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| Poster by artist UperLooper (David Andrade) |
Ingmar Bergman’s Hour
of the Wolf was released in 1968. Received with mixed reviews, the
storyline narrates how painter Johan Borg disappears after moving to a cottage
on the Frisian Islands with his wife Alma to work on his paintings away from
society. Her finding his diary and her recollection of the events which take
place before his final absence create a claustrophobic atmosphere in which the
boundary between reality and insanity becomes blurred. The Swedish filmmaker
continues with his inclusion of supernatural figures as he already did in films
such as The Seventh Seal (1957), The Magician (1958) or The Devil's Eye (1960). In this case, patrician demons haunt the abovementioned couple, and
what begins with Johan’s nightmarish visions, concludes with Alma sharing his
hallucinations and their falling into a hopeless world where madness rules.
Johan Borg functions as a surrogate of Bergman and,
from a Freudian point of view, the film can be explained in psychoanalytic
terms since ‘‘Bergman’s need to disguise his ‘‘confessions’’ and reflect, as in
a flawed mirror, anxieties that are not under complete artistic control’’ (Buntzen and Craig 24) emerges. Therefore, the
film illustrates Johan’s personal and creative frustrations echoing the
director’s particular situation at the time.
This blog post will mention some psychoanalytic themes
present in the story, yet my focus will be on three other subjects: the
employment of folklore to portray psychological horror with its association to
witchcraft, Mozart’s The Magic Flute (1791)
as an echo of Johan’s choice of his fate, and E.T.A Hoffmann’s Romantic piece The Golden Pot (1814), as a means to psychoanalytically
analyse the painter’s adulterous lust and descent into a hellish world with
allusions to sorcery.
Folklore
as an Account of Horror
Bergman wrote a script entitled The Cannibals before changing its name to Hour of the Wolf. Frank Gado claims that ‘‘before the premiere,
Bergman said the phrase came from a Latin text he remembered reading in his
student days, but researchers at SF could not find the source. Like the
proverbs about the devil’s eye and the smiles of the summer night, the ‘‘hour
of the wolf’’ was undoubtedly invented by the filmmaker’’(349). The explanation
of the term appears in the film (Minutes 46:21-48:15):
Gado’s view may be correct and Bergman could have
invented the term since after this definition, Johan goes on to tell Alma about a childhood trauma suffered by the director
himself. Nonetheless, the use of the wolf is significant, since Johan refers to
the hour before dawn, and in pre-Christian Scandinavian mythos the moon and the sun were chased by wolves in
the sky. Hence Bergman may have been influenced by traditional lore.
Interestingly, Barry Lopez states that ‘‘the link
between the wolf and a period of halflight-either dawn or dusk, though dawn is
more known as the hour of the wolf- suggests two apparently contradictory
images’’, one associated with enlightenment and civilization, and another one
related to ignorance ‘‘and a passage back into the world of dark forces. Thus,
in the Middle Ages, the wolf was companion to saints and the Devil alike’’. The
wolf’s howl in the morning ‘‘elevated the spirit. Like the crow of the cock it
signalled the dawn, the end of the night and the hours of the wolf.His howl at
night terrified the soul: the hours of the wolf (famine, witchery, carnage)
were coming on’.
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| Folio 16v- De eale; the yale. De lupo; the wolf- The Aberdeeen Bestiary-MS 24 |
This connection between the wolf and the crow
resembles Jonathan Harker’s stay at Dracula’s castle in Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897), since the lawyer
remained with the Count (who can transform into a wolf and control the
behaviour of the animal) conversing all night long: ‘‘It was by this time close
on morning, and we went to bed. (Mem, this diary seems horribly like the beginning of the ‘‘Arabian Nights,’’ for
everything has to break off at cockcrow- or like the ghost of Hamlet’s father)’’
(Stoker 31). Jonathan finds peace only when morning comes, and Bergman may have
employed Dracula as a source, since
the leader of his demons, archivist Lindhorst, has a remarkable resemblance to actor Bela Lugosi
as the Count. Besides, he also owns a castle, to which Johan and Alma are
invited.
