Horror Music, Mutes, And Acoustical Beings In

Journal of Film Music 6.1 (2013) 5-30 ISSN (print) 1087-7142doi:10.1558/jfm.v6i1.5 ISSN (online) 1758-860X

© Copyright the International Film Music Society, published by Equinox Publishing Ltd 2015, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield, S1 2BX.

W hen Count Floyd of SCTV’s Monster Chiller Horror Theater presented the Ingmar Bergman spoof Whispers of the

Wolf, his promise that vee ver going to bee scared right out ov our pahnts seemed hilariously absurd. Although spectators reacted with snickers and chortled giggles, Count Floyd may have actually had a point. After all, in 2007 the WIOF Die-Witness News team of fright.com posted a news update with the headline “The Death of Ingmar Bergman: Yes, Even Horror Fans Can Say Goodbye.”2 However, with the exception of

1 I am indebted to William H. Rosar, Per Broman, James Deaville, André Loiselle, Paul Théberge, Alan Gillmor, Campion Carruthers, Roger and

Hour of the Wolf, can any other Bergman film truly be classified as horror? This is up for debate, especially given recent studies that probe the boundaries of the genre. Nonetheless, it is undeniable that Bergman

Emmy Luko, Erika Luko-Price, Larissa Luko-Montisano, Alan MacDonald, and the anonymous reviewers of this journal for perceptive comments and feedback on previous versions of this article. This research was partially funded by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Carleton University. Huge thanks to Jan Holmberg, CEO and head curator of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation, for permitting me to access The Ingmar Bergman Archives in Stockholm.

A version of this article was presented as “Ingmar Bergman’s Voiceless Beings and Disembodied Phantoms,” at the Music and the Moving Image Conference, Steinhardt School of Culture, NYU, NYC, June 1–3, 2012.2 http://iconsoffright.com/news/2007/07/the_death_of_ingmar_bergman_ye.html, accessed January 17, 2014.

Listening to Ingmar Bergman’s Monsters: Horror Music, Mutes, and Acoustical Beings in Persona and Hour of the Wolf 1

ALExIS LUkOCarleton University, [email protected]

Abstract: Many of Ingmar Bergman’s films are indebted to the horror genre through topics that explore physical and psychological torture, mutilation, illness, murder, sexual taboos, dream, psychoanalysis, madness, and the supernatural. These emblematic horror tropes are reinforced with close-ups of expressive mouths and eyes and a masterful manipulation of shadow and light, helping to create an aesthetic that is at once intimate and haunt-ing. There is a third plane, an aural one, on which Bergman intertwines music, a rich palette of sound effects, deathly silence, and blood-chilling screams. This paper focuses on the significance of music and the voice (or the lack thereof) in Bergman’s soundtracks and expands ideas put forward by Julia kristeva about the “abject” and by Michel Chion pertaining to the omniscient and bodiless acousmêtres or “acoustical beings” and mutes of film. This article examines mutes and acousmêtres in Persona and Hour of the Wolf, and how the quality of their voices or, indeed, their silence, aids them in articulating their identities and manipulating and tyrannizing those around them. Bergman’s characters threaten to destabilize the narrative if and when they find their bodies and/or voices, and thus maintain an ominous power as they straddle diegetic and non-diegetic aural space.

Keywords: Ingmar Bergman; film; music; horror; mute

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© The International Film Music Society 2015.

tipped his hat to horror in films such as The Virgin Spring, The Seventh Seal, Through a Glass Darkly, Persona, Cries and Whispers, The Serpent’s Egg, Shame, Fanny and Alexander, The Magician, and From the Life of the Marionettes. A handful of critics and academics have aptly recognized not only the influence of horror films on Bergman’s own oeuvre, but have also credited him with playing a crucial role in influencing the development of the genre.3 Bergman has explored everything from cannibalism to vampirism, physical and psychological torture, mutilation, illness, murder, sexual taboos, dream, psychoanalysis, madness, and the supernatural.4 These emblematic horror tropes are reinforced with close-ups of expressive mouths and eyes, a masterful manipulation of shadow and light, and primal blood-curdling screams, helping to create an aesthetic that is at once intimate and haunting.

