Witchcraft vs. The Patriarchy in Hxan, Witchhammer, and Belladonna of Sadness | Far Flungers

The witch-hunt reached epidemic levels, and over eight million were burnt alive in one of mankind’s darkest chapters. But the "Häxan" argues that modern times are just as horrific. Torturing people into confessions is still practiced to this day, only the church has been replaced by the law. Today, individuals suffering from mental health issues inhabit all the behavioral traits of what people back then would consider the devil’s work, and the way we treat them remains problematic. We may not burn them on stakes, but we surely give them hell in mental institutions. 

When I first heard of this magnificent film, I thought it would illustrate so-called witches as “the evil ones.” Instead, the film portrays perfectly normal human beings with everyday professions—priests and policemen—as the true villains. “Häxan” is the most fascinating horror documentary I’ve ever seen; a haunting document of a time when the practice of medicine was considered sorcery. And I’ve always thought Otakar Vávra’s “Witchhammer” would make a perfect double-bill to Christensen’s “Häxan,” as it too draws from authentic historical records of Inquisition trials.

In “Witchhammer,” the use of fear to attain confessions resembled the Stalinist methods of the communist regime in the 1950s. The film was subsequently prohibited from screening, and only appeared on television decades later in 1989. But what makes “Witchhammer” stand the test of time is its incredibly detailed portrayal of the methods used within the process itself. Vávra based everything on actual texts of court records that took place in Velké Losiny and Šumperk from 1678 to 1695. Blackmailing, torture, and psychological manipulation were used to turn friends into foes, the weak into prey. At one point, a priest named Lautner, one of the film’s key characters, utters in frustration, “Your Grace, the Devil’s work lies in the brutality towards the superstitious and the uneducated.” The film shows how the trials were orchestrated in a way so that once the process started, it was impossible to stop. 

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