Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen)
by Ingmar Bergman
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Erland Josephson, Georg Rydeberg, Gertrud Fridh, Liv Ullmann, Max von SydowDirector: Ingmar Bergman
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: Swedish (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled)
Format: Black & White, Dolby, DVD, Full Screen, NTSC, Special Edition, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.66:1
Running Time: 93 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2004-04-20
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen)
Movie Review: Ingmar's Middle Period Problem Play.
Summary: 4 Stars
A man, Johan Borg, and a woman, Alma, go to live on an island. The man is a painter and he has problems sleeping. He and the woman are staying up one night and he tells her about the people he sees in the dreams - the bird-man, the woman with the hat, eventually he becomes exhausted and falls alseep before dawn.
They become accustomed to living on the island. Johan goes around and does some sketches. Alma finds his diary under the bed and reads it. At one point Johan is on a rocky coast and a boy gets into a fight with him and Johan kills him and dumps him in the water. It's hard to tell if this is a dream or not. Bergman shows the episode but turns the sound off. It's like a silent movie within the rest of the movie. But it might have really happened - we got to this episode when Johan was confessing to Alma that the scratch/bruise he had wasn't from a snake like he had told her.
A neighbor, the man who owns the island comes and invites Johan and Alma to his house for a dinner party. The food might not be so great but he can promise good wine he says. They take him up on it. It's a surreal dinner. They are treated to a puppet show where Bergman apparently filmed a real actor and made it look like he was a marrionette. (Clever trick). The people at the party are obscurely threatening and it didn't look like Johan and Alma were having a swell time.
After that the movie becomes a mash-up of dreams and reality, making it almost impossible to explain what happened. It reminded me of Stindberg's A Dream Play actually.
I liked this movie despite the fact that it was one of the least accessible films I've ever seen. (Even for Ingmar this was out there.) But, it had a convincing air of menace, a great look and feel, and hey, it was definitely different.
If you're new to I.B. you might try Smiles of a Summer Night or Wild Strawberries first. If your hip to Bergman's middle period: The Silence, Persona, Passion of Anna, Shame - you'll likely dig this too.
Summary of Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen)
The delicate, dangerous line between genius and insanity is brilliantly plumbed in this haunting film from Ingmar Bergman that's "a dazzling flow of surrealism, expressionism and full-blooded Gothic horror" (The Observer). Haunted by demons past and present, artist Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) fights a losing battle to retain his sanity and maintain his artistic prowess. His wife Alma (Liv Ullmann), desperate to help him, finds herself starting to share his hallucinations. But as Johan's mind continues to unravel, Alma is forced to choose between her love and her life.Art House & International DVD Video
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