I’ve seen countless American horror movies, dozens of Italian and English, several Spanish, at least two Australian, and one Irish. But I do believe I've now seen my first Swedish horror film.
“Vargtimmen” (“Hour of the Wolf”), an Ingmar Bergman film originally released in 1968, doesn't have anything to do with wolves. The title refers to the time of day, around 3:00 a.m., when people tend to die. So if you don't sleep at night, you might be okay. Or at least that's what tortured artist Johan Borg (Max Von Sydow, of course) believes, and yet that also might be what drove him mad. Or maybe he wasn't crazy. Maybe it was all true.
This classic frame story (present-flashback-present) is one of the freakiest horror films I've ever seen. And I'm an Argento fan. It's freaky because it's so creepy, a word that gets thrown around a lot, but when your skin slinks off your body for a few laps around the living room while you're watching a movie, it's hard to find an appropriate synonym. I could say "ghoulish," and that would fit, as would "macabre" and "sinister." Each of these fright hues is represented in "Hour of the Wolf," but overall, this film was truly shudder-provoking, so I must go with "creepy."
It starts off a bit slow. Johan's wife Alma (Liv Ullmann, of course) is being interviewed by a filmmaker who has come to document Johan's strange disappearance. She speaks directly into the camera for quite a while (it
is Swedish), and makes a point of saying she and her husband were happy when they first came to the island. Then she hesitates, as if she's not exactly sure they really were, even though she repeats it, and they appear to be when we enter the flashback.
As the story unfolds, Johan tells Alma about some frightening characters he's seen when he's been out painting and sketching, and I am thoroughly hooked. Scared, too. He doesn't want to go to sleep, so he asks Alma to tell him a story. By way of narrative, she wonders aloud about something a friend had told her, that when a man and a woman have been together for many years, they begin to resemble one another. Not just in appearance, but in mindset, so that they even begin to think the same thoughts.
This is the heart of the film; Alma cannot be sure if his insanity caused her to become insane during their last night together, before he wanders off for the last time, or if he wasn't totally insane, that some of the unrealities occurred.
Being knocked off balance is a specialty of Mr. Bergman's. But this was tilted-room-on-acid off balance. The film at times makes you question your own sanity. As in other Bergman films, it puts the viewer in the position of having to examine herself, uncomfortably, closely. I can imagine how popular it would be with existentialists. But you don't have to be one to appreciate this bizarre trip into the mind of a madman who seems all too familiar.
Posts