In his study of the philosophy of horror, Noel Carroll defines the monstrous as that which is “unnatural,” in violation of order, physically and cognitively intimidating and threatening to knowledge and society.5 According to film horror theories of Peter Hutchings, monsters are impure and dangerous, occupying an “in-between” space, blurring the divide between living/dead, vegetable/human, human/animal, and feminine/masculine.6 These categories are better understood through the lens of Julia kristeva’s conception of the “abject,” roughly defined as somewhere between object and subject, socially rejected, representing taboo, and disturbing social order. She differentiates between the abject outside

3 Samuel J. Umland writes, for example, about the influence of Fritz Lang’s Testament of Dr. Mabuse on the Serpent’s Egg in “World of Blood and Fire: Lang, Mabuse, and Bergman’s The Serpent’s Egg,” in European Nightmares: Horror Cinema in Europe Since 1945 (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2012): 195-206. Emily Brick has called The Virgin Spring a “rape-revenge” narrative that fits into the narrative structure and ideology of Straw Dogs and Dirty Weekend. Emily Brick, “Baise-Moi and the French Rape-Revenge Films,” in European Nightmares: Horror Cinema in Europe Since 1945 (London and New York: Wallflower Press, 2012), 94. In a review from December 26, 1973, film critic Roger Ebert recognized links between Cries and Whispers and William Friedkin’s The Exorcist: “1973 began and ended with cries of pain,” wrote Roger Ebert. “It began with Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Cries and Whispers,’ and it closed with William Friedkin’s ‘The Exorcist.’ Both films are about the weather of the human soul, and no two films could be more different. Yet each in its own way forces us to look inside, to experience horror, to confront the reality of human suffering,” accessed October 18, 2013, www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-exorcist-1973.4 Upon being asked about influences by the French daily Nice Matin, Dario Argento (Dawn of the Dead, Suspiria) was quoted in an interview in 2012 revealing: “I have many [masters]! From my past as a critic I’ve seen a lot of films. Obviously I love Alfred Hitchcock, and American movies from the 40s and 50s in particular. And Ingmar Bergman.” Quoted by Jan Holmberg at http://ingmarbergman.se/en/news/2012-12/argento-bergman-and-berlusconi, accessed January 17, 2014. 5 Noel Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, or Paradoxes of the Heart (New York and London: Routledge, 1990), 34. On monsters also see Rick Worland, The Horror Film: An Introduction (Malden, MA and Oxford, Uk: Blackwell, 2007), especially Chapters 1 and 4.6 Peter Hutchings, The Horror Film (London and New York: Pearson, 2004), 35.

the body (visible decay, excrement, blood, infection, disease)7 and the abject within the body (hidden pregnancy, tumor, cancer, monstrous growths).8 These theories have been applied to horror film scholarship by katherine Goodnow, who demonstrates how the abject relates to different categories of monsters.9 At one end of the spectrum are werewolves, vampires, and other beasts with recognizable physical abject characteristics. They bridge categories of human and animal with outward traits such as claws, warts, scales, and bloody fangs. At the other end of the spectrum are Goodnow’s/kristeva’s “clean-faced” or “false-faced” monsters who are disguised, hiding their monstrosity within.10

The “abject” is a useful model to help better understand Ingmar Bergman’s “horror” music and the sounds (or lack thereof) that emanate from his cinematic characters. I argue that Bergman’s Swedish domesticated “bullies” might actually be considered “monsters,” employing music for selfish and manipulative purposes—to seduce, torture, dominate and deceive.11 To this end, for anyone even peripherally acquainted with Bergman’s oeuvre, it should come as no surprise that most of his monsters fit into the “abject within” or “clean-faced” category. These are more frightening types than conventional vampires, werewolves, and ghosts as, according to Peter Hutchings, clean-faced monsters permit “the imagination of the spectator to go to work,” and what they visualize will “always be more effective than those horrific entities conjured up by the filmmakers.”12 Bergman’s own brand of composite monsters often get away with their crimes as they lead deliberately duplicitous lives, oscillating between soft caresses and verbal and psychological attacks.

To better understand how Bergman’s clean-faced “meanies” match monster profiles, it becomes important to turn to the soundtrack, which has long been recognized as serving a crucial role in infusing psychological fear into the hearts and

7 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 71.8 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 11.9 katherine J. Goodnow, Kristeva in Focus: From Theory to Film Analysis (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2010), see particularly pages 33-43.10 According to kristeva, “the abject is neither subject nor object … it confronts us with those fragile states wherein man strays on the territories of animal” (p. 239). There are four types of abject threat that collapse order and meaning by breaking down borders between living/dead; human/nonhuman; clean/unclean; love/destruction. kristeva points out that a corpse represents the utmost of abjection as it represents the ultimate breaking down of borders wherein death infects life (p. 231). See Julia kristeva, The Portable Kristeva, edited by kelly Oliver (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997). 11 Alexis Luko, Sonatas, Screams, and Silence: Music and Sound in the Films of Ingmar Bergman (New York: Routledge, 2015).12 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 127.

