Hour of the Wolf (1968)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆

Hour of the Wolf (1968) – I. Bergman

I had this on videocassette for many years but it seems almost like a different film now on blu-ray and rescued from my decaying memory traces.  I did not recall that the story is essentially told by Alma Borg (Liv Ullmann), filling in the gaps of the narrative from the details revealed in her husband’s diary (Johan Borg played by Max von Sydow).  He is an artist, a tortured artist who may be coming apart at the seams.  They are holidaying on an island in the Swedish archipelago.  During his time out painting, Johan begins to meet and interact with other residents on the island, who live in a large castle (and perhaps they represent his patrons and critics).  He develops an antagonistic relationship with them and in recounting them to Alma, he makes them sound exactly like demons.  In truth, one of them is the spitting image of Bela Lugosi and all of them seem perverse or perverted.  Or perhaps this is all in Johan’s head – we can never really be sure whether they are just figments of his imagination or not (except that Alma does seem to be present when they are around on some occasions).  Johan becomes increasingly haunted and stops sleeping at night (including during the Hour of the Wolf when it is said that more people die than at any other time).  In one of their late night sessions, Johan tells Alma of a recent experience (shot in flashback in stark high contrast bleached out b&w) where he was followed by a young boy who wouldn’t leave him alone until Johan felt so antagonised that he killed the boy; of course, it is hard not to think of the boy as Johan’s younger self and the dialogue often suggests splintering or loss of identity.  Eventually Johan has a violent break with reality, shoots his gun at Alma, and flees.  We are left only with Alma’s version of events and the diary.  One reviewer even suggested that this is all part of Alma’s imagination!  In any case, Bergman manages to wed his interest in the artist’s place in society (here an object of possibly unwanted attention and judgment) with some of the imagery of the gothic horror film (ravens make an appearance). Perhaps this doesn’t rank with the all-time classics from the Swedish master (the characters remain too distant from us) but it isn’t like anything else you’ve seen.