Well, this weekend has inadvertently been a witchy double-bill, between The Sudbury Devil and this.
Haxan is a Danish silent-era film from 1922. The format - which kind of surprised me - is basically a lecture on witchcraft, divided into 7 parts with the first giving a quick historical overview and the remainder being short dramatisations of different aspects of the subject. The first part is basically a bunch of slides, though the use of a stick to point at specific details being discussed was oddly amusing to me. I found this intro section pretty dry and unengaging: but it does pick up in the following parts. The film's real strength is the creative and striking visual FX, which are pretty cool and impressive for a film which is now over a hundred years old.
Unfortunately, I wouldn't say the visuals really make it worthwhile. At 1h 45mins, it's pretty long for what is essentially a documentary, and, to be honest, I actually dozed off a bit towards the end. Unsurprisingly, a lot of the scholarship is out of date and inaccurate. At one point it claims the total death toll of the Witch Hysteria was 8 million: from what I've read, modern scholars put it more like 100,000. There are a couple of points too where the narration sort of breaks the 4th wall by explicitly talking about the actors, as opposed to the characters. It has a weirdly jarring effect in continually calling attention to its own artifice. The conclusion is quite an interesting one though, comparing the treatment of the elderly back then with the modern use of retirement homes and mental asylums.
Finally, I should probably mention the music which felt very out of place for much of the film. I don't know if this was the original score, or even if there was such a thing, but it was weirdly chirpy and was very at odds with the film's matter.
All in all, it's a bit of a curiosity but I'd struggle to really recommend it.