Word: bergmans
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Whatever compulsion artists feel towards self-portraiture, the pictures they paint clarify their artistic vision more than their personal characters. No less so for the master of cryptic film-making, Ingmar Bergman, who often saw a need to reflect on his work, though never to illuminate...
Appropriately enough, Bergman decided to model his putatively most personal of films, "Hour of the Wolf," after The Sandman by the great German fantasy writer E.T.A. Hoffman, a story for which no critic ever has written a satisfactory and definitive interpretation. In both tales an artist of questionable talent and freakish temperament grows insane from his own delusions. And in both, the portrayal of sexual anxiety and madness defies resolution...
...Bergman's film, Johan Borg (Max von Sydow) and his companion of seven years Alma (Liv Ullman) have retreated from exuberant society to a remote island off the coast of Sweden. Johan pretends a lurid affair drove him here years ago, but his diary, the centerpiece of the tale, reveals that his passion was never required. Already descending through a gate of illusion into utter madness, Johan finally snaps when Alma discovers his secret...
...Bergman uses Hoffmann's aura of confusion both as an aegis for uncomfortable secrets and an illumination of Bergman's views on himself as an artist. He simply offers too many layers of perception for his viewers to discern properly between them. The viewer struggles with the same fear of uncertainty as the painter Johan...
...least forgivable. No one would wish to adhere their own life story to Hoffmann's imagery. Even though he wrote a full century before Freud, Hoffmann packs The Sandman with towers, telescopes, eyes and other symbols of male genitalia which Freud would later co-opt for his Hauptthema. Bergman dodges any unfavorable associations and perhaps inaccurate parallels by altering his artist's sexual neuroses altogether from Hoffmann...