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Film Review: Who’s That Knocking at My Door – 1967

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Director(s)Martin Scorsese
Principal CastHarvey Keitel as J.R.
Zina Bethune as Girl
Release Date1967
Language(s)English
Running Time 90 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary
An older woman (Catherine Scorsese) cooks while the Virgin Mary “watches”.
An older woman (Catherine Scorsese) cooks.
She kneads dough.
The Virgin Mary watches.
The Virgin Mary dissolves in the cooking.
A flame dissolves on the woman.
The woman (Catherine Scorsese) serves the food to kids.
The woman (Catherine Scorsese) dissolves into the Virgin Mary.
Rapid edits and dissolves tie the image of the mother together with Virgin Mary; women as a stand-in for divinity is established.

The film opens with an energetic drum-beat on an image of the Virgin Mary in the foreground and a mirror showcasing an older woman cooking in the background. These figures – the older woman and the Virgin Mary – will continue to be juxtaposed in aggressive fashion as the sequence continues. First, simple cuts jump between the two of them, but as the drum beat continues, the film utilizes dissolves to cement the duo into a unified entity. The holy aspects of Mary become imbued in the woman, and the scene ends with the latter feeding a large group of kids as Mary looks on – the connection between the image of the “mother” and the divine has been cemented.

Joey holds a weapon behind his back.
J.R. (Harvey Keitel), Joey (Lennard Kuras), and the rest of the gang wait.
The shot moves closer to J.R. (Harvey Keitel) and Joey (Lennard Kuras).
The shot closes in onto J.R. (Harvey Keitel).
Joey (Lennard Kuras) strikes.
The camera tracks the fight.
The camera tracks as one fight occurs in the background and one happens in the foreground.
The title card.
In opposition to the Edenic opening, the next scene embraces sin as a fight breaks out to rock-and-roll music. This is Scorsese’s arrival and it’s replete with what he’s best known for.

Immediately, this divine motherhood is contrasted with the next scene which starts with a weapon held behind a back – a symbol of violence. The drum-beat is replaced by the sounds of a radio. The editing pattern also shifts; this time the camera cuts three separate times, starting from a wide shot before eventually cutting to a single shot of a young man, J.R. (Harvey Keitel) standing in a group. Part of his entourage, Joey (Lennard Kuras), the person holding the weapon, waits for his opponent, a man from another group who stands across from him, to get ready.

The radio begins to play a rock song proper, “Jenny Take a Ride” by Mitch Ryder, as opposed to just an instrumental like the previous scene, and two fights among the groups begin to break out. The camera tracks on one of them and neatly captures the brawl in one smooth movement while the film cuts to the other scuffle happening in a proximate location before cutting back to the earlier tracking shot which now showcases the two fights in the same frame, one in the background and one in the foreground.

Among all this chaos, the title card drops and signifies the arrival of a brazen new cinematic voice (at the time), that of director Martin Scorsese. His opening neatly juxtaposes the ideas of the divine and the profane, a dichotomy that’s been ever-present in his work since. The seeds for the primary conflict have just been sown.

A woman cooks in a store.
The camera zooms out from her.
The camera moves and sees a duo walking.
The camera zooms and reveals this duo is J.R. (Harvey Keitel) and Joey (Lennard Kuras).
The distance between “good” and “bad” is rendered spatially as the camera zooms out from the image of the woman who cooks to the image of the fighters.

The film cuts to a shot of a market; a woman inside gets food ready – a direct callback to the “divine” connection generated in the first scene in the film between the image of the cooking woman and the Virgin Mary. The camera zooms out from this divine allusion and moves along the street before zooming in on J.R. and Joey, figures who have just been involved with violence. This duo enters a location called the “Pleasure Club”; thus, a distance between the Edenic and the sinful is reinforced spatially.

Joey (Lennard Kuras) beats Gaga (Michael Scala).
Joey (Lennard Kuras) lectures Gaga (Michael Scala) with J.R. (Harvey Keitel).
The Girl (Zina Bethune) smiles at J.R.
J.R. (Harvey Keitel) can’t stop thinking about The Girl.
J.R.’s life of sin is interrupted by an encounter with a girl; he can’t shake himself of this interaction.

Inside the establishment, Joey goes to a table where a card-game is being played and asks the see the respective players’ hands. Upon looking at the second player’s hand, he claims that said player has lost and proceeds to beat him. This player, Sally Gaga (Michael Scala), is this group’s “runt” and has borrowed so much money from Joey that playing cards is out of the question. As Joey aptly puts it: “You steal from your mother, not me.” When Sally attempts to apologize, Sally reminds him: “Your priest you tell you’re sorry to. Me, you don’t tell you’re sorry to!” The dichotomy established in the opening continues to sink its fangs as this group is established as a counter-point to the holy and “good”. They are not the holy priest or the divine mother.

The group departs and the trio of friends – J.R., Joey, and Sally – convene in a bar owned by Joey. Yet, J.R.s mind is unable to focus on the conversation at hand and he seems transfixed by something else. A cut to a girl (Zina Bethune) smiling at him, yet located at a different location, indicates exactly where his thought lies. Scorsese cross-cuts between these temporally and geographically separated moments to highlight J.R.’s transfixion.

The Girl (Zina Bethune) reads.
A close-up of the Girl (Zina Bethune) reading.
The film “double-cuts” on this girl to highlight J.R.’s subjective obsession; this technique will be repeated throughout the film and establishes the current of our protagonist’s thoughts.

He utilizes a “double-cut”, a shot of the girl’s face which then briefly cuts to a close-up of the same, to reinforce the subjective involvement on the part of J.R. Our protagonist is utterly mesmerized by this girl and the conversation from the bar can no longer even be heard. The silence which replaces the chatter of the bar suggests this encounter is a dream and the girl becomes something “more”, a transcendent figure.

J.R. (Harvey Keitel) steals a look at the Girl’s (Zina Bethune) paper.
J.R. (Harvey Keitel) points out John Wayne to the Girl (Zina Bethune).
The past comes to life again and we become privy to the initial meeting between J.R. and the girl who start their encounter with a discussion of cinema.

Then, the oneiric mood dissipates, and we along with J.R. find ourselves back in the past – the encounter between boy and girl plays out in its totality as the past usurps the present. The noise of a crowd creeps into the soundscape, informing of us of this shift, while the camera slowly pulls out of J.R.’s isolated face to reveal him sitting next to the girl. He keeps stealing glances at the paper she’s reading, but she notices as much and invites him to read along with her.

