The hour of the wolf

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Movie
German title The hour of the wolf
Original title Vargtimmen
Country of production Sweden
original language Swedish
Publishing year 1968
length 87 minutes
Age rating FSK 16 (formerly 18)
Rod
Director Ingmar Bergman
script Ingmar Bergman
production Lars-Owe Carlberg ( Svensk Filmindustri )
music Lars Johan Werle
camera Sven Nykvist
cut Ulla Ryghe
occupation
synchronization

German synchronous file # 5722

chronology

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Hour of the Wolf (Original: Vargtimmen ) is in black and white twisted Swedish film directed by Ingmar Bergman in the year 1968 with Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann in the lead roles. The elements with the surreal film and the horror film working Drama provides the psychological portrait of an artist who has retired with his wife to an island, where he is haunted by visions and images from his past. The Hour of the Wolf is the prelude to Bergman's so-called Fårö trilogy.

action

Over the opening credits of the film, director Bergman can be heard talking to members of his staff about the next take and giving instructions. In the first setting Alma Borg takes place in front of the camera. She tells the film team about the mysterious disappearance of her husband, the painter Johan Borg. The film cuts in a flashback to the events that preceded Borg's disappearance.

After a crisis, Johan Borg and his pregnant wife Alma have retired to a lonely hut on the island of Baltrum . He feels constantly pursued by people who may be as real as products of his imagination. Johan gives some of the “demons” who persecute him fantasy names such as “the woman in the hat” or “the bird man”. One day an old woman appears in front of the hut and points out the diary hidden under Johan's bed to Alma, in which he records his encounters. Alma reads Johan's diary and learns that he is haunted not only by intrusive visitors, but also by memories of his former lover Veronica Vogler.

Later Johan and Alma received an invitation to the castle of Baron von Merkens, who also lived on the island. There the guests torment Johan with unpleasant questions about himself and his past. On the way back, Alma assures Johan that she will stand by him, even if she is afraid that the demons will try to tear her apart.

With the renewed display of the title The Hour of the Wolf , the second part of the film begins. Alma watches through the nights with Johan. The most critical hour, according to Johan, is the “hour of the wolf”, when most people are born but also die. He tells her how he was locked in the closet as a child and that he believes he recently killed a boy who could also have been a demon.

One of Merken's guests appears in the hut and brings the invitation to another celebration, at which Veronica Vogler will also be present. To say goodbye, he leaves Johan a pistol to protect him against the "small game" on the island. Subsequently, the couple have an argument over Johan's obsession with Veronica Vogler and his delusions. Alma reiterates her fear, but also her will to stay. Johan shoots Alma down and flees to Merkens' castle, where he meets Veronica Vogler and reality and madness finally mix. People turn into bird creatures or tear off the skin on their faces. The demons chase Johan into the forest. In the meantime, Alma, who survived Johan's attempted murder, has gone in search of him. She also sees the demonic figures attacking Johan. After they disappear, she remains alone in the forest.

In the final shot, the film returns to the documentary recordings from the beginning. Alma looks into the camera and asks whether she loved Johan too little or too much, had dealt with his visions of horror too little or too much to protect him from them: “Isn't it that a woman who lives for a long time? living with a man, becoming like that man over the years? When she loves him, she begins to think like her husband, to see like him. It is said that this changes a person. "

background

Creation of the script

The Hour of the Wolf is based on a manuscript by Bergman, completed in late summer / autumn 1964, with the working title “Die Menschenfresser” (also “Demons”, in the original “Demonerna”). However, Bergman, then director of the Royal Dramatic Theater in Stockholm , fell ill in early 1965 and the project was postponed. After his recovery, he first made the short-term film Persona . The screenplay for The Hour of the Wolf was created from the “ogre” manuscript, which has references to earlier films such as Wild Strawberries (1957), Persona and The Face (1958) in names such as Borg, Alma and Vogler .

Axel Fridell: The gamla antikvitetshandeln (Little Dorrit)

Influences

Bergman borrowed the names Lindhorst, Heerbrand and Kreisler from the works of ETA Hoffmann . He was visually impressed by the 1932–33 etching Den gamla antikvitetshandeln (Little Dorrit) by the Swedish painter and graphic artist Axel Fridell (1894–1935), the “ogre eaters” depicted on the etching inspired the demons in his film. In their reviews, reviewers also discovered parallels to August Strindberg's autobiographical novel Inferno , Strindberg's literary processing of his marriage and religious crisis accompanied by visions and paranoia, and to the paintings by Hieronymus Bosch .