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minds of viewers.13 It is no accident that Bergman’s soundtracks are so fascinating as a topic of study. After all, throughout his career, he acknowledged the significance of music in inspiring his cinematic aesthetic. He also sought to create links between the forms and rhythms of music and film. He was employed for a season at the Royal Opera in Sweden, where he developed a love of Mozart, Franz Lehár, and Wagner. Later in life, he married Estonian-Swedish concert pianist käbi Laretei, from whom he received expert musical guidance and advice. Bergman’s special relationship with music is highlighted in his memoirs,14 books and academic journals,15 newspapers and magazines,16 and in interviews on Swedish Radio (SR),17 and Swedish television (SVT).18

13 Neil Lerner, ed. Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear (New York and London: Routledge, 2010). Also see Michael Lee, “Sound and Uncertainty in the Horror Films of the Lewton Unit,” in Music, Sound, and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema (New York and London: Routledge, 2012), 107-121; Jack Sullivan, Hitchcock's Music (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2006); Christine Lee Gengaro, Listening to Stanley Kubrick: The Music in His Films (Lanham and Toronto: Scarecrow Press, 2013)14 Memoirs: Ingmar Bergman, The Magic Lantern: An Autobiography [Laterna Magica] (New York and London: Viking Penguin, 1988). Ingmar Bergman, The Fifth Act, translated by Linda Rugg and Joan Tate (New York: New Press, 2001). Ingmar Bergman, Images: My Life in Film, translated by Marianne Ruuth (New York: Arcade, 2007); käbi Laretei, Såmsom i en översättning: Teman med variationer (Stockholm: Bonniers, 2004). Ingmar Bergman, Stig Björkman, Torsten Manns, Johanas Sima, Bergman on Bergman, translated by Paul Britten Austin (London: Secker and Warburg, 1973).15 Books and academic journals: Peter Schepelern, “Ingmar Bergman og musikken,” Kosmorama 24, no. 137 (1978): 44-46. Ulla Britta Lagerroth, “Musicalization on the Stage: Ingmar Bergman Performing Shakespeare,” in Ingmar Bergman Revisited: Performance, Cinema and the Arts, ed. Maaret koskinen (London: Wallflower Press, 2008). Sofia Lilly Jönsson, “Ljudestetik I Spelfilm: Om sju Minuter i Bergmans Fanny och Alexander” (Department of Musicology and Theater, Stockholm University, 2001). Martin Nyström, “Musiken spelar störst roll i Ingmar Bergmans filmer/Music Plays the Major Role in Ingmar Bergman’s Films,” Dag Nyheter (November 30, 2003): 4-5. Ermanno Comuzio, “Musica, suoni e silenzio neil film di Bergman,” Cineforum, 32 (February 1964): 166-173. Jeffrey Gantz, “Mozart, Hoffmann and Ingmar Bergman’s Vargtimmen,” Literature/Film Quarterly 8, no. 2 (1980): 104-114. Paul Duncan and Bengt Wanselius (eds.), The Ingmar Bergman Archives (Hong kong and Los Angeles: Taschen, 2008). 16 Newspaper and magazines: Oscar Hedlund, “Ingmar Bergman, lyssnaren/Ingmar Bergman, The Listener,” Expressen (July 20, 1963): 4-5; appeared in English as “Ingmar Bergman, the Listener” in Saturday Review (February 29, 1964): 47-49. Jannike Åhlund, “Gud och kannibalism fick fart på Bergman och koskinen,” Svenska Dagbladet (July 1, 2005). Ingmar Bergman, “Min Pianist,” Vecko Revyn 11 (1962): 16-18; 79. Britt Hamdi, “Ingmar Bergman och käbi Laretei.” Damernas värld (November 17, 1960): 27-33, 74.17 Radio: “Ej för at roa blott/Not just to entertain,” Radiotjänst, Swedish Public Radio (January 2, 1947). “Möte med Ingmar Bergman,” Swedish Public Radio (February 6, 1960). “Ingmar Bergman Sjunger/Bergman Sings,” Swedish Public Radio (January 17, 1969). Ingmar Bergman, “En grammofontimme med Ingmar Bergman,” Swedish Public Radio (September 7, 1969). Ingmar Bergman, “Ingmar Bergman och Daniel Börtz,” Samtal om musik, Swedish Public Radio (January 1, 2001). Ingmar Bergman, “Sommar,” Swedish Public Radio (July 18, 2004). Ingmar Bergman, “Ingmar Bergman intervjuas om filmmusik och närmaste planer,” Biodags, Swedish Public Radio (1959). 18 Television: käbi Laretei, “kväll med käbi/An Evening with käbi,” Swedish Television, Channel 2 (January 19, 1985),.“känner du käbi Laretei?” Swedish Television (December 27, 1976). “Musikalisk salong,” Swedish Television (March 10, 1966). Camilla Lundberg, Interview: “Ingmar Bergman och musiken,” Swedish Television (December 25, 2000). Vilgot Sjöman, “Vilgot Sjöman intervjuar Ingmar Bergman,” SVT (January 27, February 3, and February 10, 1963).