A shot of John Wayne in The Searchers.
A close-up of John Wayne’s character.
The “double-cut” on John Wayne signfies J.R’s ideological investment in the idea of the Western hero as an archetype to look up to.

He tries to play coy and bumbles his words but indicates he’s interested in the picture of John Wayne; another “double-cut” emphasizes his fixation on this mythical western figure. She responds that the magazine is a French magazine, and the two engage in a conversation about foreign cinema, Italian and French, and the respective print media associated with the same; the conversation is fitting, given the film’s obvious influences from both the Italian Neo-Realists and the French New Wave in its stylizations and narrative conventions (or lack thereof). The conversation discusses the need for an English analog to these foreign media, a suggestion (or rather, a revelation) that this film, Scorsese’s debut, is an attempt at bridging a connection (and paying homage) to foreign developments in cinema.

The camera pans from the Girl (Zina Bethune).
The camera pans towards J.R. (Harvey Keitel).
J.R. (Harvey Keitel) thinks of this conversation while in the bar.
The camera tracks on a close-up of J.R.’s (Harvey Keitel) face.
The camera tracks on a close-up of the Girl’s (Zina Bethune) face.
An overhead shot of J.R. (Harvey Keitel) and the Girl (Zina Bethune) talking.
The overhead shot dissolves into the Girl (Zina Bethune) smiling.
Joey snaps J.R. out of the moment.
Scorsese directs the hell out of the initial meeting between J.R. and the girl, utilizing a series of camera movements, shot choices, and distinctive forms of editing to highlight the magic of the moment. The girl and J.R. are smitten with each other and the only obstacle seems to be the order of sin that his friends represent; he will be forced to make a choice.

The conversation continues and becomes increasingly stylized. The camera neatly moves from each party, framed as singles, as the two discuss the image of Wayne in the context of the film it’s from: John Ford’s The Searchers – notably one of Scorsese’s favorite films and one that will continue to remain in the “text” of his films to follow. [1]Schickel, R., & Scorsese , M. (2011). The Ford Connection. In Conversations with Scorsese. essay, Alfred A. Knopf.J.R. ,like Scorsese, is absolutely enthralled by the film and tries to discuss it with the girl who can’t seem to recognize it. He talks about the dichotomy between the cowboy protagonist played by John Wayne and the Native American antagonist and they both seem to agree that the latter is the “bad” guy, even though their discussion seems to suggest that both characters share a similar negativity. Thus, the figure of the hero is elevated and given leeway for participating in problematic behavior that is used to condemn the antagonist. J.R. touches on this seemingly unfair value judgement for a brief moment before continuing on the conversation; this (mis)identification of goodness and its opposite is a key issue that his journey with this girl will force him to confront and is fittingly set-up via this discussion of cinema.

The girl eventually realizes she’s seen the film and comments that she’s not used to liking westerns before J.R. pushes her on the issue and claims that everyone’s problems would be solved if they “liked westerns.” He makes it clear that a clear hero to root for against an antagonist appeals to him. This clear-cut value structure grounds him.

She acquiesces to his declaration, and the conversation moves on to the nature of the ferry ride they’re both on. She admits that she’s going on it to experience it as a “ride”, a view which he can’t conceptualize; the ferry to him just represents a chore – a break with familiarity for him.

All the while, the film cuts to-and-fro between him at the bar with his friends to this conversation with the girl where his mind remains. Tracking shots of both his and the girl’s eyelines reveal the depth of their growing feelings for one another and a dramatic overhead shot accompanied with a dissolve of the girl laughing set the stage for a grand romance. There’s a clear connection here and J.R.’s obsession with it rings clear.

But the idyllic moment breaks; Joey slaps J.R. and interrupts the latter’s recollection in an attempt to get attention back to the conversation at the bar. J.R.’s friends want go out and meet a “new broad” but he shows no interest. Why would he when he’s so focused on this bright, cheery girl who’s completely enamored him? Who would leave “Eden” to sin? This is the Madonna-Whore (the film would utilize the terms “Girl”- “Broad” instead) complex in play, one that seems to fit J.R.’s view of the world, evidenced by the valorization of Wayne’s protagonist and the western genre as neatly separated into discrete notions of “right” and “wrong”. Thus, a clear opposition is established between the worlds the girl and his friends represent, and the film truly begins as J.R. is forced to choose between these two distinctive modes of existence.

By focusing on the subjective exploration of a character, J.R. in this case, and his decision to “sin” or not, Scorsese is able to eschew traditional narrative conventions and focus purely on the mood of the characters. The basic plot – boy falls in love with girl and has to figure out how to deal with his feelings despite lacking a “grammar” by which to do so – feels so much more epic because of the way Scorsese directs the ebb and flow of the emotional battle that underpins it. By cutting between interactions of J.R. and the stand-ins for the worlds he finds himself traversing, the film is able to remain compelling even as “little” happens in a narrative sense; momentum is generated purely through exploring the subjectivity inherent to the decision-making process.

J.R. (Harvey Keitel) is framed by the barstools.
J.R. (Harvey Keitel) and the girl (Zina Bethune) are framed by a stool.
Gaga (Michael Scala) framed by an upside down barstool.
Early on, characters are repeatedly framed by stools, reinforcing points of contrast between the two worlds that J.R. straddled between.

This is why Scorsese consistently frames the characters against stools (especially in the film’s first half). He wants us to compare-and-contrast between the choices; the “world” the girl represents is open to persons and allows a genuine relationship to form, while the other is more insulated and is less open. The former’s communicative possibilities open up the chance of suffering as distance between people is closed while the latter operates as a façade that protects as it conceals the nature of what’s being done.

However, that doesn’t mean Scorsese only uses visuals to do the talking; in lieu of explicit dialogue, he uses songs as a formal mechanism to reflect and reinforce the distinctions between the worlds and the consequences of their intersection. From the opening, the music is established as a “cover” of sorts to the violent behavior that J.R. engages in, a reprieve that transforms his sinful actions into something enjoyable and permissible; this is an act of “insulation”. But as his relationship with the girl continues, music qua reprieve becomes problematized and the soundtrack reflects as much; the score continues to play rock tunes but their function radically changes as J.R.’s traversal reveals the costs associated with remaining in one world versus another.

