If there is one thing I come away with in this film it is this quote near the beginning - "The belief in sorcery and witchcraft is a result of naive notions about the mystery of the universe." The film is presented documentary style with the first portion being about the beliefs of the ancients in regard to sorcery, just so nobody believes that all of this came completely from the Roman Catholic church. It is interesting that there are such commonalities among the ancients and those of the middle ages. They had similar physical forms for demons and believed that sorcerers made people ill or were responsible for certain catastrophes. They never say so, but I imagine this was one way to keep people in line politically speaking. If the townspeople blame sorcerers for their dying cattle or a huge fire they are less likely to revolt against the authorities. Remember the Catholic church and the kings of the Middle Ages were in close alliance.
The dramatic portion is about the last two thirds of the film in which the inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church in the middle ages is shown along with instruments of torture indicating that it would be easy to get someone to confess anything given such devices. It was much like the House Un American Activities Committee of the early 1950's. If you were called a Communist the only way to clear yourself was to name a bunch of other people as Communists. Likewise, witches under torture were forced to name a bunch of other people as witches, they were tortured, and so on. The traveling monks who did this work would thus leave a town after burning half the women to the stake and be able to say "Wow! It's a good thing we showed up! Look how many witches you had and never even knew it!" The film jumps to the present and says that modern science has shown that many of the symptoms of witchcraft - such as lack of sensitivity to pain - have been found to be the result of hysteria and thus has a psychological component, not a demonic one. Funny though how Christensen makes all of these hysterical people out to be women, in particular women who have lost somebody from WWI and turned to shoplifting or some other antisocial or compulsive behavior because they can't fathom going through life without the person they lost. I cut Christensen some slack on this because this film was made almost 100 years ago, plus he does show that it is women who still suffer now (in 1922) from intolerance - locked away in asylums - rather than burned at the stake as they were in the middle ages. And he encourages charity to the poor and misunderstood.
The only thing I'm not sure about is the veracity of the film when it comes to the creative methods of torture. I've heard some people say that many of these devices came from a museum that simply made some of the devices up to increase sensationalism, and thus attendance and ticket sales. Still it's a fascinating piece of film work and I'd recommend it. Just realize that it is creepy enough you might not want to watch it late at night when you are alone.
The dramatic portion is about the last two thirds of the film in which the inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church in the middle ages is shown along with instruments of torture indicating that it would be easy to get someone to confess anything given such devices. It was much like the House Un American Activities Committee of the early 1950's. If you were called a Communist the only way to clear yourself was to name a bunch of other people as Communists. Likewise, witches under torture were forced to name a bunch of other people as witches, they were tortured, and so on. The traveling monks who did this work would thus leave a town after burning half the women to the stake and be able to say "Wow! It's a good thing we showed up! Look how many witches you had and never even knew it!" The film jumps to the present and says that modern science has shown that many of the symptoms of witchcraft - such as lack of sensitivity to pain - have been found to be the result of hysteria and thus has a psychological component, not a demonic one. Funny though how Christensen makes all of these hysterical people out to be women, in particular women who have lost somebody from WWI and turned to shoplifting or some other antisocial or compulsive behavior because they can't fathom going through life without the person they lost. I cut Christensen some slack on this because this film was made almost 100 years ago, plus he does show that it is women who still suffer now (in 1922) from intolerance - locked away in asylums - rather than burned at the stake as they were in the middle ages. And he encourages charity to the poor and misunderstood.
The only thing I'm not sure about is the veracity of the film when it comes to the creative methods of torture. I've heard some people say that many of these devices came from a museum that simply made some of the devices up to increase sensationalism, and thus attendance and ticket sales. Still it's a fascinating piece of film work and I'd recommend it. Just realize that it is creepy enough you might not want to watch it late at night when you are alone.