Production and film launch

The film marks the beginning of the so-called Fårö trilogy, followed by Schande (1968) and Passion (1969). The film was shot from May to September 1966 on the Swedish island of Fårö , where Bergman lived at the time, in Hovs hallar in the southern Swedish province of Skåne and in the Råsunda Film Studios in Filmstaden , Solna . The outdoor shots for Bergman's The Seventh Seal were made in Hovs hallar around a decade earlier .

After Persona , this was Liv Ullmann's second film for Bergman. Alma Borg's advanced pregnancy, visible in the film, was not posed: Ullmann was expecting a child from the director, and their daughter was born during the shooting.

The Hour of the Wolf started on February 19, 1968 in Swedish cinemas and on March 1 of the same year in German cinemas.

Stylistic devices

Since Bergman wanted to create a distance from what was for him very personal material, he built in scenes from the shooting and discussions with the actors. Except for the opening and closing scenes, however, he reversed these extensions, which had a running time of around 15 minutes. He made use of this technique again with passion . Regarding the personal aspect of the film, Bergman later said, “ There is no distance or objectivity in The Hour of the Wolf . [...] I used to like to express disparagingly about The Hour of the Wolf , probably because the film touched on repressed sides of myself . "

Another distancing means for Bergman was the reinsertion of the film title in the middle of the film: "Sometimes it is very good to wake people up and then send them back into the drama." B. the simulated film tear in the middle of Persona or Harriet Andersson's eye contact with the audience in Die Zeit mit Monika (1953).

Parallels in Bergman's work

The scene in which Johan lights Almas and his face with a match goes back to an idea by Birgit Tengroth that Bergman used in the Tengroth film adaptation of Durst (1949).

When the demons mock Johan Borg during his get-together with Veronika Vogler, Johan exclaims, “The mirror is broken. What do the pieces reflect? ”Bergman later used the same phrase again in his television production From the Life of Marionettes (1980).

Bergman varied the scene in which Johan looks at his watch and Alma illustrates the never-ending duration of a single minute in Sarabande . In Sarabande there is also the direct address of the leading actress into the camera or to the audience at the beginning and towards the end of the film. One of the titles of the film, which is divided into ten chapters, is "The hour before dawn".

music

The scene performed by a doll-sized singer on a miniature stage in the castle of Baron von Merkens comes from the first act of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera The Magic Flute . This scene clarifies for Charlotte Renaud, in which Tamino, protagonist of the Magic Flute , seeks an answer to the question whether the Pamina he is looking for is still alive ("O eternal night! When will you disappear? [...] You invisible ones, tell me 'Is Pamina still alive?'), The situation of Johan Borg, who was consumed by fears. The excerpt ends with the invisible choir's answer: “Pamina is still alive!” Bergman added: “For a few moments the music gives peace and comfort. The camera touches all faces. The rhythm of the text is a code: Pa- mi -na means love. Is love still alive? Pamina is still alive, love is still alive. Camera on Liv: a double declaration of love. ”- Seven years later, in 1975, Bergman presented his cinematic implementation of Mozart's opera in its full length.

The sarabande from Partita No. 3 in A minor by Johann Sebastian Bach can also be heard. This composition is alluded to again in shame and passion , an indication for Renaud that all three films can be viewed as a trilogy that belongs together.

criticism

The Hour of the Wolf was recorded mixed in Bergman's homeland, Sweden . Lasse Bergström von Expressen called the film “inaccessibly personal and entertainingly brilliant” and continued: “The magician suffers, but he takes pleasure in his tricks. That is the paradox of this esoteric, beautiful film. "Carl Henrik Svenstedt from Svenska Dagbladet criticized:" What silences The Hour of the Wolf and makes it inaccessible is the dictatorial proclamation of its message. At no point does the film open up to the viewer, it never wrestles with itself, and as a consequence it does not allow any debate with the viewer. "

In the USA , Renata Adler of the New York Times discovered “good acting performances”, “unforgettable pictures”, an “eccentric sense of humor”, but also “extremely repulsive” scenes and summarized: “'The hour of the wolf' is none of Bergman's great films, but for someone interested in films it is unthinkable not to see him ”. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times saw a “highly personal” and “difficult film” that doesn't always work: “If we accept Bergman's horror story instead of questioning it, 'The Hour of the Wolf' works great. However, the rope on which [the film] walks is so thin that the slightest hostility on the part of the audience can relegate it to the realm of melodrama . Which he is not. If you see him, look at him from Bergman's point of view. "