For a film-maker as important and relevant as Martin Scorsese, it’s baffling that his debut feature-film, Who’s That Knocking at My Door, has been so eagerly dismissed (including by Scorsese himself) [2]Schickel, R., & Scorsese , M. (2011). Little Italy. In Conversations with Scorsese. essay, Alfred A. Knopf. when, as evidenced above, it so neatly portends the auteur’s interests and stylistic influences/tools. There’s the focus on a character’s subjectivity, meditation on sin versus divinity, a wonderous use of music to evoke mood – trademarks of the master’s oeuvre. While Scorsese isn’t as restrained or formally motivated in how he employs all his tools- freeze frames, slow-motion, distinctive camera movements, intense cross-cutting between scenes and jarring cuts within scenes at times are employed with abandon- as he would be later in his career, his ambition in “throwing the kitchen sink” at the screen in this debut certainly has an effect on the viewer especially in his utilization of the “double-edit” which succinctly achieves a subjective mood that weaves J.R.’s obsessions as a motif begging to be dissected.

So yes, while the film, as Scorsese suggests, serves as a “rough draft” of his first masterpiece, Mean Streets, it certainly warrants a broader appreciation in its own right [3]Ibid. given the way it forces us to focus on character as opposed to plot; the film is such a profound mood-piece, working on feeling over narrative heft in every major decision it makes, that it’s hard to take one’s eye off the screen. While the film sometimes lapses, namely in the amount of time it wastes in the sinful domain, that of J.R.’s friends whose intersections with our protagonist are far less interesting, varied, and developed as his scenes with the girl, there’s more than enough here to chew on and appreciate.

REPORT CARD

TLDRMartin Scorsese’s debut film neatly foreshadow many of the auteur’s obsessions and operates entirely as an exercise in mood and style; plot gives way to character exploration and we follow a man who’s forced to find a grammar to deal with a world that seems newly foreign and alienating to him. While there are moments where the film throws so much at the wall that it forgets what’s already sticking and undermines its own rhythm, when it works it genuinely enthralls and captivates, making you forget about the small bumps on the way. What a wonderous start to a filmography as legendary and storied as Scorsese’s.
Rating9.3/10
GradeA

Go to Page 2  for the spoiler discussion and more in-depth analysis.
Go to Page 3 to view this review’s progress report .

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1960's, 1963, Drama, Grade, Review, review-movie, S, Year

Film Review: Winter Light – 1963

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Director(s)Ingmar Bergman
Principal CastGunnar Björnstrand as Tomas
Ingrid Thulin as Märta
Gunnel Lindblom as Karin
Max von Sydow as Jonas
Allan Edwall as Algot
Release Date1963
Language(s)Swedish
Running Time 81 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary
  • Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) guides his congregation in prayer, but his eyes seem like they aren’t focused.
  • As Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) prays, the camera frames him as distant and small, showing how small his congregation is.
We start the movie on Tomas and immediately come to know he’s distant from the words he’s preaching as both his eyes and mind wander.

We hear church bells ringing in the background as the title sequence starts. Their presence primes us for the opening scene – the start of Communion. The camera lingers on a Pastor, Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), as he solemnly guides his congregation. His face is somber as his eyes seem to distantly gaze to the side of the screen – his mind out of focus. The movie cuts to a shot far behind him, demonstrating that his Church’s flock is small; a pastor diminished during his sermon among a small, disparate gathering guiding them through the Lord’s Prayer.

  • Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) kneeling in the church dissolves to a view of it from outside.
  • The church from a distance.
  • This view of the church dissolves to another.
  • The church from another angle.
  • This view of the church dissolves to another.
  • The church from another angle.
  • The church dissolves back into Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), as his mind comes back into focus.
  • Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) is mentally once again in the church.
The montage of dissolves of different exterior shots of the church starting with Tomas and ending with him is a beautiful way of demonstrating the nature of his despair. He’s trapped by the Church, unable to run from it even in his thoughts which circle it from every angle. Even if he no longer believes in the words he says, he can’t find a way to escape their grip on his life; he’s both unable to stay and unable to go away.

The scene dissolves from the inside of the Church to multiple vantage points outside of it, as though Tomas’s mind can’t afford to stay in the building during the prayer – his distance constantly grows until finally the exterior of the church dissolves back into a closeup of his face. Despite his desires to escape God, his mind is unable to detach; the existential crisis becomes apparent.

  • Algot (Allan Edwall) prays earnestly.
  • Märta (Ingrid Thulin) stares forward at Tomas instead of praying.
  • A mother scolds her child who doesn’t seem to want to focus on praying.
Like Tomas, the congregation is fractured in how they approach God. While some members pray earnestly like Algot others seem to just be forced to be there like the young child. A church with a leader experiencing a crisis in faith is one thing, but to have this spiritual trouble reflected in the nature of the church’s makeup is to tie Tomas’s journey to that of the Church – making him a stand in for something larger and opening the interpretative floor.

Members of the congregation are shown on the screen in succession, demonstrating that Tomas’s spiritual conflict is present in them as an entity. The sexton, Algot (Allan Edwall), is seen praying solemnly, reading along the words with a real dedication. Meanwhile, a schoolteacher, Märta (Ingrid Thulin), sits calmly saying nothing while staring forward as if focused on Tomas. However, another shot demonstrates a child bored out of their mind with the word of God desperate to seek some form of entertainment. As the group gets up to receive their daily bread and wine, it’s made apparent that every member has a different reason for being there; a different relation to the divine entirely. This difference is demonstrated in the actions of a young couple; the husband, Jonas (Max von Sydow), barely sips any wine while the wife, Karin (Gunnel Lindblom), seems to drink a healthy amount. What could explain this difference in deference to the blood of God?

  • The image of the empty church dissolves to an sculpture of Jesus.
  • Jesus is positioned on the left of Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand).
  • After Algot (Allan Edwall) questions Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand), the sculpture of Jesus gets closer to the latter.
  • After Algot leaves, Tomas(Gunnar Björnstrand) looks down in angst/pain, but is positioned to the left of Jesus now, being in the latter’s sight now.
As the people leave , Tomas is allowed to retire inside, but his attempts to do so are marked by a curious relationship with a statue of Jesus. The statue marks the transition from the empty Church to Tomas’s upcoming fight to despair so its presence is fitting in that sense, especially given the nature of Tomas’s relationship to Jesus. An encounter with Algot is accompanied by a reframing of the statue which seems to move from Tomas’s left side to his right side, ,going from looking away to looking directly at Tomas. In a movie about God’s silence, nothing could be more meaningful.

