Though his name is rarely associated with horror, Ingmar Bergman influence on modern adult horror is undeniable. Yet, the one indisputable horror film he made, Hour of the Wolf, is criminally underappreciated.

Hour of the Wolf was Bergman’s follow-up to has much acclaimed 1966 psychological thriller Persona– a film that flirts with horror and extreme content but is too much of a mixed genre “arthouse” film to fit under any easy classification. Prior to Persona, Bergan was inspired by a nightmare he had and wrote a screenplay called The Cannibals, but he abandoned the project when he was hospitalized with pneumonia. After Persona was completed, he used portions of The Cannibals screenplay to make Hour of the Wolf, a title that references his own bout with insomnia.  

Hour of the Wolf, which alludes heavily to Mozart’s opera The Magic Flute, starts with Alma (Liv Ullmann), the pregnant wife of an artist, approaching an old wood table outside her cottage on the island of Baltrum. She sits and delivers a monologue to the camera which has taken the perspective unknown visitor. We learn that her husband Johan (Max von Sydow) has been missing for months. We are told that he had come to island to get away from people and that he was extremely agitated in his final days at the cottage.

Then we watch scenes from those final days, starting with Johan and Alma arriving on the island by boat. At night, Johan, who is suffering from insomnia, shares his sketchbook with Alma. Then he tells her of some of the figures he has drawn- figures which include an old woman whose face comes off with her hat, a Bird Man related to Papageno from Mozat’s opera, the meat-eaters, the spider men and the cast-iron cackling women. Alma just sits and takes it all in, mostly hiding her terror.  

The next day, Alma is doing chores outside when she gets a visit from an elderly woman wearing a hat. The woman tells Alma that she is 216 years old, or maybe just 76, and says to the younger woman that she should look for a black satchel under the bed containing Johan’s diary, advising her to read it.

Alma does.

When I first saw Hour of the Wolf, I was in my early twenties and remember being a little scared when watching it. The film plays on our imagination in a way few films do. Early on, it sets up a promise of horrors in the form of grotesque individuals, but a film made in 1968 certainly can’t deliver and the ambitious monstrosities Johan discusses…can it?

For me, what makes Hour of the Wolf a true influencer is the recognition of its incredible similarity to Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. (Film students, I just wrote a paper for you. You are welcome.) Johan, like Jack Torrance, is a creative talent who has tried to isolate himself. And like Jack, Johan’s sanity seems to be slipping away. But the most important way these two films are connected is in their innovative psychological approach to the supernatural, which I am surprised has not been used more often given The Shining’s popularity. The supernatural beings in both films appear as though they are real, yet they also seem to only exist in the minds of those the haunters pick. These ghosts serve as a metaphor for madness so strong it can put loved ones in jeopardy.

When I was younger, my focus was on the castle’s strange inhabitants. But re-watching as an adult, I now see that, like Persona, the film’s meat comes in the middle act during the telling of a very personal story. In Persona, the protagonist tells of a sexual escapade. In Hour of the Wolf, Johan tells of a childhood trauma. In both films, Liv Ullmann plays the listener. However, in Hour of the Wolf, Bergman juxtaposes Johan’s recollection with a powerful scene where Johan confesses to lying about a snakebite, only this time we are shown what happened in an odd, powerfully scored flashback. The scene that reveals a strange encounter that ends in a brutal act of violence. How do these scenes relate to the overall film? And, considering Johan’s state, did they even happen at all? These are questions viewers must answer on their own. But these scenes, along with the reoccurring mentions of Johan’s scandalous past affair with a woman named Veronica, help establish Johan as a man who has lived experiences, though too many of these experiences Alma seems to know too little about.

Max von Sydow does a good job playing the role of a man losing his grip on reality, and though he gets the most screen time, this really is Liv Ullmann’s film. Not only is Alma a much easier character to empathize with, she also is the one who frames the narrative. As an actress, Ullmann understands how to convey meaning through facial expressions, which is why Bergman had her play the willfully mute Elizabet in Persona. In Hour of the Wolf, that expressive face is on full display, rotating between concern and devotion. And in this film, she gets to talk too. This is a spectacular performance that holds up over fifty years later. She is the Wendy Torrance who has a clue.

When Hour of the Wolf was first released, Bergman fans considered it a fringe work in his canon, dismissing this gothic horror as an odd one-off. Today, the film is held in much better regard, with some esteemed critics arguing that it is amongst his best work. (Steven Jay Schneider lists it as one of the 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die and The British Film Institute listed it at 44 on a list of all-time greatest films.) I understand why. Hour of the Wolf holds up remarkably well today. Bergman choice of music, his atmospheric cinematography, the performances, and the subtle practical effects give the movie a timeless quality. But it is its psychological aspect to his treatment of the supernatural that I find truly innovative and important. Hour of the Wolf is a film that has bounced about my brain for over twenty years. The horrors that occurred on that small island of Baltrum are equals to the ghosts that frequent the Overlook. Hour of the Wolf is, and always will be, one of my favourite movies.