Customer Reviews

Hour of the Wolf [VHS]

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

My rating refers to the movie - not the DVD.
Had I rated this product 1 star (which would be a generous rating for the DVD,) I'd be sending the message that this isn't a good movie...5 stars for Bergman's work.

MGM's WAR OF OAR:
A lot of word has spread about MGM's DVD releases of this film and Bergman's "Shame" being presented in the wrong aspect ratios.
Here are the facts and my personal experience with this mess:
The original aspect ratio (OAR) of this movie and "Shame" is 1.37:1 (this has been confirmed by Svenska Filminstitutet,) i.e. almost full screen on a "normal" TV, but not quite; there should be BARELY NOTICEABLE black bars both above and below the picture.
However, in February 2004 MGM released a boxed set including five Bergman titles, where the two earlier mentioned films were presented in aspect ratio 1.66:1.
"How can you change the OAR?" you might ask. In this case the answer is simple: by matting the picture. MGM had placed very thick black bars on the top and bottom of the picture throughout the movie, resulting in a wider looking format, but causing 11.5% of the image to be blocked out. Through this link you can read all about it, and compare still images from these films to how they look on the DVD, and how they should look:
http://207.136.67.23/film/DVDCompare2/mgm.htm
Naturally this flub upset people, and eventually MGM had to admit their wrongdoing and withdraw these two DVD's from the market.
This is the statement that MGM Home Entertainment made regarding the recall of the INGMAR BERGMAN COLLECTION:

"It has come to our attention that the transfers utilized for the release of Ingmar Bergman's "Hour of the Wolf" Special Edition DVD and "Shame" Special Edition DVD are not representative of the intended theatrical presentation.
In order to provide customers with the best quality product available, we are recalling the product at retail and will be releasing both films in a 1:37:1 aspect ratio on April 20, 2004.
The Ingmar Bergman DVD Collection will also be available on that date. MGM Home Entertainment always strives to provide the highest standard of product and customer care. For additional information or comments, please contact our customer service."

Reading this statement a year ago made me happy that I hadn't ordered or bought the boxed set or any separate discs thereof. The DVD's were now going to be withdrawn from the market and later re-released in the OAR...fine.
However, when these discs were re-released on April 20th 2004 they were presented in 1.33:1, NOT in the OAR 1.37:1, as MGM had promised.
I waited some months thinking that maybe some other studio (like Criterion) would release these movies in the OAR. Nothing happened, and naturally MGM wasn't going to admit a second mistake, so since I hadn't seen these movies, but had heard and read good things and was therefore curious, I ordered MGM's 1.33:1 versions of both "Shame" and "Hour of the Wolf" from amazon.com in the early fall of 2004.
When the discs arrived "Shame" was slightly matted just as I'd expected (1.33:1,) but I got the 1.66:1 version of "Hour of the Wolf" even though I'd contacted amazon.com's costumer service in advance to make sure that I would NOT get the edition that was supposed to have been taken off the market 6 months ago by then.
I complained to amazon.com, and instead of sending me the edition I wanted they gave me a refund - better than nothing, but they couldn't tell me how to get a hold of the 1.33:1 edition of "Hour of the Wolf," so neither can I.
Just be aware - there is no such thing as a widescreen edition of this film, even though the more expensive edition of the two MGM DVD's available on amazon.com suggests so.

Ok, that about that. Some may suggest that this kind of technical mumbo-jumbo is not interesting and certainly not necessary when reviewing a movie, but whether you claim you care or not, watching 88.5% of the image of a movie WILL (consciously or subconsciously) effect your judgement of the film, because things are happening behind those thick black bars. Not presenting Sven Nykvist's camera art as he and the director intended it is quite disrespectful towards both the artist and the audience.
...my suggestion is to MAKE SURE you get the 1.33:1 edition of the(se) film(s,) or wait until someone releases them in OAR 1.37:1.