Inevitably the congregation leaves the Church and Tomas retires inside. The camera dissolves from the newly empty Church to a fixture of Jesus on the wall – a fixture that hangs behind, slightly behind the left of him. However, as Tomas puts his head down, in obvious pain and discomfort from sickness – physical and metaphysical – the camera repositions the two figures to have Jesus staring at Tomas from behind. It’s telling then at this moment that the young couple from earlier, Karin and Thomas, come in looking for advice. The former explains that while she puts very little stock in the matter, her husband is despondent over the idea of a nuclear war instigated by China; a nihilism that annihilates any attempt at life. Tomas responds that we must trust God.

  • Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) realizes the dishonesty of what he’s said.
  • Tomas’s (Gunnar Björnstrand) hand quivers over his desk.
  • Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) tells Jonas that “life must go on.”
  • Jonas (Max von Sydow) asks Tomas , “Why do we have to go on living?”
Jonas’s words strike through Tomas’s scripted ideas of what to say and do. Tomas’s inability to lie and okay the role manifest s in his disgruntled expression and quivering hand, culminating in him honestly confronting Jonas. Eventually he admits that he understands the young man’s despair, but is unable to provide an answer for why he, Jonas, must keep on living. The exchange is framed in canted angles to reinforce the severity of what’s being discussed – the idea of living a life that in end of itself might be entirely “pointless”.

However, it’s clear that he doesn’t believe his own words as his face gives his true feelings away. His despondent eyes are matched with an accompanying shot of his hands trembling on his desk. He goes towards the couple and faces them in a more intimate arrangement, ready to divulge his more truthful thoughts. He confesses that atrocities in the world make the idea of God remote and as a result he understands Jonas’s anguish. The camera switches to a Dutch/canted angle, as he continues to comment that in spite of his empathetic identification with Jonas’s despair, “life must go on.” Jonas asks, angled in similar fashion to Tomas, “why do we have to go on living?” Thus, the canted conversation crystallizes the crisis of faith established at the start of the movie; how do we find meaning in a world where everything is so tenuous as to be wiped out at any moment? It’s a sickening reversal of the idea of life as positive, instead suggesting that life is out of synch with the universe whose natural condition is one of death – life is nothing more than a temporary blight on an otherwise incomprehensible void. Tomas is unable to give an answer at the moment and the trio agree that Jonas will drop Karin home and then come back. The trio’s attempt at establishing the upcoming rendezvous is fraught with panic as Jonas’s despair seems almost physically manifest as he leaves, making it uncertain on what he’ll end up doing.

As the couple leaves the Church, Tomas is once again left alone only for a brief moment before Märta, shows up and makes it apparent to the audience that there’s some notion of intimacy between Tomas and herself – a flame from the past she seems desperate to (re)kindle more emphatically. She’s an atheist, which as he points out, makes her appearance at Communion earlier strange. She points out that communion is a love feast, so her attendance fit the spirit of the ceremony. He mentions that he feels despair at God’s silence. She responds that God is silent because God does not exist. His metaphysical quandaries are met with her requests for love. Their dichotomy feels like an echo of the younger couple we’ve just seen – a man lost in his existential despair with a woman who tries to save him. Eventually she leaves as well, leaving Tomas alone to grapple with the gravity of what he’s been privy to.

Thus, the stage of Winter Light is set; a man who preaches, having a crisis of faith, forced to give advice to someone experiencing the same despair as him while at the same time being pursued by an atheist who seems more in tune with his faith then even him. Accosted by an unwanted love on one side and an unbearable nihilism on the other, Tomas is forced to navigate a path to coming to terms with his life. Despite taking place over the course of an afternoon, the story is lacking in anything but depth.

Every simple decision characters make become heightened because they transform into representations of the way we orient ourselves to faith. For example, after Jonas leaves there’s a palpable tension in the air because we’re uncertain about how put together Jonas is after being told by a pastor that the world is cruel and unforgiving and we must live in spite of that just because. It’s not a large leap in deduction to think the troubled husband might harm himself. Thus, at a narrative level there’s a genuine sense of dread that’s allowed to exist because of the severity of the content and its presentation. Thematically, his decision becomes one about the value of faith itself.

It’s in this way that the movie elevates its seemingly simple structure into a transcendent masterpiece that tackles the idea of a silent, ungaugable God from a variety of different perspectives. As the movie continues and relationships are revealed, both in the characters backgrounds and in the construction of the mise-en-scène, even the most minute detail transforms into something worth analyzing. Every dissolve that bleeds two images together begs the question of what facets of faith are being called to question on top of why those identifications are being made.

  • David (Gunnar Björnstrand) tells Minus (Lars Passgård) God is present in love.
  • Tomas (Gunnar Björnstrand) is unable to comfort Jonas (Max von Sydow) in the presence of God’s silence.
As the second part of the trilogy, Winter Light does more than just extend the themes of a movie subtly, instead taking entire strands and ideas wholesale and putting them to the test. In Through a Glass Darkly, Björnstrand‘s character, David, tells his son, Minus, that God is present in love. This answer is put to the test as Björnstrand’s character is forced to answer, Jonas, who can’t see how love can exist in a world where nuclear war, a technique of pure obliteration, can exist alongside it. The shared characters give the dialogues a connective tissue; Jonas is another take on Minus, this time a “son” who’s seen the dark recesses of the human condition and is unable to reconcile them any longer.

These ideas become all the more layered when evaluating Winter Light as a spiritual sequel to Through a Glass Darkly. The movie goes so far as to directly quote this previous entry in Bergman’s unofficially titled “Silence of God” trilogy, by having a character admonish the idea of God being love, one of the key takeaways of the former entry. Funnily enough, this idea is something Björnstrand’s character in that movie, David, espoused. Thus his transformation in this movie – being cold and indifferent – gains a past, so to speak, which help parse even more from each of Tomas’s actions. There’s a referent and context by which to evaluate and further evaluate his decisions. Seen in this way, Winter Light forces Through a Glass Darkly to justify itself, asking David qua Tomas in the form of Jonas how love even matters in a world that is seemingly indifferent to all displays of it. If nuclear war can erupt at any point, a negation of life driven by hate, then what does love mean?

Being able to achieve this depth at all is masterful but to do so in a narrative that only takes 81 minutes while involving only 2 primary characters and 2-4 side characters (depending on how you qualify side characters) is something else entirely – marrying one of the most deftly written scripts with a visual vision capable of matching it.