Besides, in the Swedish version of Dracula, Mörkrets makter, published in 1899/1900
and twice the length of the original, the following passage can be read:
"During our conversation, it had become very late
and I began to feel some of the piercing, peculiar cold the dawn always bring
with it. Everyone who has been watching by a sick bed, or been commanded to a
night watch, knows this shivering, which seems to go through the very nature
itself. It is said that most deaths occur at this time! – – Even the Count
seemed to feel the change – he shuddered, and when suddenly a cock-crowing was
heard somewhere far away, he got up quickly..." (translation from the
original Swedish text, 46)[i]
The so-called ‘‘Hour of the Wolf’’, therefore, brings
to mind ‘‘the Witching Hour’’, a term perhaps coined by Shakespeare:
‘‘Tis now the very witching time of night,
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.’’(Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2)
When churchyards yawn, and hell itself breathes out
Contagion to this world: now could I drink hot blood
And do such bitter business as the day
Would quake to look on.’’(Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 2)
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| The Sorceress, 1626, Engraving by Jan van de Velde II |
Similarly, this hour, when all the supernatural beings
such as demons, ghosts or ghouls can do their dreadful deeds, can be linked to
the Christian belief of the ‘‘Devil’s Hour’’, thought to be 3 a.m. as opposed
to 3 p.m., the time when Christ died on the Cross.
Bergman wisely employs his protagonists’ vigils to
depict his inner sufferings. After Johan defines the feared time of the night,
he contineus to narrate with detail how, as a child, he was punished by being locked insise a wardrobe
with the belief that a little man who
dwelt inside it would bite his toes off
(Minutes 48:16-50:50). Scared, Johan tried to fight the man back and begged to
be freed. Afterwards, his father reprimanded him caning him with a rod, and his
mother in the end forgave him. The audience never learns what Johan did to
deserve this severe beating, yet it is a memory from the director’s childhood.
According to Buntzen and Craig, ‘‘in Freudian terms,
the little man in the wardrobe threatens castration, and the son’s masochistic
subjection to the caning, expressed in the desire for the most severe
punishment, is a recognition of the sexual dominance of the father’’(27). The suggestion
of a homosexual rape in the caning is also present in the story as one of the
demons Johan perceives is a schoolmaster with ‘‘his pointer in his trousers’’
(Minute 12:25), which can be a cane or his penis, and the episode in the film
in which Johan murders a preteenage boy.
As the motion picture continues, the viewers can guess
Johan evolution from infant to a grown-up man as well as his relationships with
women and his artistic frustration. His sinking into madness and, consequently,
his dragging of Alma with him is mainly perceived with their attending the
demons’ party, in which, surprisingly, Mozart’s The Magic Flute plays a key role to comprehend the characters.
Mozart’s
The Magic Flute: The Test of Johan
Soon after their arrival and at the beginning of his
illness, Johan reveals the sketches he has drawn of the demons he can see. The
audience cannot look at those copies, yet he explains to Alma what he has observed:
‘‘a homosexual’’, ‘‘an old woman, the one always threatening to take her hat
off … Her face comes off along with it‘’, ‘‘the meat-eaters, the insects, the
spidermen’’, ‘‘the schoolmaster, his pointer in his trousers’’, ‘‘cast-iron,
cackling women’’ and, especially, the worst of them all, ‘‘The Bird Man’’
(Minutes 11:30-12:36), whose beak Johan does not know whether it is real or
just a mask. All these creatures represent Johan’s internal conflicts. This
last demon is related to Papageno, of the Magic
Flute, and, thus, Bergman introduces the viewer to one of the main sources
of the plot: Mozart’s opera.
Once Alma observes the sketches, she is also able to
see the demons. All of them are supernatural creatures born from their
imagination, bar Veronica Vogler, Johan’s former mistress and his obsession.
The couple accept an invitation at the von Merkens’ castle, and, after some
incoherent conversations during the dinner (with comments on the demons’ fangs
included), the party move to the library to watch a puppet theatre performance
of The Magic Flute:
For those who are not familiar with the musical piece,
The Magic Flute is the story of
Prince Tamino, who is persuaded by the Queen of the Night to rescue her
daughter Pamina from captivity under the priest Sarastro. Papageno, a
bird-catcher who dresses as a bird, will help Tamino in his adventure. Once
Tamino and Pamina meet, Sarastro orders Tamino to undergo a series of ordeals
that will guide him to enlightenment and he will have Pamina as his wife.
Bergman was so enthusiastic about this opera that he made a film version of it
in 1975 employing a Swedish libretto for the occasion and adding some changes
to the storyline. One of the main alterations from the original plot is that Sarastro is
Pamina’s father.