A similar picture to that in Sweden emerged in Germany. Egon Netenjakob wrote in the film-dienst : “In this film Bergman withdrew into a reserve where man-eating demons are still an indisputable reality. In contrast to the desolate dream worlds of an Arrabal , for example , his faces are neat despite all the sophistication, despite all the surprises, they are precisely constructed and calculated down to the smallest detail as a virtuoso theatrical juggling game that does not hide the means with which it juggles . "The judgment of the Spiegel was more ambivalent :" In his 28th film, the Swedish grandmaster Ingmar Bergman, 47, surrendered to cinemagy; not without Simsalabim. [...] The gloomy film work, often set in breathtaking images, mobilizes Bergman's cine fund of sexual distress and psychological pain; unfortunately also the tendency of the Swedes to symbolic broadsides and Frankenstein horror. Of course, the theme [of artist madness] is also of a yellowed shudder. " Die Zeit , on the other hand, rated The Hour of the Wolf as" very worth seeing ":" The film of a couple, not their story, but the attempt to read the trail, which is left behind by him after his failure. "

Even after a long time, the tenor of the criticism remained the same. Anders Troelsen put it in the Danish film magazine Kosmorama in 1978 : “The film allows identifications, but nota bene only for socially isolated artists who are equally in between. On the other hand, he shows no way out of the current isolated position. He is paralyzed by his own visions of horror and locked in himself. ”The lexicon of international films saw in the film“ a complex nightmare collage by Ingmar Bergman, who ironically breaks the psychogram of his heroes with horror film quotes and film critical reflections. Bergman remains true to the leitmotifs of his work, but breaks away from the conventions of film narration. "

Awards

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The hour of the wolf was approved by the Swedish censors on September 27, 1967 with a length of 89 minutes (2455 meters). A few days before the premiere, on February 9, 1968, the film was cut to 87 minutes (2395 meters). This version has been shown in theaters in Sweden and internationally. See censorship approval of The Hour of the Wolf in the Swedish Film Database, accessed July 26, 2012.
  2. ↑ a b c d e The Hour of the Wolf on the Ingmar Bergman Foundation website , accessed on July 9, 2012.
  3. ↑ a b c Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, Jonas Sima: Bergman over Bergman, Fischer, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-596-24478-1 , pp. 237-250.
  4. ↑ a b c d Ingmar Bergman: Pictures, Kiepenheuer and Witsch, Cologne 1991, ISBN 3-462-02133-8 , pp. 26–42.
  5. ↑ A. Blokker: Het Uur van de Wolf, review in Vrij Nederland of June 29, 1969, Amsterdam 1969, quoted from Michael Robinson: An International Annotated Bibliography of Strindberg Studies 1870-2005, Volume One: General Studies, The Modern Humanities Research Association, London 2008, ISBN 978-0-947623-81-4 , p. 479.
  6. ^ Georges Sadoul: Dictionary of Films, University of California Press 1972, ISBN 0-520-02152-5 , p. 399.
  7. ^ The Hour of the Wolf in the Swedish Film Institute's database, accessed July 9, 2012.
  8. ↑ a b The Hour of the Wolf in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  9. ^ Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, Jonas Sima: Bergman on Bergman, Fischer, Frankfurt 1987, ISBN 3-596-24478-1 , pp. 191-192 and 242-244.
  10. ^ A b Charlotte Renaud: An unrequited love of music , article on the website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, accessed on July 11, 2012.
  11. ↑ a b Review cited from the website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, accessed on July 10, 2012.
  12. ↑ "The acting, of course, [...] is too good to be apparent, and some of the images [...] are as memorable as anything from Bergman's earlier films. […] There is also a very eccentric kind of humor. […] One scene […] is very strongly repellent […] "Hour of the Wolf" is not one of Bergman's great films but it is unthinkable for anyone seriously interested in movies not to see it. “- Review in the New York Times, April 10, 1968, accessed July 10, 2012.
  13. ^ "[...] highly personal [...] It's a difficult film, and not altogether a successful one. […] If we accept Bergman's horror story instead of questioning it, "Hour of the Wolf" works magnificently. So delicate is the wire it walks, however, that the least hostility from the audience can push it across into melodrama. But it isn't that. If you go to see it, see it on Bergman's terms. ”- Review in the Chicago Sun-Times on December 11, 1968, accessed July 10, 2012.
  14. ↑ Egon Netenjakob im film-dienst, quoted from Ronald M. Hahn , Volker Jansen: Lexikon des Horrorfilms, Bastei-Lübbe, Bergisch Gladbach 1989, ISBN 3-404-13175-4 , pp. 412-413.
  15. ↑ Eye in the glass , review in Der Spiegel No. 11/1968 of March 11, 1968, accessed on July 10, 2012.
  16. ↑ Film tips in Die Zeit No. 13 of March 29, 1968, p. 27, accessed on July 12, 2012.
  17. ↑ Anders Troelsen, Kosmorama No. 137, 1978.