It’s on that note that both the actors and cinematographer Sven Nykvist must be mentioned, for if not for their combined efforts Tomas’s journey would rob the movie of much of its heavy impact. Most of the movie employs only natural light provided during the cold months of winter which gives the movie a chilling, somber aesthetic which compliments it tonally and thematically. Every burst of light suddenly feels holy because it’s so out of the ordinary. The shadows naturally creep along as the story continues, making the final moments of the movie all the more decisive. Most importantly, the lighting is harsh and doesn’t disguise or hide the actors’ faces in any way. Every pore, every line, every quiver is on display for us to experience.

  • Märta (Ingrid Thulin) stares at the camera during her monologue.
  • Märta (Ingrid Thulin) looks towards the corner during her monologue.
Ingrid Thulin‘s near 8 minute monologue as Märta is the strongest example of how Bergman manages to use close-ups to push the themes of the movie to the forefront of our minds. The intimate way her eyes connect with ours forces us to deal with her ideas more seriously; there’s a responsibility generated on the part of the viewer by a performance so raw. By filling the movie with powerful conversations, natural lighting, and the perfect closeups Bergman manages to keep the viewer engaged in the somber and dense tone of the movie.

Due to the quality of the actors’ performances (main and side), each closeup transforms into a gaze into the soul. The characters’ doubts, interests, and points of identification become clear as we see their eyes look around the frame. This is made evident no more clearly than in an almost 8 minute, nearly unbroken monologue given by Ingrid Thulin as she stares directly at the camera, both at the audience and at the recipient of her message, Tomas. Her eyes shift as she divulges her innermost thoughts, darting towards the lower corners at times as she remembers something or directly down as she gets ready to drop something heavy. Calling it a performance masterclass would be a good starting place to describe what we see. Thulin’s performance is matched by an equally powerful, yet far more morose and despondent performance from Björnstrand, who at one point in the movie delivers a monologue difficult to watch entirely because of how searing and brutal it comes off.

The final result is a film that that probes the darkest places of the soul in an honest and thought-provoking fashion, inviting anyone willing to go on a journey with its characters. Despite its specific Christian background and intimate ties with Bergman’s own religious tribulations, there’s a universal quality in the movie that’s perceptible to anyone who’s ever had that existential feeling of despair that we’re really all alone in the world. By forcing Tomas to go through so many different confrontations with finding meaning in existence, the movie cultivates the grounds by which we can do the same. It’s a piece of art that truly tugs at heart, leaving one in awe by the time the end credits play.

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TLDRWinter Light is a solemn and profound insight into nature of God’s silence in a world that seems chaotic and unbearably cruel. The naturalistic lighting that accentuates the severity of every one of the actors’ faces to the deft way makes monologues and moments of decision sear through the screen, almost as if directed at us. The script creates parallels between multiple sets of characters and ideas that give it a host of meanings based on how you perceive different identifications. If nothing else, the fact that Paul Schrader’s First Reformed , a modern spiritual masterpiece, was able to lift from and use so many ideas from this movie to such great effect, proves that its apparent simplicity hides a treasure trove of potential within for those willing to look.
Rating10/10
GradeS

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1963, C, Grade, Horror, Review, review-movie, slasher, splatter, Year

Film Review: Blood Feast – 1963

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Director(s)Herschell Gordon Lewis
Principal CastMal Arnold as Fuad Ramses
William Kerwin as Detective Pete Thornton
Connie Mason as Suzette Fremont
Lyn Bolton as Mrs. Fremont
Release Date1963
Language(s)English
Running Time 67 minutes
Report CardClick to go to Review TLDR/Summary

NOTE: This review contains partial spoilers for Psycho.

An insert shot of the radio.
The woman turns off the radio.
A canted shot of the woman undressing.
Ancient Weird Religious Rites.
The woman gets into the bathtub.
Fuad (Mal Arnold) stabs her.
Fuad (Mal Arnold) stares at the gore on his knife.
The woman lays bloodied and dead in the tub.
Fuad continues to rapidly stab at her.
The opening evokes the (in)famous shower murder from Psycho but plays it completely different. The editing is haphazard, the score is primitive, and the colors of the space are confusing. All of these tactics force us to focus on the blood and gore as opposed to narrative logic.

The film opens with a primitive drumming that generates a sense of foreboding. A young woman enters her apartment and turns on a radio. An insert shot of the radio imbues it with a sense of agency as an announcement about a murder plays; women are being warned to stay at home after dark due to the presence of an unhinged killer. The score accentuates this proclamation and consequently becomes more unnerving.

However, the young woman listening doesn’t care for this warning and turns off the radio. She gets ready for a bath and begins to strip; a canted shot of her undressing plays on our anxieties and makes the death from the announcement a foregone conclusion. She is marked for death.

Before she gets into the bathtub to meet her fate, the films cuts to a book titled: “Ancient Weird Religious Rites.” This second insert shot ties the book and radio together and grants a context to the aforementioned serial murders: they are part and parcel of some kind of ritual. Yet, the two highlighted items – a modern radio with a serious warning about a current crisis and an esoteric book focused on discovering the past – introduce a discordant feeling. If an agent is being hinted it through shots of these items, it’s certainly one that’s out of joint.

Then, a scream. The music cuts out for a moment and the young woman is stabbed by an intruder. A strange organ-based score replaces the previous drum-based music as the perpetrator of the attack, Fuad Ramses (Mal Arnold), proceeds to repeatedly stab his unsuspecting victim in brutalizing fashion.

The film cuts from the victim back to Fuad and back again; she’s surrounded by a green-tiled background while he’s encompassed by a wall painted in yellow. The juxtaposition in color adds to the disharmonious feeling up to now as the two colors seem to bear no connection to one another and introduce an incongruity within the shared space of the bathroom; these sides feel like they belong to different spaces, a feeling accentuated by the lack of a master shot by which to make sense of the room’s geography.

Finally, the violent attack ceases. The camera takes perverse pleasure in poring over the ensuing carnage, showcasing the bright-red gore against the distinctive backdrops of the space; this sign of violence is what connects the sides of the room together – bloodshed is what unites the otherwise disjointed space into a cohesive whole.

A face on a pyramid.
The title card bleeds onto the screen.
Police headquarters.
Pete (William Kerwin) and the police chief (Scott H. Hall) bemoan the murders.
The past and present meet as we cut from the murder scene, to a pyramid, and then back to a police office. The focus is still on the blood which pours out of the title card.