Horror, in particular, relies heavily on sound effects and vocal timbres to highlight the creepy sounds of monsters and their terrified victims. In the horror genre, sound “underline[s] or augment[s] moments of shock and violence,” and “denotes the unseen presence of something that should not be there.”19 The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Haunting (1963) are classic cases, boasting extraordinary soundtracks with invisible sound sources. Pascal Bonitzer defines the off-screen area in which many monsters are aurally situated as “blind space,” where the violent screeches, bumps, strikes, and moans are separated from their sources.

One of the most noteworthy monster traits and, indeed, one of the least discussed in terms of the integrated soundtrack, is the quality (timbre, melodic quality, and rhythm) of the voice itself.20 Monsters typically have steady and controlled voices or are mute and/or nonverbal, or use sound effects as their primary means of communication (e.g., Michael Myers in Halloween and Leatherface in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). In his ground-breaking study The Voice in Cinema, film theorist Michel Chion has written extensively about the voices of cinematic monsters.21 The acousmêtre or “acoustical being,” argues Chion, is an entity that is heard but usually shrouded from view.22 On the screen, there is a dislocation between the monster’s voice and its body. Famous examples range from the Wizard of Oz, the computer Hal in 2001: A Space Odyssey, and a host of film’s most infamous beasts: the mother from Psycho, Regan MacNeil in The Exorcist, the murderer in Fritz Lang’s M, Darth Vader in Star Wars, and the killer on the other end of the telephone in Scream. Chion’s counterpart to the acousmêtre is the voiceless mute. There are true mutes, who cannot speak because of an actual medical problem, and there is a type of self-imposed “mutism” wherein characters refuse to speak.23

It is in the process of avoiding the camera’s gaze that acousmêtres acquire the capacity to see all. Similarly, without a voice, it is assumed that mutes know much more than they let on, making them the guardians of secret knowledge. Omniscience and omnipotence put acousmêtres and mutes into privileged

19 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 128, 129.20 See Paul Théberge, “Almost Silent: The Interplay of Sound and Silence in Contemporary Cinema and Television,” in Lowering the Boom: Critical Studies in Film Sound, ed. Jay Beck and Tony Grajeda (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008), 51-67.21 Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema, translated by Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1999). See also Michel Chion, Audio Vision: Sound on Screen, edited and translated by Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 22 Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 9. 23 On muteness versus “mutism,” see Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 96.

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positions, allowing them to wield an almost magical or diabolical power.24 So long as monsters remain mute and/or lurk as acousmêtres in off-screen spaces, there exists a dynamic of power and subjection, with the monster, of course, in the power position.25 But power is only preserved while the acousmêtre remains unseen and the mute’s voice unheard. As explained by Chion, when the acousmêtre’s body is unveiled, it undergoes “de-acousmatization” and is typically drained of special powers.26 Similarly, a mute’s powers are neutralized when his/her voice is finally heard, at which point the spell is broken and secrets are revealed.27

According to Hutchings, part of what creates the tension in a horror film is the wait for sounds to find their “bodies.” The spectator anticipates the moment wherein disturbing voices/noises and visible sources conjoin.28 Near the end of a film, when mute monsters and/or bodiless acousmêtres finally discover their body–voice connections, there is often a mismatch, evocative of ventriloquism or demonic possession.29 The voice is deliberately manipulated so that it is either too loud, at the wrong pitch, too masculine/feminine, or alien (i.e., excessively bass, guttural or electronically/digitally enhanced).

Jekyll and Hyde monster transformations are perhaps the most fetishized moments of horror. They are often visually hyperbolized on the screen as bodies are featured in close-up and gradually mutate to reveal abjectness. As pointed out by Hutchings, “[m]onsters can become victims, victims can become monsters or, in other ways, can achieve dominance, with much of this relayed through a type of performance which foregrounds the body in motion.”30 This has particular resonance in Bergman’s narratives, where acousmêtres and mutes are frequently encountered and dominant–subordinate relationships between monsters and victims (so central to horror) often play out—albeit in more domesticated Swedish family settings.

