark rituals, torture, ecstasy and we also get to meet the Devil himself quite a few times, impersonated by the director who seems to enjoy it quite a bit.

Häxan seems a bit randomly put together, just like a vintage museum. It’s a bit of horror and sensation, it’s a bit of lecturing, it’s a bit of drama and a bit of comedy. Once in a while the fourth wall is broken and the film starts to give out information about the actors.

It’s a bit hard to tell for sure where Benjamin Christiansen stands in the question of witchcraft. Does it exist for real or not? Regardless of which, there’s no lack of scenes that may not be terribly scary for a modern viewer, but nevertheless are funny, original and imaginative.

Not everything is for pleasure though. There are also parts that are rather unsettling and saddening, dealing with the collective madness that spread in Europe in the middle age, resulting in the death of innumerous innocent people, mostly elderly women.

A modern comparsion
The film ends with an interesting – and surprisingly modern – comparison between the treatment of “hysterical” women of today and the historical view on witches.

I’ll give the last word to Christiansen. I think he’s got some good points.

“Centuries have passed and the Almighty of medieval times no longer sits in his tenth sphere. We no longer sit in church staring terrified at the frescoes of the devils. The witch no longer flies away on her broom over the rooftops. But isn’t superstition still rampant among us? Is there an obvious difference between the sorceress and her customer then and now? We no longer burn our old and poor. But do they not often suffer bitterly? And the little woman, whom we call hysterical, alone and unhappy, isn’t she still a riddle for us? Nowadays we detain the unhappy in a mental institution or – if she is wealthy – in a modern clinic. And then we will console ourselves with the notion that the mildly temperate shower of the clinic has replaced the barbaric methods of medieval times.”

Häxan is a strange creature of a film. It’s probably not for everyone, but if you’re into curiosities and can see the charm of silent films, I think it’s a must-see.

Häxan (Benjamin Christensen, DK, 1922) My rating: 4/5