The gore fades to black, the drum-based score comes back into play, and a face on a pyramid dominates the frame; the past intrudes into the modern setting. The title appears on the screen as a splatter as the blood begins to pour of the letters and overwhelm the boundaries it’s meant to demarcate; the score becomes accentuated by a tubular instrumental matching this visual excess.

Then, the pyramid fades to black again and we cut to a plain textual display, dark blue letters against a plain brown background marking a police office – a sharp contrast to the mystique of the font, color, and setting of the title sequence. We’ve returned to the present once again.

Inside the room, Detective Pete (William Kerwin) and the police Chief (Scott H. Hall) express fear at the number of killings, the inexplicable removal of body parts from the victims, and the fact that no evidence has been pointing to any subjects. The most recent murder, that depicted in the opening, has only compounded their worries. Frustrated and left with no other options, the two resign themselves to playing more radio warnings.

A sign for Fuad’s catering service.
Fuad (Mal Arnold) leans into Mrs. Fremont’s (Lyn Bolton) space.
Fuad (Mal Arnold) stares at Mrs. Fremont.
A closeup of Fuad’s (Mal Arnold) gaze.
Fuad (re)enters the film again, this time as a caterer, and hypnotizes a client into giving him the final piece to his puzzle; his Egyptian feast, our blood feast, has an ending in sight.

Then, the organ music comes back into the fray and the film cuts to a sign for “Fuad Ramses Exotic Catering”, a display utilizing a distinctive font similar to the one used in the title credits; we know that the police’s warning is doomed to failure. Try as they might, the killer has now entered the scene once again.

He performs his “cover” job as a caterer and tends to a checkout counter. A woman dressed in fancy garb, Mrs. Fremont (Lyn Bolton), approaches him and hires him to cater a dinner for her daughter, Suzette (Connie Mason); she’s interested in something eccentric to make the night special. Her manner of speech is direct and her mannerisms are exaggerated in a bourgeoise fashion. There’s something unreal about the way she approaches the encounter.

This feeling is amplified when Fuad responds by fully leaning his body into the frame, staring at her without daring to blink. He offers to cook an Egyptian Feast, the likes of which the ancient pharaohs performed over 5000 years ago. The camera cuts to a close-up of his intense gaze as a droning noise begins to play; it feels like a spell is being cast. The relationship between the two changes: it’s not her hiring him as much as he’s hiring her.

Mrs. Fremont’s mannerisms change and she acts as if in a trance before accepting the offer; once she does, the moment breaks and she returns to her previous manner of acting. The magic subsides and the transaction is complete.

Fuad (Mal Arnold) limps through his store.
Fuad (Mal Arnold) gets to a secret door.
Fuad (Mal Arnold) enters a blood-red room.
Fuad (Mal Arnold) exalts Ishtar.
Fuad limps towards a secret room, building up a sense of curiosity. He enters and we come to understand that he means to revive the Goddess Ishtar through his gory sacrifice.

Alone again, Fuad slowly limps towards a door in the back of the building. The amount of time spent chronicling this movement serves no purpose and serves as a strange form of punctuation, merely elongating the distance between the events before and after it. But this moment is also marked by the drum score from earlier, granting it an importance that it doesn’t seem to warrant.

This traversal finally ends when he makes it to a hidden room draped with red curtains, the color of blood. He walks towards a figure in the far corner of the room while the camera pans and tracks him; this figure is Ishtar, the Goddess that Fuad plans to do the feast for. As he exalts her and swears his allegiance to her cause, the camera cuts to a close-up of the statue’s face; it’s here where the film’s use of close-ups and insert shots merge as the focus on the statue’s visage makes it apparent that this is the magical agency that’s been operating unseen in the film up to now; Faud’s ritual has been working and the subject of the statue is closer to resurrection. With Mrs. Fremont’s request, the ritualistic endgame is in sight.

Thus, at a surface level, director Herschell Gordon Lewis’s (in)famous Blood Feast seems to position itself as a low-budget, exploitative attempt meant to take advantage of the “demise of many state censor boards” to deliver a blood-soaked experience. The performances are odd, the score is “tuneless” and” experimental”, the plot is seemingly inane, and the budget seems to have gone mostly to the gore effects which the camera seems to care most about [1]Mendik, X., Schneider, S. J., Kaufman, L., & Mendik, X. (2002). Chapter 16: ‘Gouts of Blood’: The Colorful Underground Universe of Herschell Gordon Lewis . In Underground U.S.A.: … Continue reading. Yet, these oddities and the manner in which they’re executed transform this “slasher” film into an “ur-text” that’s remained pivotal in defining contemporary horror cinema [2] Brottman, M. (1996). “There never was a party like this. . . !” Blood feast and the Primal Act of cannibalism. Continuum, 9(1), 25–45. https://doi.org/10.1080/10304319609365689.

While the “appointed ancestor of the slasher film is Hitchcock’s Psycho”, a seminal piece of work whose subversion of narrative conventions and utilization of subtle, impressionistic cinematic techniques in generating unease continues to part and parcel of the golden standard by which films, not just horror, are evaluated, Blood Feast‘s introduces a visceral element that remains just at vital at exploring taboo and the costs of violating the same. The film’s focus on gore leaves little room for the imagination and lets us see the “opened body”; a taboo has been violated as the “visible” and “knowable” are literally opened up to reveal the unseen insides. [3] Clover, C. J. (2015). Chapter 1: Her Body, Himself. In Men, women, and chain saws: Gender in the modern horror film. essay, Princeton University Press.

Yet, these obscene displays of violence aren’t meant to scare us as much as allowing us to fully engage with and enjoy the spectacle. Unlike Hitchcock who located “thrill in the equation victim=audience” and consequently shot the most violence scene of the film, the iconic shower murder, as an impression of the knife “slashing” the film itself in an attempt to rupture the viewer’s body,[4] Ibid Lewis treats us as participants in the violence and invites us to participate in the macabre ceremony. Opposed to the victim, we’re aligned with Fuad as perpetrator; we want to consume a “blood feast”.

This dichotomy in the two film’s approaches to violence is made explicit in the way they handle the same situation: a shower murder. While Psycho’s scene is absolutely iconic, a pinnacle in dread and tension, it’s effect is achieved through “virtuoso editing and a sprinkling of chocolate syrup.”[5]Skal, D. J. (2001). Chapter Eleven: Scar Wars. In The monster show: A cultural history of horror. essay, Faber and Faber. The realism of the narrative allows Hitchcock to impress upon the audience the impact of the violence without ever showing too much; he doesn’t even need to use red gore effects to convey the impact.