Besides the utterances of monsters, the sounds of victims are equally fascinating in the horror genre. In addition to crying, cowering, shaking, trembling, and begging for mercy, victims are perhaps best

24 In The Voice in Cinema, Chion writes about the strengths of the acoustical being—to be everywhere, to see all, to know all, and to have complete power (p. 23). 25 Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 15-58.26 As discussed by Chion, in The Voice in Cinema, the wizard of The Wizard of Oz undergoes “de-acousmatization” (pp. 27-29). 27 For well-known films in which mutes acquire a voice Chion mentions Satyricon, Hitchcock’s Number Seventeen, and The Elephant Man. The Voice in Cinema, 100-101.28 As noted by Hutchings, it is normal for sources and noises to join up as it creates tension in a horror film. Hutchings, The Horror Film, 129.29 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 132.30 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 168.

known for their screams.31 To this end, Chion has identified culminating moments in horror film which he has dubbed screaming points.32 These are aural moments that create an “ineffable black hole” toward which everything converges, embodying “a fantasy of the auditory absolute.”33 The scream is usually encountered “at the crossroads of converging plot lines [for] … maximum impact.”34 Screams are typically produced by women and are subject to the male gaze.35 Hutchings views the scream as a sound effect or “ventriloquistic device” as it is typically dubbed in after filming and is not necessarily emitted by the same individual who visually performs the on-screen scream.36 Most of Bergman’s films feature a screaming episode but his screams tend to defy horror “rules” as they are often performed mutely by women and men.37

In this article, the theories of Chion, Hutchings, and kristeva will be explored and expanded through examinations of Bergman’s Persona (1966), identified by Michael Lloyd as a “kind of modernist horror movie,” and Hour of the Wolf (1968), universally recognized as horror. In these films, Bergman makes frequent use of the voices of victims, monsters, mutes, and acousmêtres. As I argue below, one of his favorite character-types actually assumes the form of a “mute-acousmêtre hybrid”—an individual who has the ability to transform from monster to victim and vice versa, acquiring and acquiescing power through shifts between submissive and dominant positions.

Persona’s Mute-Acousmêtre Hybrids

Persona (1966) features one of the most famous of Bergman’s mutes—the actress Elizabeth Vogler (played by Liv Ullmann), a character who is silent for

31 For a more complete analysis of the physical manifestations of victims in horror film, see Carroll, The Philosophy of Horror, 24. Also see Carol Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws: Gender in the Modern Horror Film (London: BFI, 1992), 51. 32 Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 77. 33 Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 76, 77.34 Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 77. 35 Laura Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” Screen 16, no. 3 (1975): 6-18. Also see Laura Mulvey, Visual and Other Pleasures (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).36 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 132. Ross Fenimore writes about Bernard Herrmann’s shrieking orchestration during the shower scene of Psycho which has been interpreted as “birds screeching or the sound of a human scream.” Ross J. Fenimore, “Voices that Lie Within: The Heard and Unheard in Psycho,” in Music in the Horror Film, edited by Neil Lerner (New York and London: Routledge, 2010), 88-89. 37 Clover, Men, Women and Chainsaws, 51. On his work on the female scream in the trailers of horror films, James Deaville has recently extended the notion of the male gaze to the sonic realm: James Deaville, “Selling Abjection: Female Vocalities in Horror Trailers,” unpublished paper delivered at the 2014 Media, Communication and Cultural Studies Association (MeCCSA) conference in Bournemouth, January 8-10.



almost the entire duration of the film.38 According to the psychiatrist-character in an early scene, Elizabeth’s muteness is self-imposed. She chooses to be mute because she “no longer wants to hide behind a mask.”39

As part of her psychological rehabilitation program, Elizabeth and her more loquacious foil, Nurse Alma (played by Bibi Andersson), spend the summer in a Swedish cottage and, though the bond between the two women seems at first to be innocent and convivial, things progressively unravel as the nurse,

38 Lloyd Michaels, “Bergman and the Necessary Illusion,” in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, edited by Lloyd Michaels (Cambridge, Uk: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 16-19. Michaels has identified Persona as a “modernist horror movie.” Susan Sontag, “Bergman’s Persona,” in Cambridge Handbook to Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, edited by Lloyd Michaels (Cambridge, Uk and New York: Cambridge University Press), 74 and 82. Sontag characterizes Alma as wearing a mask of health and optimism.39 Throughout Bergman’s films, the spoken word is shown to be a cruel instrument of fraud that fails time and again. In Persona, we watch as Nurse Alma, who puts all her faith in words, ends up breaking down into a fit of hysterical anguish. In The Silence and Cries and Whispers, we see how words cannot possibly come close to expressing the sufferings of war and impending death.

rendered incensed and frustrated by Vogler’s silence, eventually loses touch with her own identity.

As the film develops, the personae of Vogler and Alma gradually meld together. At first percolating beneath the surface, a subliminal violence between the two women intensifies, finally culminating in a scene in which blood is shed, leading many commentators to discuss Persona in terms of vampirism. The connection is quite apt given the fact that the psychological/physical violence is comparable to The Cannibals (contracted by Svensk Filmindustri), a film that Bergman worked on prior to making Persona.40

In one of the most iconic scenes of Persona, amidst gauzy veils, white nighties, and close-ups of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, we encounter ghostly, unseen acousmêtres. Though there is no visual evidence, the sound effects are suggestive of two foghorns out at sea, pitched a perfect fifth apart (G/D). To the ghostly foghorn accompaniment, the

40 Bergman, The Magic Lantern, 205-206. Though The Cannibals was never produced, elements of its plot are detectable in Persona and Hour of the Wolf.

