Bergman 22: Hour of the Wolf (1968)

It should have been Persona next but I skipped it because - much as I love that film (it's one of my all-time favourites, in fact) - I do know it very well, and the transfer in the Criterion box is the same as the 2014 Criterion release, which I already had. So on to Hour of the Wolf, which I'd never seen. Certain things that might almost go without saying at this point - very strong performances, blah, exceptional cinematography, yadda, extraordinary images, and all that jazz. If anything, this film seems - formally - like something of an amalgam of Persona and The Silence, the starkness of the former married to the way the latter is simultaneously a "realistic" narrative, an interior psychodrama, and an allegory, with none of the three possibilities overtaking the others or turning them just into some kind of vehicle. Though I think it has to be said that this is the weakest, partly because the "homosexual panic" theme doesn't wear so well these days, and partly because Bergman's personal demons intrude that bit too obviously here (giving the film that characteristic mix of the all-too-clear and the hermetic that this kind of thing often gives rise to). But to say a film is a little weaker than Persona and The Silence is pretty high praise in itself. I look forward to watching this again and digesting it further. (Interesting also how, as with Persona, the experimentalism of this film is married to some fourth-wall breaking reflexivity - in this case the "behind-the-scenes" audio accompanying the credits. It's almost as if Bergman needs this to situate and perhaps justify the weirdness. Without it he'd risk turning into David Lynch...)