DVD FEATURES:
There is a 26 minute "featurette" featuring short interviews (shot in 2002) with actors Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, Ingmar Bergman biographer Marc Gervais, and short footage from an approximately 35 year old interview with Ingmar Bergman. There's no behind-the scenes footage or outtakes featured in the so called documentary; a lot of it is just repeated on-camera quotes, still pictures and a great amount of clips from the film, cut together at MGM studios. Nothing worth celebrating, though it's viewable - they could easily have cut it down to less than 10 minutes, thus made it more intense, while still as interesting.
Marc Gervais' comments and commentary is not very insightful or based on a lot of facts around the production of the movie - he merely suggests his own interpretations of what Bergman was trying to tell based on his own theories, which aren't very interesting, and which don't always make sense in comparison to Bergman's autobiographical suggestions. Frankly, if I may be a tad harsh, I'd be as interested in listening to George W. Bush's analysis of this picture as Mr. Gervais'.
Criterion's Bergman Biographer, Peter Cowie, who has met the director several times, usually provides much more interesting commentary.
Other features on this disc (at least the matted edition) include English, French and Spanish Language subtitles, a photo gallery, and a theatrical trailer.

THE MOVIE:
"Vargtimmen," which is the Swedish (original) title of "The Hour of the Wolf" is a black and white production from 1968, written and made in Swedish by director Ingmar Bergman. 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.) During most of the shooting of this film--which incidentally (as many other films since "Sĺsom i en spegel" a.k.a. "Through a Glass Darkly") took place on Bergman's residence Fĺrö--Liv Ullmann was in fact pregnant, at the time carrying her and the director's child Linn.
Basically (bluntly, or on the surface) 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.
Bergman has never explained exactly why certain things take certain actions in his films. Usually he doesn't even discuss the scripts with the actors. Partly for this reason, has he never been interested in recording audio commentary for his films on DVD, nor do I believe there is reason for him to do so, because his films are his creations - his art. There is no apparent reason to me why anyone should try to "figure these movies out" and make official theories and statements of what exactly they are trying to tell you, because sometimes they might not even be trying to tell you anything. This form of art, like other forms of art, should (as they do) leave you space for a personal interpretation.
Most of the cast (with exceptions like Naima Wifstrand) were, at the time, basically just stage actors - a fact that certainly effects the intense outcome of all characters featured in the movie and makes it special.
The music in several scenes of this film (such as when Johan Borg, on a fishing trip, is bothered by a demon in the form of a child) is very intense, effective and skilfully applied to the picture.
This is a work of art that a true fan of Ingmar Bergman's filmmaking must not miss.

A famous painter, Johan (Max von Sydow), and his wife (Liv Ullmann) arrive on a small island where Johan plans to recollect his thoughts and find himself in his painting. He suffers from insomnia and bad nerves, and his nights are spent waiting in horror for the magical hour before dawn, the hour of the wolf, when a flood of memories, anxieties, and regrets transcend thoughts and appear as demonic apparitions which threaten to consume him. Johan's wife, Alma, must help him overcome his dangerous obsessions with his ghosts before the manifestations become too real, and its too late...

The Magician and Hour of the Wolf are my two favorite Bergman movies -- the reason being the flaws of these films only make them stronger by serving the point. In the Magician its an artist's fear of having his cheap trickery exposed for what it is, and his inability to make "pure" art. The fact that Bergman had to sell the film as an "erotic comedy" with a silly subplot doesn't make the film weaker: it just reinforces it with irony.

In the same way, the Hour of the Wolf was clearly made by a nervous and overworked artist: at this point the critics were out for blood with Bergman, ready to declare his career over and his movies indulgent exercises in his popular image. Bergman himself was having a rough time, with a theatre and a film career exhausting him and his marriage falling to pieces. But for Hour of the Wolf, any resignation, nervousness, or indulgence merely serves to strengthen the film's message. Hour of the Wolf is a desperate film, and because of that, I think its in this film that Bergman comes closest to his own artistic vision: That place where dreams, memories, and anxieties come together and become indistinguishible (something he would have a harder time conveying in films like Face to Face).

