page_title: Hour of the Wolf
section_title: Development
hierarchical_section_title: Hour of the Wolf / Production / Development
context_page_description: Hour of the Wolf is a 1968 Swedish psychological horror film directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Max von Sydow and Liv Ullmann. The story explores the disappearance of fictional painter Johan Borg, who lived on an island with his wife Alma while plagued with frightening visions and insomnia.
  Bergman originally conceived much of the story as part of an unproduced screenplay, The Cannibals, which he abandoned to make the 1966 film Persona. He took inspiration from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 1791 opera The Magic Flute and E. T. A. Hoffmann's 1814 novella The Golden Pot, as well as some of his own nightmares. Principal photography took place at Hovs Hallar, Stockholm and Fårö.
  Themes include insanity, particularly as experienced by an artist, sexuality, and relationships, conveyed in a surreal style and with elements of folklore. Analysts have found allusions to vampire and werewolf legend. Authors have also connected the work to Bergman's life and his relationship with Ullmann; Bergman said he was experiencing his own "hour of the wolf" when he conceived the story.
  The film was initially met with negative reviews in Sweden.
context_section_description: Inspirations for the story included Bergman's recurring nightmares, featuring a woman who took off her own face and an entity that walked on ceilings. Johan's description of being locked in a closet as a boy was based on Bergman's childhood. An external influence was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute, with the opera's character Papageno transformed into an evil Birdman. Bergman's interpretation of The Magic Flute is echoed through his character Lindhorst. Bergman credited German author E. T. A. Hoffmann as an additional major influence.
  
  Elements of the story also originated from Bergman's manuscript The Cannibals or The Maneaters, which he finished in 1964 and planned to shoot on Hallands Väderö. Bergman abandoned The Cannibals due to pneumonia, after which he wrote and directed Persona instead. Following Persona, he decided to make a reworked version of The Cannibals, under the new title Hour of the Wolf. The term was defined by Bergman in an explanatory note in his screenplay: 
  The hour between night and dawn ... when most people die, sleep is deepest, nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their worst anguish, when ghosts and demons are most powerful. The hour of the wolf is also the hour when most babies are born. 
   
  According to Professor Birgitta Steene, the title is drawn from Swedish folklore, where the "hour of the wolf" refers to the period from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., supposedly when the most deaths and births occur. Folklorist Bengt af Klintberg recalled that in 1964, Bergman tasked theatre manager Niklas Brunius to research legend about the hour, and Brunius asked Klintberg about it; Klintberg found the term had no roots in Swedish folklore, though there was a "ghost hour" between midnight and 1 a.m. Bergman claimed he first came across the term "hour of the wolf" in a Latin source, though he did not identify the source and may have coined the term himself. He later said that at the time of the story's conception, he was experiencing his own "hour of the wolf", and was "freed" from it upon the production's completion.
  
  During the latter stages of post-production of Persona in 1966, Bergman held a meeting to begin planning Hour of the Wolf. He later said the film builds on Persona: 
  Hour of the Wolf is seen by some as a regression after Persona. It isn't that simple. Persona was a breakthrough, a success that gave me the courage to keep on searching along unknown paths. ... When I see it today, I understand that it is about a deep-seated division within me both hidden and carefully monitored, visible in both my earlier and later work. ... Hour of the Wolf is important since it is an attempt to encircle a hard-to-locate set of problems and get inside them.
caption: German author E. T. A. Hoffmann was an influence on the story.
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