5. Hour Of The Wolf (1968)
The film is a series of flashbacks as told by Alma (Liv Ullmann). We first see painter Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) and his wife Alma settling in a nice little cottage beside the sea. He is recovering from an unnamed crisis. He keeps getting approached by really weird and spooky people on the island who mess with his head - sending him into insanity and self destruction. He also has soul crippling insomnia in which Alma has to stay up and keep an eye on him and listen to his increasingly ominous murmurings. Through his diary, Alma learns that Johan is tormented by these weird people and also an image of his ex-lover. On one of his long insomniac nights, he tells her all about Veronica - his ex and also how he used to get punished as a child, by being forced into a cupboard for long periods of time. There is also a nightmarish sequence in which a child is killed but whether this is reality or a nightmare is debatable. Johan attends a party in a castle, hosted by all the weird people he keeps running into. He is promised Veronica is there but when he succumbs to the insistence of the Bird Man dressing him up in make up and a silk robe, for Veronica's pleasure, he is left humiliated in front of the guests who all laugh at his appearance. Johan says "I thank you. The limit has finally been transgressed. The mirror is shattered. But what do the shards reflect?". He is attacked in the wood. Alma has gone to look for him and this is the last she sees of Johan. This is personally my favourite Ingmar Bergman film. It is often stated to be a horror film. Maybe it has horrific elements but it is also a fascinating portrait of a man's journey into a psychotic break - consumed by his demons and also the inability of his loved ones to intervene in a such a fiasco. It is a potent examination of the Artist's psyche and the horror of the film is psychological in nature. The film presents absurd and abstract images and sequences to portray the disintegrating mind of Johan. As a portrait of a disturbed mind, Hour of the Wolf is spot on in conveying the surreal horror of losing your marbles. Bergman can create an horrific film without recourse to monsters like vampires but it has to be said that Hour of the Wolf is very much a film for Bergman aficionados as it carries his existentialist themes to an extreme and I generally think it is best appreciated after studying some of his more 'mainstream' (for want of a better word) films.