The film is beautifully made, with Sven Nykvist collaborating as usual. Bergman and his cohort were cutting close to perfect in craft around this period. The flood of images is overwhelming. Some favorite scenes: Johan struggling with a small boy while fishing, the dinner party (the pressure!), and of course, the famous "Magic Flute" scene, with the small puppet moving almost imperceptibly as a real man. And that prevalent Bergman talking point, Mozart, and the chorus' breathless chanting: "Pamin-na still lives." (lit. "Love still lives")

An emotional and personal film, one of his best.

"hour of the wolf" is far from a 'lesser' bergman film:it is his best.

johann (max von sydow), and his wife alma (liv ulmann), retreat to an island with one another and try to live a serene, peaceful life while johann works on his art. to say the least, it doesn't exactly pan out.

slowly but surely, johann's demons pursue him and whether they actually 'exist' or not is neither here nor there as far as the message of the movie goes. the most crucial scene is when the puppet show takes place in the demons' castle, and mozart's "magic flute" is done by the birdman, papageno. the darkness and meaninglessness of the human condition is reflected in the lines of mozart's character:"eternal night, eternal night, when whilst thou flee? when will mine eye the daylight see?" while these lines are recited by the birdman after the puppet show by papageno, a slow close up is gotten on his intensely evil face, and the lines are delivered with reverence and an inflection of utter doom and hopelessness. the answer is what johann already knows all too well--never. the artist's (and, by extension, man as a whole) attempts to know reality, to understand the purpose of his life and the meaning of existence, will come to naught, and he will be particularly unfortunate since, unlike the rest of the human race, he alone realizes the shadow of ephemerality and incomprehensibility cast all over life. the beginning and the end of the movie are more or less rational, in that there is nothing left but for johann to lose his mind. johann and alma, despite their intense love for one another, are just as cut off and unknown to one another as all human beings, and her attempts to save him are futile.

this film is a masterpiece, and masterfully utilizes the surreal and the imaginative to display bergman's unpleasant truth.

I like this movie but unfortunately MGM messed up the aspect ratio of the film. This film was originally 1.37:1 not 1.66:1 as it's presented here. I guess they felt it was necessary to cut the actors' heads off in this print. Perhaps one day they will correct this mistake but for now, stay away from this dvd.

And he is us, goes the old saying. It certainly applies to Ingmar Bergman's twisted take on the classic vampire tale. The artist Johan Borg (Max Von Sydow) travels with his pregnant wife Alma (the always revelatory Liv Ullmann) to a cottage on a small island. Johan is trying to regain his footing as a painter, and Alma has come along to support him. Very soon some strange people intrude on the couple's isolation and invite them to dinner at "the castle."

So outlandish are these faux aristocrats that we quickly conclude they're phantasms manufactured in Johan's overheated imagination. But then we see Alma responding to them as well. Johan is dragged deeper into the machinations of his group of ghouls until they finally bring him down into the darkest parts of his psyche. Johan's ultimate crisis occurs during the "hour of the wolf" that time in the dead of night when according to legend babies are eager to come in to the world, and the dying are eager to leave it.

Bergman uses Johan's failing battle for sanity to explore one of his most enduring obsessions. By his own admission, Bergman didn't believe in God. He believed in a world that was whole in itself, built up over time by man and nature. Yet this wholeness seems to always be in danger of splintering, disintegrating, or getting sucked out of a person the way the voracious vampires of his dark imaginings draw Johan's life force from him. This fear of a world so shattered that the pieces can't be put back together again becomes the recurring bass line that anchors all of Bergman's major films.

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.

Cinematographer Sven Nykvist seems born to make a vampire movie. In a nod to the German Expressionists he creates a world that's all flat white light sliced apart by dark shadows. Ghostly faces emerge out of the black to leer, gape and mock. Bergman both uses and has fun with the conventions of the Nosferatu story. Hour of the Wolf is a deadly serious exploration of the artistic psyche shredded by stress that's leavened with some over the top symbolism (particularly the use of birds) and some vamping ghouls. (Erland Josephson as the macabre Baron Von Merkins and Ingrid Thulin as the voluptuous Veronica Vogler seem to have particular fun with their roles.)

