I spoke far too soon about Haxan, which proved to be a bit of a mixed bag but a superior film nonetheless. Ostensibly about Witchcraft in European history, we get a series of vignettes featuring torture by the Inquisition, Sorceresses at their dirty work, gleeful Sabbats--including a memorably beautiful sequence of a nude witch watching her colleagues take to the air on brooms and benches and goats. There is an extremely ironic wry wit through much of Haxan which manages never to be corny; many visual jokes are highly sophisticated juxtapositions that highlight a suprisingly politicized and proto-feminist viewpoint in the last third of the film [they were accused of witchcraft but of course we know today they were actually simply suffering from hysteria--poor things!]. Alas, while there are cute vignettes featuring modern girls whose hysterical behavior is compared to that of witches, there is no footage of these young woman receiving the common cure at the time.
The tone of the film dramatically jumps from rather effective and gruesome torture sequences to gleefully cheerful and blasphemous scenes of young women adoringly smooching the Dark Lord's filthy asscheeks to devestating portrayals of overbearing Inquisitors and their prey. The filmmaker keeps interrupting his narrative to provide his opinion or to make smart-ass comments. During one particularly mean-spirited montage the standard text-on-screen narrative shot comes up and it says: "One of our young actresses demanded to try the thumbscrew"[footage of an adorable young flapper being tormented by said device], then more text: "but I won't tell you what scandalous confessions I forced out of her!" Loved it!
Of course this is a Criterion Collection presentation, so everything is sharp, bright and clear, and the restored musical score is well-performed and synched in a way that adds to the humor. Check it out.
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