Director: Benjamin Christensen
Cast: Benjamin Christensen, Clara Pontoppidan, Oscar Stribolt, Astrid Holm
Have I Seen It Before: Never.
Did I Like It: I suppose it makes sense why documentary has yet to appear in the round table of genre in silent cinema that might or might not work a hundred years after the fact. Outside of news reels or the occasional train heading toward the camera*, it never feels like the kind of genre that would lend itself to a time before synchronized sound.
Then again, is this even really a documentary? There are long stretches of frames focused on pages of books that no doubt got Ken Burns all hot and bothered, but there are long stretches where the director dresses up like the devil and black sabbaths are depicted, ultimately leading to the unravelling of a film, only to turn back in on itself and take a look at how the superstitions have shifted from the then-modern perspective of the clearly enlightened 1920s.
Honestly, after all of that I probably need to admit that the film is truly difficult to get a bead on. But by the same token, thoughts of the film haven’t left me since I watched it last week, which automatically puts it in the above average column for the silent films I’ve watched this year. An undercurrent of oddness punctuated by some even odder imagery may be all I require from a film anymore. The live music accompaniment that didn’t just rely on the theater’s pipe organ.
*I honestly thought that Behind The Screen (1916) was a documentary subject, when it was actually just one of Chaplin’s shorts… Now I kind of want to watch that one right now. That’s got to be an indicator of a pretty good movie, right? It causes your mind to wander and want to watch other movies.