HOUR OF THE WOLF (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
Category: Cinema > Films
| Original title: | Vargtimmen |
|---|---|
| Director: | Ingmar Bergman |
| Release date: | 1968 |
| Country of origin: | Sweden |
| Genre: | Drama | Horror |
| IMDb: | https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063759/ |
Censorship incidents
| 1968-03-01 | Scenes cut from the film HOUR OF THE WOLF (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
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| 1968-03-26 | Ban on the film HOUR OF THE WOLF (Ingmar Bergman, 1968)
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Description
From the mid-1950s until the late 1960s, Ingmar Bergman directed an array of films that extensively incorporated elements of the occult and of myths, exploring the role of dreams, fantasies and the subconscious. Relying on the Scandinavian folk universe and on European medieval legends, Bergman posed philosophical questions about faith and existentialism through a blend of Christianity and paganism. The HOUR OF THE WOOLF is such an example, based on both autobiographical elements and Scandinavian folklore. As the film was essentially one of folk horror, it was negatively criticized as a mere stylistic exercise.
The film was banned by two dictatorships, in Spain and in Greece. In Spain, where the regime of General F. Franco frequently censored or altered Bergman’s films in order for the director to appear as a pious Catholic, the HOUR OF THE WOOLF was banned due to its perceived extremity –as had happened five years earlier with Bergman’s film SILENCE.
In Greece, the film was initially censored lightly due to the depiction of violence and nudity. However, some negative remarks by a pro-dictatorship newspaper annoyed the head of the Greek dictatorship, Colonel G. Papadopoulos, and the film was re-examined. The members of the censorship committee, then, argued that the Greek state should no longer tolerate Bergman’s films and their ‘’barbaric, and nihilistic credo’’. Furthermore, the head of the committee argued that it was unacceptable for the Greeks to succumb to the ‘’primitive’’ Scandinavian culture and specifically to a country in such a decline as Sweden, while, in the same time, Greece was “thriving” under the dictatorship. Consequently, the film was banned; although the political reason was the reaction of the dictator Papadopoulos, the underlying theme was the anti-intellectualism of the Greek dictatorship, which aspired to both form and resonate the taste and culture of the Greek people, especially against such influences as Bergman’s mythic existentialism.
Christos Triantafyllou
Sources – Bibliography
- Estia (newspaper), 14/3/1968.
- “The Screen: I am a conjurer”, Time Magazine, 14/3/1960.
- Ellinger, Kat, “Ingmar Bergman, folk horror pioneer”, British Film Institute website, 25/1/2018.
- Higginbotham, Virginia, Spanish Cinema under Franco, University of Texas Press, 1987.