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| Emanuel Schikaneder, librettist of Die Zauberflöte, shown performing in the role of Papageno. |
In Hour of the
Wolf, ‘‘Mozart’s part-man, part-bird child of nature anticipated a Romantic
age in which children and nature symbolize purity and benevolence; Bergman’s
Birdman personifies corruptive self-knowledge and a ‘‘natural’’ evil seated in
childhood psychosexuality’’ (Gado 348).
The emphasis on ‘‘Pami-na’’ by Bergman’s demon-Birdman
exposes Johan’s conflicts at that moment: on the one hand, his choice between
his maternal and protective wife Alma and his ancient lover Veronica, whom the
demons also know; and, on the other hand, his recognition as a failure as an
artist.
Richard Evidon perceives Johan and Alma as Tamino and
Pamina (130). The task of Johan is, therefore, to decide whether he follows
Alma, who represents the ‘‘motherly figure’’,or Veronica, ‘‘the source of his
demons’’ (Gado 353). With the line ‘‘Does Pamina still live?’’(Minute 38:50),
Bergman reiterates Johan’s feelings, with his doubts about his marriage and his
coldness towards his wife up to the point that he shoots at her three times. In
lines that were removed from the final script, Johan says about Alma: ‘‘ A
great, calm creature. A mother-animal, Alma. And every evening we creep into
the mother-animal’s belly’’ (Gado 354). In contrast, Veronica embodies the
licentious spell on the painter, and the castle where the demons dwell
symbolises chaos, confusion and morbidity. Therefore, Veronica can be
understood as Mozart’s Queen of the Night, who teases Tamino/Johan with her
enchantment. When Lindhorst states that Pamina is ‘‘no longer the name of a
young woman’’, but ‘‘a formula, an incantation’’ (Minute 39:17-39:22), the
viewer can presume the turmoil the demons are creating on the artist by recalling
the figure of his lover.
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| Erte's design for Queen of the Night |
Since Johan replaces Bergman, the director elaborates
on his Oedipal fantasies through the artist. When commenting on the opera in
the seventies, Bergman expressed that ‘‘the Queen of the Night represents the
crippling maternal influence which tries to keep Tamino from attaining
manhood’’(Gado 353). Thus, this image linked to the aforementioned one of the
mother’s forgiveness after the director’s punishment in the dark wardrobe
expresses the filmmaker’s relationship with his mother.
If Tamino is at the Temple of Wisdom and has to reach
enlightenment, Johan is also previously questioned by the psychiatric curator Heerbrand about
his capacity to see inside people’s souls: ‘‘As an artist, you know the human
heart. What don’t you see in your facial studies, not to mention in your
self-portraits?’’ (Minute 27:03- 27:08) . The demon relates how he can ‘‘finger
people’s souls and turn their insides out’’ (Minute 26:59). Johan reacts in
anger and hits him, perhaps because he does not want to recognise his own dark
thoughts and his frustration as a painter. In the scene above, when asked about
his condition as an artist, he confesses being ‘‘a calf with five legs, a
monster’’(Minute 39:51). This is not the first time Bergman attempts to inspire
sympathy for a misunderstood and
victimised artist (he similarly appeals for it in The Magician, a 1958 film), yet in Hour of the Wolf the
confused viewer is perhaps more concerned about Alma’s fate than Johan’s plunge
into madness.
The denouement of the film is related to the already
explained opera by Mozart as well as to Prussian Romantic writer E.T.A Hoffmann’s
The Golden Pot, in which supernatural
elements play an important role.
E.T.A
Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot: Johan as
an Embodiment of Student Anselmus
This long scene which I will analyse in this final
section narrates Johan’s meeting with Veronica and his descent into an
anguished state of madness.The extract begins with Johan’s entrance to the
castle, and his encounters with the demons:
As the story continues, characters such as Headmaster
Paulmann and his daughter Veronica, who loves Anselmus, Registrar Heerbrand (who
is represented in Bergman’s curator), and Archivist Lindhorst emerge. This last
character, father of Serpentina, is a Salamander, the Elemental Spirit of Fire,
who was banished from the Land of Atlantis by Phosporus, the Prince of Spirits,
and, thus, has to cohabit with humankind on Earth. The Archivist hires Anselmus
to copy old manuscripts for him and claims that Serpentina will be the reward
for his hard work. Hoffmann’s Archivist is related to Mozart’s Sarastro, who
imposes tests on Tamino to win Pamina and has a woman as an enemy. Consequently,
Anselmus enters a world where reality is blurred with unknown beliefs, the same
as when Johan crosses the threshold of the demons’ castle with all its
consequences. Bergman’s Lindhorst shares characteristics with the Archivist
(including the name), the main characteristic being his connection to birds, in
this case to crows and pigeons. Remarkably, another demon, Conductor Kreisler, is named after ''Hoffmann's literary alter ego Johannes Kreisler'' (Gado 348-349) from the unfinished The Life and Opinions of the Tomcat Murr, first published in 1819-1821.
