Hour of the Wolf

watching, i thought that bergman's one horror movie is almost indistinguishable as such when compared with his others. but seen as tied to persona, it makes sense; the theme is similar, but this is more straight-forward and has some explicit scenes, and in that, i can see the horror movie.(*) the uncertainty of perception, interpretation, and hallucination is present from the start, tremendous, and descends into surreal as the character's sanity slips away. as time passes, is alma affected too? beyond folie a deux, her self-/imposed sleep deprivation itself would be enough. and then there is... read more

hour of the wolf feels like proto-lynch, but while lynch dives completely into the surreal, bergman just dips his toes in. the result is much stronger when the surreal and nightmarish is occurring within something resembling the real world and real human relationships. it is haunting and it actually rattled me. i'm still not completely sure how i feel about it, which is how i have felt about every bergman film i have seen thus far. read more

film school drop outs 2018 week 31 - cinematrographer - sven nykvist horror x52 2018 foreign language watched this on filmstruck. my first bergman film! the quality of this movie is starkly different between the hour of the wolf title card. the first fifty minutes are rather uninteresting and i find myself bored. after the second title card is shown, the last forty minutes become much interesting and gets really creepy and weird. the scene by the water with the boy is really damn good! so much good imagery in the last 40 minutes! the whole film has gorgeous black & white read more