Saturday, 20 October 2018

HOUR OF THE WOLF **

Bergman made "Hour of the Wolf" in 1968 and it's one of his most personal films. It also verges on a parody of what we expect a Bergman film to be, being a typically dark and forbidding study of the artist destroyed by his own demons. Moving between a conventional horror film and a wholly individualistic study of madness it's not in the front rank of Bergman pictures yet it is still quite remarkable and is head and shoulders above anything a lesser director might have turned out. As the artist losing his sanity and the wife barely able to cope both Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann are superb while the luminous black and white cinematography is by Bergman regular Sven Nykvist.

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