In The Golden Pot, Serpentina represents the opposite
of Veronica. This last character resembles Bergman’s Alma, since they both symbolise
the rational world, yet both connect with the supernatural creatures that
surround them. Hoffmann’s Veronica unites with the applemonger/crone, who
wishes to destroy the Archivist, and the witch gives the girl a mirror with
which she can observe Anselmus. Veronica attempts to make the Student believe
that the Salamander and Serpentina are merely a product of his imagination.The
doubts between the Student’s sanity arise from the beginning of the tale as the
boy recounts : ‘‘If you knew what strange things I have been dreaming, quite
awake, with open eyes, just now, under the elder- tree at the wall of the
Linke’s garden, you would not take it amiss of me that I am a little absent, or
so’’ (33). Nevertheless, if Anselmus ends up happily-married to Serpentina,
Bergman’s Veronica transports Johan into his worst nightmares.
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| Illustration for The Golden Pot by Fedor Ionin, 2014 |
My interest was focused on two different moments to
depict Johan’s fatality: Johan looking at his image in the mirror, and his encounter
with Veronica.
Lindhorst puts makeup on Johan and the painter looks
at himself in the looking glass while the demon claims ‘‘Now you are yourself and yet not yourself,
the ideal state for a meeting between lovers’’(Minute 1:13:18). Many theories
can be understood in this scene. At
first, this quote can lead to Freud’s concept of the ‘‘uncanny’’(Freud also
employed Hoffmann in his essay to exemplify the term with ‘‘The Sand-man’’).
For the founder of psychoanalysis, ‘‘the ‘‘uncanny’’ is that class of the
terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once very familiar’’
(1-2). In the film, Johan’s effeminate appearance exteriorises his suppressed instincts,
his repressed emotions and desires. Moreover, this image brings to mind
Austrian psychoanalyst Otto Rank’s notion of the ‘‘double’’ and its connections
‘‘with reflections in mirrors, with shadows, guardian spirits, with the belief
in the soul and the fear of death’’ (Freud 9). These interconnected impressions
in which reflections can depict inner anxieties can also be linked to Jacques
Lacan’s theory of the ‘‘mirror stage’’, yet not so much in the French
psychoanalyst’s explanation of a child recognising themselves in a mirror and
objectivising themselves, but, as Philippe Julien suggests when analysing
Lacan: ‘‘narcissism and aggressivity are correlatives. Narcissism, in
which the image of one’s own body is sustained by the image of the other, in
fact introduces a tension: the other in his image both attracts and
rejects me” (34). Johan is shocked when he sees himself reflected, but he
undoubtedly heads towards his mistress.
The ‘‘meeting between lovers’’ evokes a sacrifice in that
Veronica gives the impression of being dead in a black mass, and Johan touching
her appears to be necrophilia. The sexual attraction a corpse can provoke does not only appear in humans, but also in
some animals, as for example snakes (Crews). Male snakes often copulate with
dead females, and it seems that Johan/Anselmus lustfully desires the apparently
lifeless Veronica/Serpentina.
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| The Guibourg Mass by Henry de Malvost, in the book Le Satanisme et la magie by Jules Bois, Paris, 1903 |
This encounter also echoes Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot in the shattered mirror.
Hoffmann’s Veronica owns a mirror which the
Archivist’s Parrot ( a bird which works for him) breaks. If that mirror serves ‘‘to look, in order to
rule him (Anselmus) wholly in heart and mind’’ (Hoffmann 106), the spell
finishes and Anselmus marries the snake. Nonetheless, in the film Johan’s words
are not listened to after he wonders ‘‘But what do the splinters reflect? Can
you tell me that?’’(Minute 1:18:31) and the audience imagines how he plunges
into the void with the image of the boy he murdered. This can be understood as
Johan’s homosexual rape fears (as well as Bergman’s anxieties).
