Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf: when Folklore, Mozart and E.T.A Hoffmann Depict Madness and Witchcraft

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’. 

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)

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. 

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. 

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:

Here Bergman utilises his abovementioned passion for Mozart in relation to the writer E.T.A. Hoffmann. While I associated the painter with Mozart’s Tamino in the previous passage, in this case his character similarly echoes student Anselmus, the protagonist in E.T.A. Hoffmann’s The Golden Pot. This novella, which comprises twelve vigils (or chapters), recounts the story of this youth. The plot, set in Dresden, commences with Anselmus as he knocks over the basket of an applemonger, and her complaint when he flees seems to be a prophecy: ‘‘Ay, run! Run thy ways, thou Devil’s bird! To the Crystal run! To the Crystal! ’’(23). When the boy stops at the banks of the River Elbe next to an elder tree, he can hear some voices and crystal bells. As he looks up, he notices that there are three green-gold snakes resting in the tree. One of them, who has blue eyes and who the reader later learns is named Serpentina, approaches him and he immediately falls in love with her.
 

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.

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.

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.

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[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. 9^th 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 6^th 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 2^nd 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