1968 ‘Vargtimmen’ Directed by Ingmar Bergman
An artist in crisis is haunted by nightmares from the past in Ingmar Bergman's only horror film, which takes place on a windy island. During "the hour of the wolf" - between midnight and dawn - he tells his wife about his most painful memories.
Människoätarna, 늑대의 시간, Het Uur van de Wolf, Die Stunde des Wolfes, Ulvetimen, Вартмімен, або Година вовка, L'Heure du loup, La hora del lobo, Kurtların Saati
my man ingmar said do you mind if i go a lil wild and symbolic with this one? and i said by all means ingmar you do what you need to do
The Road To Halloween - Eliminating The Horror 'Classics'
I do take my Letterboxd reviewing pretty seriously. When I say that, I am aware that there may be a perception among some that I should presume that others do the same, but that really isn't the case!
I follow people on Letterboxd who do all manner of reviews and I admire the different styles and techniques of many people on here. But I never believed everyone should approach this the same way. Do it your way! That said, I do approach it all quite seriously even though the content of a lot of my reviews does tend towards the sarcastic and (notionally) comedic a lot of the time.
The reason…
A surreal, psychological drama that incorporates maddening, hypnotic imagery and a sense of mounting unease, it seems to have heavily inspired a lot of the work of David Lynch. My second Bergman and I'm most impressed by his immaculate framing and astounding shot composition; each shot is a thing of haunting, unforgettable beauty. It comes together into a deeply unsettling portrait of psychosis, infatuation and hallucination. I'm certain that every bit of this can be analyzed, that every moment is saturated with symbolism and depth, but I'm also pretty sure I don't want to know what most of it means because there's something so much more terrifying about the ambiguity of it all.
Basically, it's like if The Lighthouse (2019) wasn't gay and also didn't have that sexually repressed anger
Very few directors are this consistently excellent. I’m now 11 films through Bergman's filmography and they’ve all been capital G great. Unfortunately I found the first half of Hour of the Wolf to be a bit weak, but slowly it gets more surreal, bleak and creepy with unsettling psychological twists as the mind of our main character slowly crumbles and descends into madness - the second half is aaamazing. Being a horror film, this stands a bit out from the rest of his filmography, but here Bergman once again demonstrates his expertise over multiple genres, and it just makes me wish he made more of it.
As Bergman's foray into the horror genre, Hour of the Wolf is extremely patient with its buildup to the climax, where all-out absurdism finally comes to claim the ultimate horror status of this largely meditative take on trauma, guilt as well as the draining nature of being an "artist". It may not be Bergman's most acclaimed work, but it's for sure worth checking out simply for the pure curiosity of seeing Bergman doing his version of an anti-horror that's simply unrepeatable in cinema history.
Hour of the Wolf is highly symbolic with its cryptic messages, as is the case with most of Bergman's filmography. In this unassuming tale with sinister undercurrents, a painter, Johan, who live on an isolated island…
You think that, being stalked and senselessly bitten at - slowly eaten - is the worse thing, so intolerable, so horrible, you have to dash the boy thing's head against the rock and drown it. And it's befitting, you know it's a just arrival, and you won't run because it's your punishment, and she's a simple country girl, she doesn't understand!
Every thoughtless useless decadent self indulgent word or taunt or flippant platitude about your suffering is a small rend by a crow or worse than a crow, what he described: a man or a something which either has a beak or is wearing a mask with a beak. Even when, as your flesh is plucked away (I'd say soul…
I like art films that are a TIGHT 90, so this one landed. Now that I watched a movie about Swedish people staring at each other in b&w, I've given myself permission to watch Van Damme's 'The Quest.'
It's tempting always to assume that any film focusing on an artist, photographer, or other worker of a visual medium is in fact a metaphor for the filmmaker, and generally, this interpretation probably isn't wrong. But I feel like limiting the scope of the work to the personal life of the filmmaker--which is often but not always what happens when we take this interpretation--is unfair to the film. The fact that the filmmaker chooses to put up this veil suggests an attempt at something more universal. Johan's madness might be interpreted as Bergman's angst, but I think it fair to say that his obsessive insanities are an illustration of dark muses and troubled artists everywhere.
There's a moment in this…
At this point, I never read the description when I start a Bergman movie. This can be advantageous as I go into the story raw and unfiltered, and it can sometimes be shocking. I often don't know if I'm getting surreal Bergman, grounded dramatic Bergman, or somewhere in between. This film definitely falls on the surreal side.
With some of the most striking images, Hour of the Wolf pushes his style forward visually more than most of his films. Especially the fishing scene, there are moments that stay with me. Furthermore, Sydow and Ullmann are the ultimate pairing, having worked together in many of his films they seem to understand how to bring his words and style to characters.
I might not have been in the right headspace, but I did not really understand or connect with its characters. I hope to revisit this one again, and better grasp on the subjects Bergman is tackling.