While not at the summit of the master's achievements, Hour of the Wolf is mesmerizing, accessible, and, when it steps outside the self-imposed limits of its genre, psychologically profound.

MGM have not fully researched the OAR of this film. They have released this DVD in the wrong aspect ratio (1.66:1 instead of 1.37:1) resulting in A LOT of bad looking framing.

The film may have been released theatrically in the US at 1.66:1 but if so THIS WAS WRONG. The OAR of the film is 1.37:1 and it is released in this ratio around the world (see the recent French DVD for example).

The unconscious world has been few times so well carried to screen as this unforgettable film of the Swedish Master .
Jungian images assault the febrile mind of a painter - Max von Sydow - who has decided to live in an isolated island . The memories ` phantoms will maintain you at the edge of your seat . Somehow this movie has many points of intersection with another Bergman' s golden film of the fifties : Wild strawberries.
Erland Josephson and Liv Ullman are simply supreme .

An uncanny freudian tale where swedish film director Ingmar Bergman exorcizes and sublims his own fears and unpleasant truths through the paints, diary notes and childhood nightmares of a neurotic and hipersensible artist, Johan Borg( Max Von Sydow ) who retires with his protective and understanding wife Alma to an island looking for solitude and quiet( the film is partially shot in Faro island where Bergman actually lives and usually chose for long periods of retirement or to concentrate in his work ). During the habitual Johan's painting leavings an unknown old woman visits Alma at their cabin revealing her the place where his husband hides his private diary in which narrates a succession of bizarre encounters occured in the island during these departures . The people he describes in it soon show to him as his private demons, a cynical and sadistic characters that enjoy themselves disturbing Johan with insidious commentaries about his work and his vampyric and obsessive relathionship with an enigmatic woman,a part of his past he has hidden to the sensible Alma .Incapable to defeat his remorses and humiliated by his torturers he breaks down hunted by his demons. Bergman mixes sexual shocker and horror imaginary , ambiguous and gruesome symbolism and a haunted Mozart's excerpt from " The magic flute " to narrate the progressive alienation of Borg that culminates in a disturbing oniric sequence where the artist descends to the most confused corners of his subsconscious to join with his implacable demons. The film give us much to our imagination and understanding due to Bergman drives the film to ambiguity and suggestion, dissolving gradually the line between reality and hallucination leaving the spectator sublim his own experiences. In relation to the ambiguity I talk it has been hardly discussed the hypnotic scene(due to the effect of distorsion in the treatment of the images and the use of an atmospherical music ) of the attack of the little demon as a possible allusion to Johan's latent homosexuality .

Bergman's amazing "Hour of the Wolf", his audacious, overt horror film, has finally been given the deluxe DVD treatment by MGM. There's a featurette titled "The Search for Sanity" and an insightful commentary track by Bergman biographer Marc Gervais. Max Von Sydow is the depressed artist whose inner demons take corporeal form in the shape of the ghosts (or vampires?) who live in the nearby castle. Liv Ullmann is Von Sydow's pregnant wife who is eventually drawn into her husband's madness. The images are frequently upsetting and even overpowering; Gervais recounts that many of the early viewers of this film couldn't sleep afterwards. The high point comes when the Bela Lugosi look-alike demon proclaims to Von Sydow: "You see what you want to!" In other words, it's the artist himself, by surrendering to his despair, who is pumping life and existence into the monsters. It's been said that God doesn't really condemn us: we condemn ourselves. That seems to be Bergman's central point in this unforgettable, terrifying film.

the dvd looks good and perhaps they have gotten the aspect ratio right at last. however, there is NO EXCUSE for the MGM lion logo appearing and roaring SECONDS after the last frame of the film. absolutely appalling.