However, the same scene in this film operates almost in an inverted fashion; the film juxtaposes distinctive aural choices and strange color decisions to immediately throw the viewer off and makes the situation oneiric; there’s nothing to latch onto. The shock comes from the haphazard fashion in which the violence “appears” and takes control of the frame. Bucket of red gore and blood are what we end up taking away from the scene.

Lewis employs several such oddities throughout the film to distance us from the severity of the kills such as to let us partake in the violence without feeling alienated by it. The caricature like acting makes it hard to relate to the characters; thus, we can’t be bothered by the brutal executions and don’t feel put off by our identification with Fuad’s position as gore purveyor. The absurd editing – both within and between scenes – propels the narrative forward towards the next fleshy display with little semblance of logic or coherent momentum. There’s no concern with how Fuad gets to each murder scene, commits the murder without difficulty, and gets out of said scenes scot-free with no real planning even during moments when other characters should definitely notice him or find a meaningful clue to his identity. The narrative even goes so far as to utilize supernatural trappings like Fuad’s apparent magical skills and the presence of Ishtar an agent in her own right to further to disrupt the reality of the narrative. The only real constant throughout the film is the gore effects which are bright, red, and take control of the frame; we’re allowed to fully attune ourselves to them.

While the technical implementation of these “distancing” techniques may potentially distract viewers unable to get past the crude presentation, the telos they aspire to remains an important influence to the genre; Psycho may be more influential and an infinitely more compelling film, but Blood Feasts contributions still reverberate just as strongly as the former’s. In fact, I’d argue that a good portion of horrors, especially in the slasher and splatter sub-genres, take varying levels of influence from both of these archetypal films in their construction. For example, films like Halloween leans more into Psycho’s taut narrative construction and utilization of mood to generate tension along with a light amount of gore to sell the impact, but films like Friday the 13th treat plot as a tool to get the next gore-based, logic be damned, in the manner of Blood Feast.
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Thus, while the film may be sloppy and fail to remain compelling through its entirety, its heart and sheer dedication carry it through and make it worth studying; its mistakes give it a texture that proper construction would be unable to engender. Horror fans who enjoy the visual grossness that comes with the genre owe the film a sincere watch.

REPORT CARD

TLDRExtreme and audacious for its time, Blood Feast may stumble getting where it’s going, but the gory odyssey it promises is well worth it and its influence can be felt in the genre to this day. By embracing its many faults, some of which may be too distracting for viewers demanding a “polished” product, it manages to get the audience to anticipate and cheer instead of fear the next bit of carnage candy in this all-you-can eat blood buffet.
Rating6.4/10
GradeC

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1960's, 1968, Grade, Review, review-movie, S+, Year

Film Review: Hour of the Wolf – 1968

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Director(s)Ingmar Bergman
Principal CastMax von Sydow as Johan Borg
Liv Ullmann as Alma Borg
Release Date1968
Language(s)Swedish
Running Time88 minutes
Report CardClick to go Review TLDR/Summary

Text appears on the screen, presumably written by the movie’s in-universe director, indicating to us that the movie to follow, the story of the disappearance of a painter named Johan (Max von Sydow) , is informed by both a journal formerly owned by him and a personal verbal account of the events leading up to the same by his wife, Alma (Liv Ullmann).  As this information is presented, stage direction can be heard in the background. Is this the director giving instructions for the movie that’s about to start? A voice yell, “Quiet.”

The expository text gives way to the introduction title sequence, during which stage directions can be heard from the background. In this way, the “real” world and the movie world bleed into each other, revealing the duplicity of the barrier between our conscious and unconscious worlds. As if to confirm the point, upon saying “Action”, the screen fades from “Svensk Filmindustri” to

As “Action!” is called the screen dissolves to a small cottage where Alma resides. She comes out of the abode to answer some of the “director’s” questions. She talks directly at the camera presumably to the director, but her direct approach feels more like she’s addressing the audience. Her eyes, however, can rarely meet our gaze for more than a few seconds. As she talks about her missing husband, it’s clear to us that not only does Alma not know what has happened but that whatever she has witnessed is something that escapes her explanatory capabilities.  Unable to continue conversing she stares down and the camera dissolves to black once more, bringing us to the world of the “real” narrative.

These first six minutes are a light serving of what’s to come.  First, this introduction, both the text and Alma’s testimony, reveal the ending of the story. We know Johan is missing and is not coming back and we know that Alma will make it to the end, ready for a new life with her soon to be born child. By giving us this information, we can focus on the why and how of the upcoming surreal imagery as opposed to the what which primes us to be more involved in deciphering the hallucinatory events culminating in his disappearance. This also has the double effect of pushing us towards Alma’s corner because we start the movie with her and know we’ll end with her, a move that becomes quite important as it gives us an anchor to hold onto as wade through the torrents of meaning.

Second, the inclusion of stage directions during the title sequence demonstrates the constantly fluctuating border between art and reality. The initial text message is written by the “real” director of the movie.  We know the real director is Ingmar, but the second level of an in-world director taking charge of the movie adds another level of intrigue.  This is exacerbated by the nature of the movie’s sources- testimony. Testimony which we know is in fact fiction. It’s no wonder then why the nature of the surreal sequences provokes so much confusion as the nature of what’s happening is up to interpretation- what reality does it belong to? 

Third, the shift from an “objective” textual account of the overall story to the “documentary” like interview with Alma to the story “proper” demonstrates the way perspectives bleed into one another on top of imbuing the movie with a misty dreamlike quality.  At a structural level Hour of the Wolf is a movie within a movie, the former of which contains both interview footage and what we’d normally consider a movie.  It’s told from an “objective” perspective which seeks to synthesize two experiences of a person – one from a diary and another from word of mouth, both equally subjective. What does subjectivity mean if we can encapsulate the experience of another in such a way as to inhabit it? Likewise, what does objectivity mean if our experience of ourselves is one that slips outside of our understanding?   Thus, the stage is set for the story to take place.

The couple makes their way to the deserted island.
Bergman has the camera focus on the tip of the boat for an inordinately long time to emphasize the length of the trip .
Johan (Max von Sydow) spends a long while removing his belongings from the boat indicating this outing to the island is one meant to last.
As Johan (Max von Sydow) and Alma (Liv Ullmann) walk up the rocky shore, they almost seem like they disappear. It’s almost as if the island is consuming them.
Johan (Max von Sydow) and Alma (Liv Ullmann) make their trek to the supposedly deserted island. The camera lingers both on the front of the boat as it travels and on the couple as they remove their items from the same. This is done to emphasize the length of the journey and the distance from civilization the couple are trying to reach. As the couple makes their way through the rocky shore, they almost seem to disappear, almost as if consumed by the island itself, a sign of things to come.