In conclusion, my
blog post has studied Ingmar Bergman’s Hour
of the Wolf through three main ideas: how folklore related to witchcraft
depicts suppressed horrors and its external embodiments in the shape of demons;
how Mozart’s The Magic Flute is
employed to illustrate Johan’s choice
between his wife Alma and his mistress Veronica; and, finally, how E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot serves to
demonstrate different psychoanalytical theories and Johan’s final fall into
madness. Johan serves as a surrogate of the filmmaker in a complex film in
which the director’s obsessions are reflected and, thus, they have also been
included.
[i]
Thanks to Rickard Berghorn for suggesting to work on this subject and allowing
me to use this source. Further reading: https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/culture_and_living/2017/03/06/icelandic_version_of_dracula_makt_myrkranna_turns_o/
and http://weirdwebzine.com/draculitz.html
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Bergman, Ingmar, Hour of the Wolf, Svensk Filmindustri,
1968
Berghorn, Rickard,
‘‘Dracula’s Way to Sweden: A Unique Version of Stoker’s Novel’’, http://weirdwebzine.com/draculitz.html (Accessed 6th January 2018)
--- Message to Tatiana
Fajardo. 9th January 2018.
Björnsson, Anna Margrét,
‘‘Icelandic Version of Dracula, Makt
myrkranna, turns out to be Swedish in Origin’’, https://icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/culture_and_living/2017/03/06/icelandic_version_of_dracula_makt_myrkranna_turns_o/ (Accessed 6th March 2018)
Buntzen, Lynda and Craig,
Carla, ‘‘Hour of the Wolf: The Case of Ingmar B.’’, Film Quarterly, Vol. 30, No. 2. (Winter 1976-1977), pp. 23-34 http://www.jstor.org/stable/1211758 (Accessed 20th
February 2018)
Crews, David, ‘‘Social Dynamics
of Group Courtship Behaviour in Male Red-Sided Garter Snakes (Thamnophis Sirtalis
Parietalis)’’, Jounal of Comparative
Psychology, 99(2): 145-9, July 1985
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/19156376_Social_dynamics_of_group_courtship_behavior_in_male_red-sided_garter_snakes_Thamnophis_sirtalis_parietalis
(Accessed 28th February)
Evidon, Richard, ‘‘Bergman
and ‘‘The Magic Flute’’’’, The Musical
Times, Vol. 117,No. 1596 (Feb., 1976), pp. 130-131 http://www.jstor.org/stable/960219?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
(Accessed 2nd March 2018)
Freud, Sigmund, ‘‘The
Uncanny’’, http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/freud1.pdf
(First published in 1919)
Gado, Frank, The Passion of Ingmar Bergman(Durham: Duke
University Press, 1986) -via Google Books
Hoffmann, E.T.A, ‘‘The
Golden Pot’’, https://archive.org/stream/germanromancetra02carl#page/24/mode/2up
(Accessed 20th February) (First published in 1814)
Julien, Philippe, Jacques Lacan’s Return to Freud : The
Real, The Symbolic,and the Imaginary (Psychoanalytic Crosscurrents S) (New
York: NYU Press, 1995)
Lacan, Jacques, ‘‘ The
Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as Revealed in Psychoanalytic
Experience’’, http://faculty.wiu.edu/D-Banash/eng299/LacanMirrorPhase.pdf
(Accessed 28th February)
López, Barry, Of Wolves and Men (New York: Scribner
Macmillan, 1978)- via Google Books
Shakespeare, William, Hamlet (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1998) (First Quarto published in 1603)
Stoker, Bram, Dracula (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2011) (First published in 1897)
IMAGES:
Vargtimmen, La Hora del Lobo, poster, https://uperlooper.deviantart.com/art/La-hora-del-lobo-VARGTIMMEN-201868398
‘‘The Wolf’’, Folio 16v - De eale; the yale. De lupo; the
wolf. - The Aberdeen Bestiary - MS 24, https://www.abdn.ac.uk/bestiary/ms24/f16v
‘‘The Sorceress’’,
Van de Velde II, Jan, https://risdmuseum.org/art_design/objects/521_the_sorceress
‘‘Papageno’’, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Papageno.jpg
‘‘Queen of the Night’’, Erte, https://onedelightfulday.wordpress.com/2011/01/07/die-zauberflote-queen-of-the-night-in-stage-design/
‘‘The Golden Pot’’, illustration by Fedor Ionin, http://book-graphics.blogspot.com.es/2016/01/the-golden-pot.html
‘‘Black Mass’’ by Henry de Malvost, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Messenoire.jpg
