This is another movie that
has sat in my shelf for ages before I now finally watched it while
recovering from a nasty flu. This certainly was an oddity, it's part
documentary, part mockumentary and part fictional horror movie.
There's slide show like graphic presentation, acted story telling and
even some stop motion animation in it. It's divided into seven
segments each of which has a story of it's own but all focused on
different aspects of witchcraft. This movie has a rather painfully
slow start, the first segment with it's illustrations and history
lessons was just simply boring. Maybe if you are more into the
subject matter you could get something more out of it, but for me it
didn't really serve any purpose. The second part was better but not
much, it follows a witch cooking with some surprisingly comic moments
as well. But after that the movie gets going and stays quite
interesting until the end. The last segment with all it's
philosophical aspects is very dated and a bit tedious to watch, but
it does have an interesting point to it. I can understand why this
movie was banned in pretty much every country when it came out, not
because it would be pro-witchcraft, it's actually quite the opposite,
but because it's anti-religious. It basically compares religion and
people who believe in witchcraft to a mental illness. Then again not
long ago I read that some Nepalese woman was burned at the stake for being a witch, so I guess this movie is still relevant today. Which of course it
should most definitely not be.
Anyway even though there are some relevant points to the story of this film, it is mostly quite dated. But that didn't bother me much as this movie was pure brilliance for me as a film history lesson. I must say where people praise Lang, Eisenstein and Murnau among others for being the early pioneers of film making, I'd put Benjamin Christensen to that list as well. Technically this movie is a marvel. There's some movie tricks that even today look impressive. And the acting deserves a special mention, the whole movie is rather brilliantly acted without the usual over acting very common in silent films. The makeup is surprisingly effective, I mean sure the demons look a bit goofy, but they are strikingly similar to the old drawing presented at the start from old history books. But what I loved the most was the cinematography, every single frame was lit and framed perfectly down to the smallest details. After seeing this it's not hard to believe it took three years to shoot it. For anyone even a bit interested in the history of movies, this is a must see and well people who are into witchcraft might get something out of it too, but as an entertaining film for the casual viewer I don't think there's much to go with this one. Anyway for me this was an eye opener and showed that some of the early cinema pioneers came from Scandinavia. Oh, and if you are planning on watching this, beware there are two versions out there, the original 104 minute version and a shortened 77 minute version with a narrator. Steer clear from the shortened version as the music is some crappy jazz which doesn't fit it at all and it's missing some very nice scenes, so watch the original or not at all.
Anyway even though there are some relevant points to the story of this film, it is mostly quite dated. But that didn't bother me much as this movie was pure brilliance for me as a film history lesson. I must say where people praise Lang, Eisenstein and Murnau among others for being the early pioneers of film making, I'd put Benjamin Christensen to that list as well. Technically this movie is a marvel. There's some movie tricks that even today look impressive. And the acting deserves a special mention, the whole movie is rather brilliantly acted without the usual over acting very common in silent films. The makeup is surprisingly effective, I mean sure the demons look a bit goofy, but they are strikingly similar to the old drawing presented at the start from old history books. But what I loved the most was the cinematography, every single frame was lit and framed perfectly down to the smallest details. After seeing this it's not hard to believe it took three years to shoot it. For anyone even a bit interested in the history of movies, this is a must see and well people who are into witchcraft might get something out of it too, but as an entertaining film for the casual viewer I don't think there's much to go with this one. Anyway for me this was an eye opener and showed that some of the early cinema pioneers came from Scandinavia. Oh, and if you are planning on watching this, beware there are two versions out there, the original 104 minute version and a shortened 77 minute version with a narrator. Steer clear from the shortened version as the music is some crappy jazz which doesn't fit it at all and it's missing some very nice scenes, so watch the original or not at all.
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