Figure 1: Persona, Elizabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann), 1966. The Canadian Press.

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women awake, rise from their beds, and launch into a moment of intense communion. Nurse Alma places her head on Elizabeth’s shoulder and, as Elizabeth gently brushes the hair back from Alma’s forehead, there is a subtext of a loving intimacy that flirts with lesbianism. Thanks to Bergman and cinematographer Sven Nykvist’s (1922–2006) manipulation of film angles and light and darkness, the women themselves look alike, suggesting that their personae are starting to fuse.

Bergman suddenly disrupts the eroticism of the scene when both women break the “fourth wall,” eerily staring in close-up, directly into the camera’s lens, thus reversing the so-called “male gaze.”41 This is a transformative moment as it is Alma and Elizabeth’s first acknowledgment of the cinematic audience. As their eyes brazenly meet ours, they force a shift in the power dynamic, thus begging the question—who is watching whom? Who has the upper hand? Precisely as the two women stare into the camera’s lens, the soundtrack’s texture transforms as the foghorn sound effects segue to the avant-garde music of Swedish composer Lars Johan Werle. In an interview for the film magazine Chaplin, Werle stated that, though Bergman was vague in how he described the visual aesthetic of his films, in terms of the music he “knew exactly what he wanted.”

Werle’s six-measure (33.5 second) sound cue is scored for a small ensemble of four cellos, three violins, cymbals, piano, harp, flute, and English horn (Figure 2). For the first few measures, the non-diegetic orchestrated score overlaps with and echoes the diegetic foghorn sound effects, with perfect fourths in the French horn and flute (F#–B; F–B¨) and diminished fifths outlined in the harp and violin I (B–F). The violin solo serves essentially as the melody for this sound cue. It outlines a diminished fifth followed by a perfect fourth (B–F–B¨) while the tuned cymbals sound a diminished-fifth tremolo (B–F) with the directive “allow to resonate” [lascia sonore]. Fraught with semantic meaning and reigning throughout this excerpt, is the tritone or the diabolus in musica [the Devil in music or “the Devil’s interval”] resonating with horror connotations harking back to the Middle Ages. This dissonance, shunned in the Middle Ages, has been used in devilish musical works such as Liszt's Dante Symphony, Saint-Saën's Danse Macabre, and countless horror films.42

41 Mulvey, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema,” 6-18.42 Janet k. Halfyard, “Mischief Afoot: Supernatural Horror-comedies and the Diabolus in musica,” in Music in the Horror Film: Listening to Fear, ed. Neil Lerner (New York: Routledge, 2010), 21-37. Scott Murphy, “The Major Tritone Progression in Recent Hollywood Science Fiction Film,” Music Theory

This is a transformational scene for the two women and it is the aural backdrop of sound effects and avant-garde scoring that aid in demarcating it as such. The blending of real-world foghorns with Werle’s musical score solidifies interaction between diegetic and non-diegetic, thus positioning Alma and Elizabeth in an “in-between” physical and aural space.43 Finally, the intimacy between Alma and Elizabeth actually reaches through the screen to us as viewers, resulting in an eerie three-way connection reminiscent of The Ring (2002). The breaking of the fourth wall, in turn, forces the spectator to re-evaluate the foghorn sounds. After all, the off-screen sound effects seem to be responsible for waking the women, beckoning, and compelling them to share a moment of intimacy. Are these sound effects based in reality or dream? Who or what are these aural acousmêtres? Are they linked to Bergman himself, who is pulling the strings from off-screen, symbolically guiding the women through this hazy dream-like sequence? Here, music and sound aid with transitioning into a supernatural realm where anything is possible.

What is Horror Music?