We start with the couple making their maritime trek to a supposedly isolated island.  The trip is long and the camera emphasizes its length by focusing on the bow of the boat.  This is a long way from civilization. As the couple makes their way to shore, it becomes evident that they’ve come here for the long haul. Johan’s general dislike of people has led the couple to seek out a place to be alone. 

However, it isn’t long before the two of them realize they’re not the only inhabitants on the island. As the couple’s path crosses with other people, their idyllic island life begins to come under siege.  One hand, the other islanders exacerbate Johan’s anxieties, constantly probing into his status as an artist and relationship with art, leading him to become more aloof and distant. Despite being apparent fans/patrons of his work, these “others” spend most of their time mocking Johan and the supposed value of art in the world.   On the other hand, Alma’s concerns and attempts to understand something about Johan’s mental state led her to places of utter desperation as she struggles to maintain stability between her husband and herself.   She constantly strives to make a genuine connection with Johan in spite of his apparent apathy.  Meanwhile, Johan finds himself besieged on all sides and is unable to find any respite, most of all during the hours between midnight and dawn, for it is during this “hour of the wolf” where nightmares are born, people die, and babies are born – a liminal place where anything and everything can happen.

In this way, the narrative can be read as a demented ménage à trois depicting an artist trying to run away from any investigation or prodding (outside of what he desires) being chased by his partner who wants nothing more than to understand him at his most intimate who are both being harangued by a mob that seeks to explicate the couple’s motivations and decisions. Both parties, Alma and the others, want to gain an understanding of Johan.  The former wants to do it through intimacy, carving out a path for mutual understanding through love. The latter wants to do it through domination, carving out an interpretation of Johan according to their own ideas of what he ought to be.  Johan stands in the middle, caught in a whirlpool of torment. Every gambit on Alma’s part designed to save him is met by an equally brutalizing action by the part of the other islanders designed to condemn him – a tug of war for the direction of his soul. Every question any party asks is met by a surreal answer that feels more like a question than the original inquisition.  Issues of identity bleed into questions of art bubbling into the movie’s primary question: is it possible for a person to truly ever know another person – art or otherwise?

Johan (Max von Sydow) holds Alma (Liv Ullmann) next to the tree near their house. The scene is serene and calm.
Shadows cast both a literal and figurative doubt over Lindhorst (Georg Rydeberg).
The scene becomes bathed in a near blinding light as Johan (Max von Sydow) encounters an unwanted “intruder”.
Cinematographer Sven Nykvist is given full carte blanche to explore a variety of different lighting styles. When the couple first arrives on the island the lighting and positioning of the camera is stable and grounded, engendering a loving feeling of peace. However, as the couple are forced to interact with the “others” on the island the visual style of the movie changes. Shadows crawl over the characters faces reinforcing earlier visual motifs and casting doubt on the nature of who’s who. At another point, hyper saturated white light is used to create an almost blinding encounter that feels like a fever dream come to life. The constantly changing styles makes the “reality” of the movie impossible to grasp as we, along with Alma, are forced to piece together the nature of the situation.

This indeterminacy in exemplified in the visual style of the movie.  When Alma initially starts her narration, the lighting is calming and feels natural. Her initial encounters with Johan are serene and warm – an Earthy grounded feeling.  However, as the couple are made to interact with the others, the Earthy comfort gives way to Gothic terror. The lighting in these moments is exaggerated and more impressionistic, suggesting a break with reality.  The cheerful face of Alma gives way to the sunken and sneering faces of the others. The stable camera associated with Alma gives way to a swerving, arcing camera completely unbounded and out of control.  This change from calming to chaotic is also reflected in the soundscape which goes from sedated to disjointed and erratic.  Multiple moments of the macabre are accompanied with an unnerving droning noise or characters voices completely disappearing as the background noise takes full control.

By modulating the appearance and presentation of each spectacle, Bergman is able to keep the carnival of terror going in an authentic, yet opaque way. Early on, Johan describes a series of grotesque drawings – a women with a removable scalp, a menacing bird-man, and so on – to Alma. These descriptions prime our minds to look for certain visual clues and serve as the starting “motifs” for the horrors to come. Later on, we get to explore excerpts from Johan’s journal. These mental excavations add to the texture of the motifs we have access to.  When these projections bleed into the “real” world of the story, we’re never fully shown whether or not Alma and Johan are viewing the same thing or something different. Has Johan lost his mind and is Alma just humoring him? Has Alma been able to interpret Johan so much as if to share his delusion? 

In the grander context of Bergman’s filmography, Hour of the Wolf is Bergman’s first movie after Persona, which makes sense given how many of themes and image archetypes the former continues from the latter. Both movies deal with a character named Alma who deals with a character they can’t seem to fully pin down. Both movies tackle the ways memory, cinema, and reality effect and bleed into one another. Both movies employ vampiric imagery in association with identity to probe the limits of what it means to know oneself and to know another. However, Hour of the Wolf feels far more autobiographical. Johan feels like a doppelgänger for Bergman himself. Among other things they’re both artists who bemoans themselves and the place of artists while continuing to create pieces that move people. Some of the monologues given by Johan are close to quotations given by Bergman verbatim, both in person and in previous films like The Magician. Watched in this way, Hour of the Wolf takes a paradoxical quality as Bergman’s psyche becomes both the movie’s subject and its object of fascination. It’s no wonder then that my appreciation of the movie has only grown over time as I’ve become more devoted to Bergman and the worlds he creates/created. 

REPORT CARD

TLDRHour of the Wolf asks the question, “Can we every really know anyone else?” and answers in a cascading series of surreal nightmare sequences that never fail to captivate. This narrative ménage à trois features an artist, his wife, and his patrons and fans. He seeks solace in ignorance. She seeks union in transparency with him. They seek, what seems to be, nothing more than the utter humiliation of the artist despite consuming his goods vociferously. Issues of identity bleed into issues of the nature of art which bleed into issues of intersubjectivity culminating in a melting pot of utter delirium. Those seeking a haunting time with no easy answers need look no further.
Rating10/10
GradeS+

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