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. (DVD Product info.)




"The Hour of the Wolf" is the hour between night and dawn. It is the hour when most people die. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fear, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. (IMDb tagline - http://imdb.com/title/tt0063759/)




An artist in crisis is haunted by nightmares from the past in Ingmar Bergman's only horror film, which takes place on a windy island. During "the hour of the wolf" - between midnight and dawn - he tells his wife about his most painful memories. (http://imdb.com/title/tt0063759/plotsummary)




It is one of Bergman's most "mystical" films, and of all his work, "Hour of the Wolf" suites best in the genre of "horror," though it isn't a pure horror flick from beginning to end - at least not in any typical sense. The two main characters are played by Max von Sydow (as Johan Borg) and Liv Ullmann (as Johan's pregnant wife Alma.) The film tells the story of a sleepless artist with an unhealthy upbringing, who is trying to fight off haunting demons. One may theorize these demons partly as a portrayal of critics towards the artist. (amazon.com)





At the movie's end, Alma wonders if she could have helped Johan more if she had loved him less, which would have allowed her to gain some distance from his madness. Or maybe, she muses, the opposite is true. She should have gone deeper into his obsessions with him. Maybe her failure to save him was a failure of empathy and selflessness. Alma is wrestling with one of life's more bedeviling conundrums: how close we can or should get to another person. Emotional connection attenuates at either extreme: too much distance leads to coldness and isolation; too much empathy leads to self-immolation. Here, as he does later in Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman shows how difficult it is to find that space where two people can connect in ways that are life enhancing rather than soul destroying. (amazon.com)