Witchcraft through the ages is explored with dark wit in this silent classic. Writer-director Benjamin Christensen uses a historical study of witchcraft as a jumping-off point for a fascinating film that is part science, part horror, and part social commentary. This Criterion edition uses a beautiful print, a rearrangement of music from the original Danish premiere, and the original Swedish intertitles (with subtitles). Goodies include commentary by Danish film scholar Casper Tybjerg, the option of watching a narrated version without intertitles, and test shots from the film. The test shots, in particular, give insight into the early filmmaking process, as when Christensen uses his own image to try out (and reject) a flying effect. This is a worthy edition to the collection of fans of horror films, silent films, and film in general. -Ali Davis A literal witches' brew of satanic rituals and imagery make up this oddly defined documentary milestone from Danish director Benjamin Christensen. Told in seven chapters, Christensen uses everything from animation to re-enactments to create a darkly humorous mélange of torture, possession, and orgiastic parties outlining a history of witchcraft. We are proud to present the Swedish Film Institute's tinted restoration of Haxan (1922), along with the 74-minute 1968 version narrated by William S. Burroughs and a soundtrack featuring Jean-Luc Ponty.

This beloved 1962 film from the golden age of international cinema can't help but look terribly self-conscious now, full of ambivalent nods to the contemporaneous vitality of the French New Wave (an obligatory iris shot of star Hardy Kruger, for instance, as seen through something like a tiny knothole). There is also a fair amount of dragging and wasted motion in the overlong story, but even that is forgivable given this film's extraordinary, soulful portrait of a beautiful if impossible relationship. Kruger plays Pierre, a former military pilot whose plane crashed after a bombing raid in Indochina. Killing a little girl in the process, Pierre suffers a psychological trauma that is lessened by the company of a 12-year-old orphan named Cybele (Patricia Gozzi), herself an abandoned, luckless child in need of companionship. Meeting every Sunday, the two become immersed in a deeply affectionate world of their own, where nothing unsavory actually occurs yet a full range of emotional colors seems possible-much like two innocents reborn in each other's eyes. Cowriter and director Serge Bourguignon adopts a fairy-tale tone for both the central bond between Pierre and Cybele as well as the oddly harsh, uncaring social environment that inevitably condemns their union. Bourguignon is lucky to have a couple of important allies: Maurice Jarre for the musical score and legendary cinematographer Henri Decae behind the lens. While these artists can't save Bourguignon from his own trite excesses as a visualist, they enhance his considerable feeling for the redemptive poetry of an unlikely love. -Tom Keogh.

This majestic, French-made film wishes viewers a "latcho drom"-a safe journey-as it follows the roots of the Rom, traveling people better known as Gypsies. Stunning and evocative, it transcends language and culture, bringing together the best elements of National Geographic-style documentary and music video in a kind of anthropological MTV. Using only music and image, without any steady characters or plot, award-winning director Tony Gatlif (himself of Rom descent) tells a compelling story of Rom migrations from Northern India to Europe and the rest of the world. Beginning with a gathering of lavishly dressed nomads singing across the harsh deserts of Rajasthan, viewers are transported through the lush oases of Egypt into the ghettoes of Turkey, from the muddy lanes of Eastern Europe through lush French fields to the windswept coastal cities of Spain. Every step of the way, there are hypnotic reminders of the harshness and beauty of the Rom lifestyle: the rhythms of labor pounding into vibrant dance, the songs of Turkish flower sellers merging with the plaintive political satires of a gray-haired Romanian violinist. Music is everywhere-children barely able to walk dance alongside great-grandmothers-and covers all styles and subjects-from the wintry strains of an Auschwitz lament to a flamenco devotional in a Spanish shrine to a festive Dixieland number that borrows as much from New Orleans as from northern India. And wordless stories abound, told in the smiles of strangers waiting for a train or in the frowns of rifle-toting farmers come to evict travelers from their land. -Grant Balfour.