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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+

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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