Lesser Bergman?

After a week of travel and sickness, this will be more an exhortation than a review. Even now, I’m sniffling and coughing. Never mind the deadlines on the horizon. I had the pleasure of seeing Ingmar Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf (1968). It’s unfair. It’s unfair that Bergman seems capable of making a masterful example of any conceivable genre of film. Here, we have a phenomenal horror film.

Hour of the Wolf is about a couple, an artist and his wife, holed up in an island cabin. Their only neighbors are a family of chortling aristocrats who love nothing more than to gossip and sigh. The man is losing his mind. Bergman takes this simple premise and envelops the viewer in a cloud of bleak terror. Atmosphere? The movie is nothing but atmosphere—slow, creeping horror for about 90 minutes.

It’s available on YouTube for free. Check it out. For now, back to recovery (doing work).