Review of Hour of the Wolf (1968) by Robert A — 10 Jun 2012

While the line of what "horror" is in cinema is blurry, one can say that this is Ingmar Bergman's take on horror. A truly psychological and personal piece, this was written in a manuscript, which eventually broke into two scripts: Hour of the Wolf and his prior film, Persona. One can easily see connections between the two, as both consist of people slowly descending into madness.

Max von Sydow throws on an excellent performance here (as always) as an artist who is being tortured by his inner, and possibly outer, demons. He confides in his wife, most particularly during a late hour of the night, which is also known as the hour of the wolf. It is during this hour (or so says the old wives tale) in which the most amount of people die and children are born. Once a child is born one would expect him/her to have their entire life in front of them, and it's rather unfortunate that it can be cut so short, which we clearly see along the cliff side as Johan is fishing. Johan has names for all the demons he sees, and records all of this down in his diary. His wife, played fabulously by Liv Ullmann, comes across it, and soon realizes that not only must she protect him, but she must also protect herself from this descent into illusional horrors.

The hour of the wolf bit is particularly interesting. This truly rings in Johan's head, since he smashed in a young child's head with a rock and then proceeded to drop him into the water below. You could assume that this may be where his troubles really started, but it's hard to draw the line between fantasy and reality when it comes to Johan. This scene also sticks out because of the music which replaces everyday sound. The chiaroscuro lighting in addition to Sven Nykvist's cinematography really make the scene stand out, but at the same time it also gives it a hallucinatory feeling. The same can be said about the puppet show of The Magic Flute. Never has a puppet show been so scary. All in all, it's a worthy successor to Persona.