Hour of the Wolf (1968)

 

Hour of the Wolf (1968)

 

“I have always had the ability to attach my demons to my chariot and they have been forced to make themselves useful. At the same time, they have still managed to keep on tormenting and embarrassing me in my private life.”

--Ingmar Berman

 

No matter how hostile a Critic is the Horror Genre in general, all are forced to admit that the Genre has given us many of the greatest masterpieces of cinema. Never-the-less, the disdain of the Genre endures (though somewhat less-so before the mid-1980s) is well-deserved. As Roger Greenspun wrote, concerning a much different film, “The horror movie is inherently the most imperfect of genres, combining as it does an aspiration toward the sublime with the mechanics of the high school play. The combination may be natural—at least the way anything unavoidable is natural—but it rarely engenders great art, and even we who love them must admit that most horror movies fail on every level.”

 

The most respected sub-Genre of Horror tends to be Psychological Horror because it implores the Filmmaker to get outside familiar Tropes and dig into the heart of the emotions behind the Genre. True, much of Psychological Horror collapses into the silly and Cliché, but that’s only because it’s harder to do; when done well, done well, it is breathe-taking and uncomfortable. As Psychological Horror tends to be less fun the more integrity it has, so the harder work often reaps less Financial Reward. Let’s face it, we like Dracula more than we do the realities of Mental Illness.

 

This created an irony that does Horror Cinema’s critical reputation no good at all: Since Psychological Horror requires escaping the most familiar Tropes, the man who was perhaps the finest Director of Psychological Horror is not generally recognized as such.

 

I’m talking about Ingmar Bergman.

 

Almost no one calls “The Seventh Seal” (1957) a Horror film even though it’s scary as hell and full of Supernatural threats; Bergman’s “Wild Strawberries” (also 1957) is rather sweet and gentle, perhaps the finest film about old age ever made by someone not-quite-yet-old, has a memorably dark and disturbing Dream Sequence; the Revenge film, “Virgin Spring” (1960) was remade into the Horror film “Last House on the Left” (1972) but Critical discussion “Virgin Spring” focuses on themes of guilt, redemption, and Christianity, not the audiences powerful response to witnessing a rape and multiple murders; “Through a Glass Darkly” (1961) is terrifying in its realistic exploration of Schizophrenia; “The Silence” (1963) is a sinister film that carefully disguises its Supernatural elements; “Persona” (1966) has no Fantastical elements but laden with the themes of Vampirism, Identity Transfer, and features a beautifully scary score; “Fanny and Alexander” (1982) doesn’t disguise its Supernatural elements, but Critics don’t seem to want to come out and say that the last third of this sprawling family epic is among the creepiest stories ever put on screen. It’s like it would somehow demean the Master to admit he’s also the leading Master of a very visceral form of Suspense.

 

 

The plot of “Hour of the Wolf” (in Swedish “Vargtimmen”) is among Bergman’s most straight-forward narratives and certainly his film that utilizes Horror Tropes in the most familiar way. Perhaps unsurprisingly, Berman’s Horror-that-actually-speaks-its-name was initially met with hostility by Critics; the phrase “a lesser Berman” was repeatedly used. Today, it is considered among his finest films and in 2012 was ranked as ranked one of the 50 Greatest Films Ever Made in a Directors' Poll by the British Film Institute.

 

The movie begins with a text passage outlining the story we’re about to see and also explains the title, "It is the hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are more real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. The Hour of the Wolf is also the hour when most children are born." (Some suspect Bergman invented this folklore, though it does have antecedents.)

 

This is followed by a long monologue by Alma Borg (Liv Ullman, a Berman regular) who is pregnant and whose Artist husband, Johan, has just disappeared. The scene is composed identically with the film’s epilogue and they distinct from the rest of the film. Both are fourth-wall-breaking and static medium-shots while almost everything else are long-shots or extreme close-ups with an unchained camera and/or quick editing.

 

Director Berman had met Actress Ullman in 1965 while working on an earlier version of this screenplay (then-called “Cannibals”). They became lovers and Bergman abandoned his wife, Käbi Laretei, and young son for her, and Ullman also left her husband. But the new relationship proved difficult and by the time this film went into production, they were already separated while Ullman was pregnant with Bergman’s child.

 

Ullman gave birth during the production, and the prologue and epilogue were filmed afterwards, Character Alma still pregnant, Actress Ullman with a pillow under her clothes.

