(1968; b/w Swedish) Ingmar Bergman's surreal film (with cinematographer Sven Nykvist) unveils the dreams of an artist consumed by his inner demons. Speaking to the camera, Alma Borg (Liv Ullmann), telling us she has handed over her husband's diary for this project and has nothing more to say, says she cannot leave; for the previous seven years she and Johan (Max von Sydow) had been together, and she is pregnant.

They had arrived happily on the island to be alone and for him to work. Soon, however, he became irritable, anxious, and sleepless. He showed her sketches of images from his nightmares: a homosexual, an old woman with a hat (her head came off if she removed her hat), a bird man, meat eaters, insects, spider men, and others. Fearing to sleep at night, he waited until dawn to close his eyes. Alma says to him that people who live for a long time together tend to become similar in their looks and ways; her wish is to grow old and become one with him.

One morning an old woman with a fancy hat appears to Alma, warning her that her husband must not draw any more sketches and that she should read his diary in the black satchel under the bed. After Alma begins reading Johan's diary, learning of his scandalous affair with Veronica Vogler, she gets drawn into his nightmares.

Accepting an invitation to Baron von Merken's castle, Johan and Alma find themselves in claustrophobic company with Johan's ghosts, who express admiration for the artist. Johan discounts their praise by saying that his work is a compulsion and that art isn't really important.

A puppet show presents a scene from a favorite Bergman reference, Mozart's The Magic Flute; like Tamino seeking Pamina, Johan pursues Veronica through the castle (her portrait hangs in the baron's wife's bedroom) until he finds her laid out like a corpse.

After Alma's confession that she has been reading his diary, Johan tells her of being punished as a child, locked inside a closet and then caned by his father before being forgiven by his mother. He also reveals a disturbing event, which he had earlier explained as a snakebite: he struggled on the cliffs with a young boy, killed the child, and dropped the body into the water. (His son? We know that he has a son from a previous relationship. With Veronica?)

Frightened, pleading for him to leave the island with her for the mainland, but resolved not to desert him, Alma assures Johan that though she knows the phantoms are evil and are trying to take him away from her, she will not run away. Into their cottage a ghost brings a gun which Johan, after urging Alma to leave him, fires thrice at her. The hour of the wolf is the time of night when most people die and children are born.

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Copyright © 2007 Patrick Ivers. All rights reserved.
Reproduced with the permission of the copyright holder.

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