HOUR OF THE WOLF

In self-imposed exile on a secluded island off the Swedish coast — in fact Fårö, where Bergman himself made his home and shot several films, of which this is certainly the most nightmarish — self-loathing, insomnia-plagued painter Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) is thrown into an ever-hastening tailspin of psychological disintegration after a dinner appointment at a local aristocrat’s castle, persecuted by visions that draw inspiration from painter Henry Fuseli and the tales of E.T.A. Hoffmann.

His wife (Liv Ullmann), attempting to understand and save him, begins to see the very demons, real or not, who taunt him – the Bird-Man, the 216-year-old Lady With the Hat and removable face, and Baron von Merkens, the owner of the secluded island they live on, who recasts THE MAGIC FLUTE as a Poe story and who throws a dinner party in Borg’s honor that isn’t dissimilar from the one Marilyn Burns would find herself attending six years later in THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE.

Named for the hour "between darkness and dawn, when most people die, most children are born, and nightmares come to you," HOUR OF THE WOLF is one of Bergman’s most personal films — a sinister piece of self-recrimination, resembling Strindberg’s A DREAM PLAY by way of Val Lewton or Dreyer's VAMPYR.