Liv Ullmann and Ingmar Bergman alter ego Max von Sydow pull up to shore in HOUR OF THE WOLF
HOUR OF THE WOLF (VARGTIMMEN) (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
Film Society of Lincoln Center, Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center
Francesca Beale Theater
144 West 65th St. between Broadway & Amsterdam Ave.
Saturday, December 14, 6:45, and Thursday, December 19, 9:15
Festival runs December 13-19
212-875-5601
www.filmlinc.com
One of Ingmar Bergman’s most critically polarizing films — the director himself wrote, “No, I made it the wrong way” three years after its release — Hour of the Wolf is a gripping examination of an artist’s psychological deterioration. Bergman frames the story as if it’s a true tale being told by Alma Borg (Liv Ullmann) based on her husband Johan’s (Max von Sydow) diary, which she has given to the director. In fact, as this information is being shown in words onscreen right after the opening credits, the sound of a film shoot being set up can be heard behind the blackness; thus, from the very start, Bergman is letting viewers know that everything they are about to see might or might not be happening, blurring the lines between fact and fiction in the film itself as well as the story being told within. And what a story it is, a gothic horror tale about an artist facing both a personal and professional crisis, echoing the life of Bergman himself. Johan and Alma, who is pregnant (Ullmann was carrying Bergman’s child at the time), have gone to a remote island where he can pursue his painting in peace and isolation. But soon Johan is fighting with a boy on the rocks, Alma is getting a dire warning from an old woman telling her to read Johan’s diary, and the husband and wife spend some bizarre time at a party in a castle, where a man walks on the ceiling, a dead woman arises, and other odd goings-on occur involving people who might be ghosts. Bergman keeps the protagonists and the audience guessing as to what’s actually happening throughout: The events could be taking place in one of the character’s imaginations or dreams (or nightmares), they could be flashbacks, or they could be part of the diary come to life. Whatever it is, it is very dark, shot in an eerie black-and-white by Sven Nykvist, part of a trilogy of grim 1968-69 films by Bergman featuring von Sydow and Ullmann that also includes Shame and The Passion of Anna. Today, Hour of the Wolf feels like a combination of Roman Polanski’s Rosemary’s Baby and Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining with elements of Mozart’s The Magic Flute — which Bergman would actually adapt for the screen in 1975 and features in a key, extremely strange scene in Hour of the Wolf. But in Bergman’s case, all work and no play does not make him a dull boy at all. Hour of the Wolf is screening December 14 and 19 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Liv & Ingmar: The Films,” being held in conjunction with the theatrical release of Dheeraj Akolkar’s poetic new documentary, Liv & Ingmar; the festival continues with such other Ullmann/Bergman pairings as Autumn Sonata, Shame, Persona, and Cries and Whispers.
In Saraband, masterful writer-director Ingmar Bergman returns to the story of Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson), first brought to life in the heartbreaking Scenes from a Marriage in 1973. Marianne, who hasn’t seen her ex-husband in thirty years, suddenly decides to pay the aging recluse a visit, resurrecting emotions both good and bad. Shot digitally, what purports to be Bergman’s swan song looks more like a TV movie than a theatrical release; in fact, it was made for Swedish television, as was the earlier work, but this one contains far less energy. While there are moments of brilliance, there are also scenes of mediocrity and mundanity that fall flat. The framing device of having Marianne speaking directly to the camera as she looks at old photos detracts from the overall impact as well. But it is great to see Josephson and Ullmann together again. The most fascinating new character, and one that fits well in the Bergman oeuvre, could very well be Henrik (Borje Ahlstedt), a complex, scary man with serious problems between him and his father as well as with his daughter, Karin (Julia Dufvenius). Saraband is screening December 14 and 18 at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Liv & Ingmar: The Films,” being held in conjunction with the theatrical release of Dheeraj Akolkar’s poetic new documentary, Liv & Ingmar; the festival continues with such other Ullmann/Bergman pairings as The Passion of Anna, Face to Face, Cries and Whispers, and Scenes from a Marriage.
Photographer Edward Burtynsky has been traveling the world with his large-format viewfinder camera, taking remarkable photographs of environmental landscapes undergoing industrial change. For Manufactured Landscapes, cinematographer Peter Mettler and director Jennifer Baichwal joined Burtynsky on his journey as he documented ships being broken down in Chittagong, Bangladesh; the controversial development of the Three Gorges Dam Project in China, which displaced more than a million people; the uniformity at a factory in Cankun that makes irons and the Deda Chicken Processing Plant in Dehui City; as well as various mines and quarries. Burtynsky’s photos, which were on view at the Brooklyn Museum in late 2005 and often can be seen in New York City galleries (two shows just closed last week), are filled with gorgeous colors and a horrible sadness at the lack of humanity they portray. As in the exhibit, the audience is not hit over the head with facts and figures and environmental rhetoric; instead, the pictures pretty much speak for themselves, although Burtynsky does give some limited narration. Baichwal lets the camera linger on its subject, as in the remarkable opening shot, a long, slow pan across a seemingly endless factory. She is also able to get inside the photographs, making them appear to be three-dimensional as Mettler slowly pulls away. Manufactured Landscapes is screening November 12 as part of the Film Society of Lincoln Center series “Peter Mettler: Pictures of Light,” a midcareer retrospective of the innovative Canadian artist that also features eight shorts and full-length documentaries he directed, including Picture of Light, The End of Time, Plastikman, Petropolis, and Gambling, Gods, and LSD, with Mettler on hand to talk about his work at most shows. In addition, Mettler will participate in the free White Light Festival panel discussion “It’s a Matter of Time” on November 9 at 4:30 with Sylvia Boorstein, Daniel Casasanto, Georg Friedrich Haas, and Alan Lightman and a performance of Steve Reich’s “Clapping Music” by Alan Pierson and Chris Thompson, moderated by John Schaefer.
In a 1966 interview with Pierre Daix about Masculin féminin, director Jean-Luc Godard said, “When I made this film, I didn’t have the least idea of what I wanted.” Initially to be based on the Guy de Maupassant short stories “The Signal” and “Paul’s Mistress,” the film ended up being a revolutionary examination of the emerging youth culture in France, which Godard identifies as “the children of Marx and Coca-Cola.” Godard threw away the script and worked on the fly to make the film, which stars Jean-Pierre Léaud as Paul, a peculiar young man who quickly becomes obsessed with budding pop star Madeleine, played by real-life Yé-yé singer Chantal Goya. (Godard discovered her on a television variety show.) Paul chases Madeleine, getting a job at the same company, going to the movies and nightclubs with her and her friends, and meeting her in cafés, where he wants to talk about the troubles of contemporary society and she just wants to have a good time. “Man’s conscience doesn’t determine his existence. His social being determines his conscience,” Paul proclaims. He continually argues that there is nothing going on even as strange events occur around him to which he is completely oblivious, including a lover’s spat in which a woman guns down a man in broad daylight. (Sounds of rapid-fire bullets can be heard over the intertitles for each of the film’s fifteen faits précis, evoking a sense of impending doom.) Paul has bizarre conversations with his best friend, Robert (Michel Debord), a radical who asks him to help put up anarchist posters. Posing as a journalist, Paul brutally interviews Miss 19 (Elsa Leroy), a young model with a very different view of society and politics. Godard has also included a playful battle of the sexes in the center of it all: Paul wants Madeleine, much to the consternation of Madeleine’s roommate, Elisabeth (Marlène Jobert), who also has designs on her; meanwhile, Robert goes out with another of Madeleine’s friends, the more grounded Catherine (Catherine-Isabelle Duport), who is interested in Paul.