It is undeniable that Werle’s score for Persona has an unsettling creepiness akin to what might be found in a typical horror film. Given the fact that Persona has several additional horror “markers” (through the narrative, the voice, imagery, lighting) it is crucial at this juncture to examine the parameters and definitions of horror music. Horror film scholar Peter Hutchings asks whether “there is something distinctive about horror music that makes it stand apart from other film music” either in terms of its inherent qualities or its function in the context of horror.44 Film music outside horror film typically has popular appeal, championing a likable aesthetic meant to attract the widest possible demographic. Horror music is entirely different with its direct link to musical experimentation and the avant garde.45

Online 12 (May 2006), accessed May 4, 2012, http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.06.12.2/mto.06.12.2.murphy_essay.html.43 This phenomenon of sound effects blending with music occurs in In the Presence of a Clown (single pitches echo opening pitches of Schubert song), From the Life of the Marionettes, and Through A Glass Darkly (foghorn pitches echo the opening pitches of the reiterated Bach sarabande movement). See Luko, Sonatas, Screams, and Silence. 44 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 141. 45 Hutchings, The Horror Film, 146-147. It is a commonly held notion that horror music inherited a romantic era, when there was an interest in using large orchestral forces, extended techniques (e.g., col legno or playing with the wood of the bow in Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique), and new instrument combinations so as to generate unusual and unexpected timbral effects.

http://mto.societymusictheory.org/issues/mto.06.12.2/mto.06.12.2.murphy_essay.html




Figure 2: Lars Johan Werle, Persona, page 6 of autograph score, cue “M32” mm. 1–6, 0.33 1/2 sec. Foghorn scene with Nurse Alma and Elizabeth*

* Thanks to Vera Werle and Lars Johan Werle's four sons (Dag Werle, Patrik Werle, Mårten Werle, and Jesper Werle) who kindly permitted me to reprint excerpts from Werle's autograph scores for Persona and Hour of the Wolf. Manuscripts are housed at Svensk Musik. Thanks to Gustaf Bergel at Svensk Musik for his assistance with these manuscripts.

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Horror film music espouses a sense of aesthetic “strangeness.” The sounds of horror are meant to disrupt the human nervous system, affect spatial imagination, and cause spine-tingling and sweat-inducing bodily reactions. According to Hutchings, in order to achieve this, certain musical parameters are necessary: a) unconventional electronic instruments (especially for horror films dating before the 1970s); b) dissonance and atonality; c) startle effect (usually through “stingers” which are short bursts of music meant to make the viewer jump); and d) musical techniques such as: tremolo, drone, percussion, glissando, vibrato, ostinato, extreme registers, unpredictable tempo and rhythm, extreme shifts in dynamics, tone clusters, single long-tones, unknown/unidentifiable sounds, extended instrumental techniques, electronic sounds, sound effects, and unsettling shrill or low guttural noises.46 Furthermore, as indicated by Julia Heimerdinger, music and sound effects often blend together in horror film. Although both of these soundtrack elements would usually be allocated to different departments of the film production team, with a “sonic auteur” such as Ingmar Bergman at the helm, the blending of score and sound effects is not merely possible—it is, in fact, fundamental to the soundtrack style.

An examination of an excerpt from Werle’s score from the opening scene of Persona illuminates the prevalence of these horror music parameters. In this dream-like and surrealist introduction, Bergman bypasses all pretence of diegesis and communicates directly with the spectator, beginning with a type of “let there be light” reflection on the act of artistic creation itself. Starting with a dark screen, two carbon rods gradually become brighter and brighter and, upon making contact, they suddenly ignite. Sound cue “M11A” (0.00–0.32.5 secs) in Werle’s score (mm. 1–5) accompanies this opening image. It is scored for four violins (marked “sul ponticello”) and two muted trumpets (which enter at m. 3 to play a D/E¨ muted drone). Together, the strings play a cluster chord spanning D¨–D–E¨–E which gradually rises through a series of glissandi until they reach a climactic forte D/E¨-tremolo (to echo the drone of the muted trumpets). Meanwhile, unsettling sound effects of the film being pulled along the projector’s sprockets can be heard. For the second cue, “M11B” (0.32.5–57.5), Werle reduces scoring to the two muted trumpets, which alternate

46 Hutchings, The Horror Film (passim); Julia Heimerdinger, “Music and Sound in the Horror Film and Why Some Modern and Avant-Garde Music Lends Itself to it so Well,” Seiltanz: Beiträge zur Musik der Gegenwart 4 (April 2012). Note that in her article, Heimerdinger includes a short discussion of Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf.

between sounding minor seconds (starting with D/E¨) and major seconds—gradually moving chromatically upward until they reach F/F#. For the third cue, “M11C” (57.5–1.17) Werle composed a looped 6/8 dance-tune to accompany visuals of an upside-down image of an animated cartoon of a woman washing her hands.47 Cue “M12A” (2 measures) accompanies a clip from a comedic silent-film of a man dressed in his nightclothes trapped in a room and chased by Death and the Devil. Werle scores this rhythmically unpredictable and boisterous segment for bongos, wood block, and violins (note that measure 1 of this cue seems to have been omitted in the final version of the film). The nine measures of the “M12B” cue (0.00–0.50), scored for piano, celeste, timpani, divisi violins, viola, cello, and double bass, accompanies visuals of a tarantula spider and the slaughter of a lamb. Here, the instrumental effects serve almost as a checklist for Hutchings’ horror music parameters: glissandi (mm. 2–6), tremolo (mm. 1–2; 7–8), dramatic registral shifts (throughout), and sudden extremes of dynamics (moving from fff to pp to ff in measure 9).

