Hævnens nat [Blind Justice] (1916)

I'm honestly not sure whether I'd count Blind Justice as a holiday movie (with the holiday in question being New Year's Eve, rather than Christmas). A significant portion of the movie - more than a quarter of the total runtime - is set on New Year's, and there are thematic elements tied to the holiday. But at the same time, those elements aren't as immediately obvious to modern viewers, and this certainly doesn't feel like any kind of Christmas movie most people are familiar with.

I'm explaining this upfront in case anyone specifically looking for Christmas (or New Year's) movies stumbles across this review: Blind Justice probably isn't going to scratch that itch. But at the same time, this is a Danish silent film from 1916 written, directed, and starring Benjamin Christensen, who'd go on to make Häxan. You bet your ass I want to explore how he integrated the holidays into a melodrama with (vaguely) proto-slasher tones.

Very vaguely, I should add. Hell, the character in question doesn't actually kill a single person, and the narrative makes it clear he's a victim who's really not responsible for his own actions. It occurs to me the movie's depiction of mental illness - while obviously outdated and flawed - is significantly better than any actual slashers or Giallos I've encountered.

The movie itself makes for a fascinating viewing experience, though the format available is a bit frustrating at times. The only version to survive is the English one, which... okay, as an English speaker, that works in my favor. However the only copy I could locate comes from The Danish Film Institute, who have understandably subtitled it back into Danish. For the most part this isn't an issue - it just means there are Danish subtitles under the English ones. But the movie also has a sizable number of scenes utilizing letters and notes to convey information, and these don't leave space underneath for the translations. So, lacking a better option, they've simply overlaid the Danish text over the English, making it extremely difficult to read the originals in their entirety in some cases. You can still get the basic idea, but personally I hate not knowing if there's important information just out of view.

Other than that, this is an unusually clean copy with no serious deterioration or (as far as I could tell) missing sections. The lavish sets are clear, and the tinting is retained. It looks great. I mean that as both a compliment to whoever preserved this and to Christensen, who pulls off some incredible shots, including an early pan through a closed window illusion. This obviously isn't going to impress anyone hoping for modern computer effects, but for those of us interested in the early days of the medium, this stuff is incredible.

The New Year's sequence is at the beginning. Well... almost the beginning. The actual opening is of a title card telling us that Christensen (they use a slightly modified name, but let's keep things simple) wrote, directed, and produced this, and that we should care because his last movie was a big international success. So... that's not a thing movies still do. Next, we're shown a brief behind-the-scenes bit with a model of one of the buildings (I don't believe the model is used in the actual movie, but the combination of lighting and tinting makes this look a lot cooler than you'd think).

THEN we get to New Year's Eve. The two principal characters in this section are "Strong Henry" (Christensen) and Ann (Karen Caspersen). Henry is a circus strongman wanted for a murder he swears he didn't commit who's on the run with his infant son. Ann is a wealthy young woman celebrating the holiday with her uncle and extended family. She's also the only one who doesn't want to grab a gun and go after Henry when they receive word a "dangerous criminal" is loose. Instead, she expresses disgust at the way her family is eager to hunt him like an animal.

Later that night, Henry breaks into her room. Here's where we get that camera through the window trick, which doesn't even do the effect justice. They pull off the illusion it pans back through Ann's window to reveal Henry, who then forces the window open and comes in. It's a simple effect to pull off (there's no glass, so they just start with it against the window and play out the scene), but it makes for an exciting, visually striking sequence that feels way ahead of its time.

Henry tells her he's innocent, and Ann believes him. She agrees to bring him milk for his infant son (stashed elsewhere) and promises not to reveal his presence. However she's seen by her uncle, who deduces who the milk is for. Her extended family then pressures her into tricking Henry to leave her room so he can be apprehended. Once captured, he proclaims he'll one day tie a knot around Ann's neck, since he believes she betrayed him.

Cut to fourteen years later. Henry is released from jail, both because of good behavior and because some unexplained new evidence is giving the police cause to reconsider. He's told he can get his son back, but when he goes to the orphanage he learns his son was adopted almost immediately after his apprehension, and further that the records are sealed. He has a nervous breakdown and seems to lose touch with reality.

In a daze, he wanders the streets and runs into an old acquaintance, who's now working with a group of thieves and dog-nappers. Henry is too far gone to realize what they're doing at first, so he briefly works with them. They randomly wind up robbing an office used by Ann's husband, a doctor, and Henry gets his hands on a note from Ann reminding him of his vow of revenge.

While all this is happening, we also follow a side story about the guy who actually committed that murder years ago. He's an animal handler at the circus, and he descends into a spiral of fear and guilt that culminates in his death. With his dying breath, he reveals Henry's innocence.

This... doesn't actually effect the plot at all, but it confirms to the audience that Henry was telling the truth. But it doesn't change the fact he's now dangerously insane and out to kill Ann, who we also know didn't really betray him (at least not of her own volition). We also know that Ann and her husband are the ones who secretly adopted Henry's son and have been raising him as their own.

Henry captures Ann's husband and the aforementioned 14-year-old kid (who's identity he doesn't realize) and ties them up. They manage to use the phone to contact the police, but by then Henry's made it to Ann's house, where she's alone with a baby and a servant who winds up unconscious trying to prove Ann's imagining danger where none exists. There's a bit of a cat-and-mouse game where Ann moves around the house to escape Henry, protect her two-year-old baby, and reach the phone. Eventually she reveals her location to Henry to distract him from her daughter. But before he can kill her, the police show up and shoot him. Ann has him moved to a bed, where he dies the next day after being reunited (albeit briefly) with his son.

The movie questions the value of retribution while elevating forgiveness and compassion. Obviously, if everyone just listed to Ann at New Year's, this wouldn't have turned into a problem. Likewise, had Henry been able to set aside his desire for revenge, he could have been fully acquitted and in all likelihood reunited with his son for longer than the day it took him to die.

But of course it's the New Year's stuff I want to focus on. This section is largely focused on class relations, with the aristocratic characters failing to see Henry as a human being. This is playing with both old and (then) modern traditions surrounding charity and the holidays. The idea that the rich owe something to those less fortunate is at the heart of Dickens's A Christmas Carol and - perhaps more notably in this case - the Danish story, The Little Match Girl by Hans Christian Andersen, which in addition to sharing a country of origin was also set on New Year's Eve.

This idea wasn't originated by Charles Dickens or Hans Christian Andersen, but rather reflects a much older tradition of giving gifts to those who are lower class during the Christmas holidays. By preventing Ann from fulfilling this obligation, her family was creating the conditions for tragedy.

Or at least that's my read on the role the holidays are playing. It's admittedly not a main role (this is more notable as a melodrama with horror elements), but I certainly appreciate the glimpse into how movies approached and used the holidays in the early decades of cinema.

Whether you should watch this or not is of course going to come down to your level of interest in the subject matter. This features some great cinematography and pioneering horror sequences (though be aware the horror sequences only represent a small portion of this hour and forty-five minute film). I should also caution the middle hour meanders quite a bit, and there's a racial slur at one point. But despite all that, I was really surprised by just how much of this holds up.