BEFORE: I've got to get going and start early, because I want to squeeze in two Bergman films today - actually I'm starting the night before, maybe I can get to them both before I crash. I don't work on Thursdays so I could sleep in, because landing a second part-time job keeps eluding me, it's very frustrating. At least watching two Bergman films overnight might help keep me from tuning in to MSNBC and watching our democracy crumble, which is another source of constant angst.
Now it's Liv Ullmann who carries over from "Persona", and she's going to get me almost to the end of this Bergman chain.
THE PLOT: While vacationing on a remote Scandinavian island with his younger pregnant wife, an artist has an emotional breakdown while confronting his repressed desires.
AFTER: Now I get to play a new game, which is called "Where Have I Seen That Swedish Actor Before?" - and it's going to take a while to break it all down. Max and Liv, they're the easy ones, of course, but it's the character actors in the smaller roles that are going to drive me crazy. OK, here goes - the woman who played the Baroness here played Isak's wife in "Wild Strawberries", the old woman who appears to Alma played Isak's mother in that same film, the actor who played Counselor Heerbrand was also Isak's father, and the woman who played Veronica, Johan's ex-lover, was of course Marianne, Isak's daughter-in-law. Also, the actor who played Ernst von Merkens also played Raval, the priest-turned-thief in "The Seventh Seal". It's a lot to take in, I know, and I fear things like this will get worse before they get better. Bergman for sure had a small list of actors that he kept on speed-dial. (Did they have speed-dial back then? I'm not even sure.)
This is another film that feels pandemically appropriate, even though there's no direct reference to a plague or any other illness in the world, but it does have a painter and his wife who try to isolate themselves from the rest of society, allegedly so he can get some work done, but also I think because the stress of the world may be getting to him - he's not sleeping at night, and I've certainly felt that recently. My sleeping schedule was pretty bad before COVID-19 hit, and it's really only gotten worse since. Most nights I fall asleep in the recliner after my movie, becase sleeping in a sitting position is better for my acid reflux, with my head elevated above my stomach. (I've been on prescribed antacids for two weeks, and they've helped.). If I wake up too early I might get another couple hours of sleep in bed or on the couch, but then I'm on my side, and I can't sleep like that for too long, or I could feel nauseous in the morning. But 5 or 6 hours in the recliner seems to be the equivalent of 8 hours in the bed, during which I keep waking up.
I'm getting away from Johan, though, our resident tortured artist. Some time in his bubble alone with just his wife seems to be helping, the painting and the chores around the shack seem to keep him occupied, but then he starts having nightmarish visions of grotesque people, like the Man with the Beak, the Schoolmaster, and the Lady With the Hat - she keeps threatening to take her hat off, but if she does that, apparently her face comes off too. Shortly after this, Johan is approached during a painting session by the Baron, who lives on the same island in the big castle, and he invites Johan and his wife Alma to a "modest dinner". The Baron says he's a fan of Johan's work.
This "modest dinner" turns out to be a formal dinner party, with about six or seven horrid rich people, who ask probing personal questions of the artist, and also talk about torturing another artist by showing him one of his paintings, displayed upside-down. The Baroness even has one of Johan's paintings on display in her bedroom, and it's a portrait of Johan's ex-lover, Veronica. (We never actually get to see this painting, or any of Johan's paintings, just like we never saw the McGuffin painting in "RocknRolla".). But it seems that the Baron & co. have invited Johan and Alma to dinner just to torture them in various ways.
Back at the shack, Johan discusses the "Hour of the Wolf" with Alma, it's the time between night and dawn when wolves hunt, and most births and deaths occur (umm, can we get a fact-check on this, please?). He also recounts the childhood trauma of being locked in a closet, and the adult trauma of beating a young boy (who was hanging around while Johan was fishing) with a rock. The boy was a bit annoying, sure, but he didn't deserve to die - did Johan kill him because he found the boy attractive, and he was trying to repress his attraction to young boys? Combine this with the story of being "in the closet" and I think Bergman's hinting at something here...
Another visit from the castle, the Baron's counselor visits the shack, and invites them to another party (hey, we're supposed to be quarantining here, no parties!), one where the special guest will be Veronica, Johan's ex-lover and the subject of that unseen painting. The counselor also leaves a gun on the table, inteneded for protection from small animals at night. Or perhaps it's another method of tempting and torturing Johan, since he promptly uses the gun to shoot Alma, since he plans on attending the party and re-connecting with his ex-lover.
Johan's second trip to the castle is very nightmarish, one man walks on the walls and the ceiling, and the party guests are revealed to be the demons from his nightmares, like the Man with the Beak and the Man with No Eyes. The older woman who lives at the castle tries to seduce him before she'll reveal the location of his ex-lover, but he persists in tracking down Veronica, only to find that she's dead and laid out on a slab. Nope! She's alive, she was only tricking him. (This seems to be a recurring theme for Bergman, like the patient who Isak in "Wild Strawberries" diagnosed as dead, only to have her come alive and laugh at him.). By this point Johan is a laughing-stock for the castle's inhabitants, he's wearing a ton of make-up and he's been taunted and teased, so he runs off into the woods. The Hour of the Wolf is a difficult time, for sure.
Bergman ends on Alma, who was only grazed by the pistol shot. She muses that spending so much time together often causes married people to think alike, and in some cases to even start to resemble each other, or become one another. Should she have loved Johan more, or less, which way would she have been better able to help him?
A little research tells me that much of this was based on Bergman's own nightmares, plus a little of "The Magic Flute". Bergman had written a story called "The Cannibals" or "The Man-Eaters", but a bout with pneumonia prevented him from filming that, and he made "Persona" instead in 1964. "The Cannibals" eventually became "Hour of the Wolf", and film scholars generally regard this now as a portrait of Bergman's own disintegration, as a story about an artist who can't maintain a good relationship with reality, whatever that ends up meaning. The artist's wife seems to be in a good mental place, at peace, but the artist clearly is not. Does that just go hand-in-hand with being an artist (or filmmaker)? Bergman was married five times, not including his five-year relationship with Ullmann, so was there a continual cycle of meeting women, getting married, being tortured and conflicted, then abandoning them and moving on to the next? Discuss.
And if tortured artist Johan Borg here is the stand-in for tortured filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, how else are they alike? Do the inhabitants of the castle represent film critics? Is the scandal of Veronica Vogler a reflection of Bergman's own relationship scandals? Was he always the crazy one in the relationship, and did his relationships keep him grounded? Or did he just have to run off into the woods every few years and abandon his life partners?
Also starring Max von Sydow (He's back! last seen in "Through a Glass Darkly"), Gertrud Fridh (last seen in "Wild Strawberries"), Naima Wifstrand (ditto), Ulf Johansson (ditto), Ingrid Thulin (ditto), Georg Rydeberg, Erland Josephson, Gudrun Brost (last seen in "The Seventh Seal"), Bertil Anderberg (ditto).
RATING: 5 out of 10 diary entries
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