Häxan (1922)
Plays here · source: Internet Archive
Blending lecture-hall documentary segments with lavishly staged dramatizations, this Swedish-Danish silent film traces European witch-hunting from medieval superstition through the asylums of the 1920s, arguing the two were never as different as claimed.
Benjamin Christensen spent nearly two years and one of the largest budgets in Scandinavian silent cinema on Häxan, and cast himself as a leering, tongue-wagging Satan — vivid enough that the film was banned in several countries for its torture scenes and nudity alone.
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