 

The character Alma was obviously to have been written for Ullman as Bergman called her and said he specifically needed a pregnant woman. The house Johan and Alma live in is similar to one Bergman had earlier built for Ullman. (I should note here that Bergman believed in Ghosts and specifically believed the house he built was Haunted.) Ullman also recognized the Bergman based Johan on himself. The Artist used his Art to draw his lover back into his life.

 

But other things are at odds with that: “Hour of the …” is dedicated to his ex-wife, suggesting the story of the disintegrating Artist was meant to explain to Laretei why he left her. Ultimately, all this frightened Ullman, as she could see Berman degenerating into someone as self-destructive as Johan.

 

Character Johan as Writer/Director Bergman’s alter-ego is an interpretation shared by most. Critic Frank Gado, who was hostile towards the film, spelled it out, this is "story of an artist's disintegration [reflecting] … Bergman's own unraveling." Dan Williams, praising the film, said almost the same thing, this is "story of the self-destructive artist unable to maintain a relationship with reality."

 

Bergman and Ullman’s romantic relationship lasted until 1970 and afterwards they continued to collaborate. She starred in another nine of his films, so a total of eleven, several of his plays for the live-stage, and he wrote screenplays for films she Directed. Ullmann has said Bergman relied on her so much as an Actress "because my face could say what he wanted to say. That made me the one he wanted to work with ... because it was my face and I also understood what he was writing.” It’s considered one of the most fruitful collaborations in the history of Cinema, though rivaled by the eleven films Bergman did with Actor Von Sydow.

 

The next scene starts an extended flashback and we are introduced to Johan (Max von Sydow, another Berman regular) and his last days are chronicled.

 

Johan and Alma live on a bleak island with few neighbors. Johan is being stalked by Demons who have escaped his drawings and taken physical form, driving him mad with a combination of threat and temptation. This film treats the interior and exterior life as one-in-the-same, so the possibility that John is an Unreliable Narrator is not an issue, even if he’s Delusional, the Psychic Vampires are still real. Critic Egil Törnqvist (who liked the film) noted this film and the non-Fantastical “Persona” (also starring Ullman) shared Vampire-themes so strongly that one could be seen as the continuation of the other.

 

 

Berman often employed the tools Surrealism even in his most Naturalistic films and that has bearing on how different this film is from his others, specifically because it so obviously embraced a Genre: The Surreal is an element of almost all Fantastical Fictions, but often not seen as such, because when the Fantastic in the story is defined of Natural, the Metaphor is Literalized, and the Surreal becomes Real. Maybe this was one of the things that annoyed the film’s initial Critics, “Hour of the Wolf” has more Surrealistic images than most of his films but those elements are rendered with unusual (for Berman) Literalism, the Critics might’ve been a bit lost.

 

Johan names his Demons: The Birdman, the Insects, the Meat-Eaters, the Schoolmaster, and the Lady with a Hat. Soon Characters will appear that clearly represent each of them. Also, his former lover, Veronica Vogler (Ingrid Thulin, another Berman regular), becomes associated with the Curse the Demons are executing. Alma has never met her, but a mysterious woman (Naima Wifstrand), later revealed as one of the Demons, tells her where to look to find clues about her.

 

Bergam’s influences are diverse, the Birdman character is drawn from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s whimsical opera “The Magic Flute” and one can hear multiple Mozart references in Werle’s sinister score (one of Bergam’s more light-hearted films is his 1975 an adaptation of that opera). August Strindberg’s “Ghost Sonata” is also evident (Bergam Directed that play for the live-stage four times over a space of almost 30-years). E.T.A. Hoffman’s “The Golden Pot” was the source of character names and personalities, especially among the Demons in human form.

 

A Baron von Merkens (Erland Josephson, yet another Berman regular), who lives in a nearby castle, abruptly invites the couple to dinner. It proves to be a night filled with the malice of the entitled and bizarre behaviors by the Baron’s friends who are Demons for sure.

 

They are particularly taunting of the couple regarding Veronica. After dinner, the Baron’s wife (Gertrud Fridh) shows the couple into her bedroom where, inexplicably, there’s a portrait of Veronica that had been painted by Johan, that’s an unsubtle nod to the more Romantic and Gothic-styled Vampire films then-popular in England and Italy. Berman was also a fan of Director Todd Browning’s version of “Dracula” (1931) and that is evident in the castle scenes.

 

Alma is now convinced of the reality of the Demons and John’s increasing obsession with Veronica causes a violent rift between them.

 

When an invitation to a second party at the Baron’s castle comes, it pushes Johan over the edge. That party proves a festival of Transvestitism, Masochism, Necrophilia, and Supernatural weirdness, and it seals Johan’s doom.

 

As you’ve already read, Bergman preferred to mostly collaborate with the same people over-and-over. Cinematographer Sven Nykvist was his most frequent collaborator, though it was the ones in-front-of-the-camera that are the most famous, like Actors Ullman and Von Syndow. Working with Bergam on 20 films, Nykvist won two Oscars. No, this film wasn’t and Oscar winner, but the visual style is remarkable, every frame demanding attention from the audience, a boat rowing to the shore is as powerful as one of the Demons dismantling her own face. Wide-shots of the landscape have a desolate beauty while extreme clos-ups of parts of bodies combine eroticism and abstract menace. Bergman was famous for his prolonged and scrutinizing close-ups of faces, or as Director François Truffaut said, “No one draws so close to it as Bergman does.”

 

Editor Ulla Ryghe, another frequent collaborator, styles the scenes in a mannerism that is at turn languid and frantic, contrasting the extended close-up and capturing violence and hysteria with accelerating cross-cuts.

 

The sound design for any Bergman film is always extraordinary, and not surprising the names of the technical crews are largely unchanging from film-to-film, here it is Evald Andersson, Lennart Engholm, Olle Jacobsson, and Per-Olof Pettersson. The party scenes and are predictably loud, in those cases the dialogue is oppressively so, this is contrasted with long stretches of near silence or muted voices. Johans late-night bouts with insomnia also contain much of the most vital dialogue, and they are notable for the clarity of the whispering between him and Alma.

 

Composer Lars Johan Werle’s score takes over in the scenes of chaos, for most of the film it is, as Critic C.H. Newell writes, “sitting amongst the background in the dark, lying in wait throughout the shadows, it keeps things creepy, unnerving, and unpredictable most times.” Werle is also responsible for “Persona” but his cinema career was on these two and one another, non-Bergam, film. Perhaps he preferred independence of subordinate collaboration.

 

Starting with his “Sawdust and Tinsel” (1953), which Bergman called “my first true picture,” he’s surpassed all others in the goal of making cinema the Screenwriter/Director’s inner journey, which he called, “the administration of the unspeakable.” Screenwriter/Director Woody Allen, a great Admirer Bergman and whom he sometimes Parodied, sometimes Imitated, him called it a map of “the soul’s battlefield.”

 

Another theme of this film would be the Patron’s parasitic relationship with the Artist; more than anyone else, the Baron is the architect of Johan’s doom. Though the film is contemporality-set, it often feels like it’s taking place in the Middle-Ages, enhancing the image of the Aristocrats’ power even though Sweden was then a Democracy with the Aristocratic classes were fading from Authority except through their inherited (so unearned) Wealth. Williams calls attention to the "oppression by a group of aristocrats" within the castle that allows "the unreality of Johan's world takes over."

 

The Baron is consistently shot from a low angle, as he’s always smiling haughtily the angle makes the smile even larger, malignant, devouring. Deceitful smiles are the films main visualization of Supernatural power, though here-and-there some Practical FX are employed. The camera work at the dinner table is disorientating much of the film’s violence speaks of Cannibalism.

 

The epilogue brings us Alma’s second monologue. She speaks of the almost unnatural closeness she and Johan shared, suggesting she suffered mental illness in concert with him (the phrase is not used in the film, but she is describing a psychiatric disorder, “folie à deux” or “a madness shared by two”). Seemingly contradicting that statement, she admits she never really understood Johan and wonders aloud if, had she loved him more, maybe she could’ve saved him from the Demons.

 

What the pro- and epilogue establish, especially in their documentary style, is that even though Johan had much more on-screen time, the film is as much about the effect Johan’s madness had on Alma as it was about Johan’s own descent.

 

Bergman’s Themes are consistent while his narratives are diverse. He progressively moves for idea-to-idea, attacking it from different angles in two or three successive films, then moving on to another cycle. Supernaturalism almost always Haunts even in his most Naturalistic films, but explicitly Religious themes were largely abandoned after “The Silence.” Before “The Silence” the search for God was the same thing as the search for Goodness, a search that was, more-often-than-not, a devastatingly futile one. After moving beyond that Theme, he stayed within it, the theme now revealed to have always been the search for purpose in existence, the pain of that existence, he offers affirmations of Humanism in even in his bleakest tales. This films Supernatural content does not suggest a return to specific Religious themes (in fact, very little Supernatural Horror takes Religion seriously) and the ending leaves Alma devastated, but there is no question her capacity to Love honestly is why she survived while Johan didn’t. Johan was repeatedly shown to be selfish and unappreciative of what he had, that was the crack in his armor through which the Demons were able to pour poison into him.