The Mute Writes, Screams, and Speaks

After the pivotal scene involving the foghorns and avant-garde music, a role reversal occurs as Nurse Alma and Elizabeth exchange dominant and submissive roles; their mounting power struggle eventually culminates in psychological and physical violence. Driven senseless to the point of frustrated absurdity by the silence, Nurse Alma devises strategies to force her mute patient to speak.48 Meanwhile, Elizabeth realizes that her muteness serves as a tool/weapon, allowing her to maintain power. After all, as Chion tells us, “[t]he mute generates doubt; we rarely know whether he cannot speak or will not speak… we don’t know how much or how little he knows.”49 Elizabeth therefore fits the cinematic profile of a powerful, pseudo-omniscient mute. Whatever her mental state, we need not feel sorry for her and her self-imposed “disability” as, in many ways, she is a monster—a vampire/cannibal who quietly sucks life from her unsuspecting nurse.

47 For a useful analysis of this opening scene from Persona (without any precise references to Werle’s score) see Chion, Audio Vision, 98-213. 48 This transformational scene is reminiscent of the transformation of Eva in the Chopin Prelude scene of Autumn Sonata where the power dynamic shifts from mother to daughter. See the discussion in Chapter 4 of Luko, Sonatas, Screams, and Silence.49 Chion, The Voice in Cinema, 96



Bergman provides us with a number of clues that the power dynamic between the actress and the nurse is changing as he gradually begins to furnish Elizabeth with a “voice.” As a first step, Nurse Alma “hears” Elizabeth’s voice (at least her internal one) through a quintessential Bergmanian device—a letter. Written to her psychiatrist, the letter exposes and trivializes Alma’s darkest secrets. Alma is privy to her patient’s thoughts for the first time when she secretly reads it:

Alma takes care of me, spoils me in the most touching way. I believe that she likes it here and that she’s very fond of me, perhaps even in love in an unaware and enchanting way. In any case, it’s very interesting studying her. Sometimes she cries over past sins—an orgy with a strange boy and a subsequent abortion. She claims that her perceptions do not correspond with her actions.

In this letter, the tables are turned and the patient is actually studying the nurse. In terms of the accompanying soundtrack for this dramatic moment, rather than reading aloud or exploiting the cliché cinematic voice-over, Bergman provides a visual close-up of the letter while superimposing the sound effects of water droplets, thus forcing the viewer (and Alma) to imagine the timbre of Elizabeth’s voice.

Shortly thereafter, Alma lays a trap so as to break her patient’s physical silence. She purposely leaves a shard of glass on the patio pavement and awaits the result with grim anticipation. In a scene of excruciating tension, a barefoot Elizabeth paces back and forth, obliviously passing by the shard of glass. When she finally steps on it and cuts her foot, Alma gets her wish: Elizabeth does indeed scream, thus breaking her physical silence.

By this point in the film, Alma has read the private thoughts of Elizabeth, and has made her feel a physical pain that has forced her to cry out. According to Chion, the symbolic unveiling of the mute or the revelation of “the secret” corresponds with the stripping-away of the mute’s power and necessitates the sounding of the mute’s voice. Three later episodes in the film suggest that Elizabeth gradually divests herself of her mute “powers.” The first occurs during a dream scene where Elizabeth’s husband arrives at the summer cottage. Elizabeth grasps Alma’s hand and uses it to caress her husband’s face and, believing Alma to be his wife (his dark glasses suggest a visual impairment), he addresses Nurse Alma and embraces her. Alma mechanically states, “Yes, I am Elizabeth,” before falling into bed with her patient’s husband. All the while, Elizabeth silently looks on. This scene is significant as it marks the moment that Elizabeth transforms from a mute into

an acousmêtre. Here, Nurse Alma becomes Elizabeth’s puppet; Elizabeth inhabits the host body of Alma and even assumes her voice. Sarah kozloff’s important work on film dialogue emphasizes how vocal timbre can go a long way in infusing a film with meaning. In this scene, Nurse Alma “throws” her voice, which is suddenly mechanical and cold.50 Her vocal delivery diverges from the usual impassioned timbre and rhythmic drive.

With Nurse Alma now at the forefront, Elizabeth can recede into the darkness, simply pulling the strings as a director rather than continuing her role as flesh-and-blood actress on stage and in life. The irony here is that Elizabeth’s self-imposed muteness has been in vain. She has only succeeded in exchanging her old acting mask for a new mask—the body of Nurse Alma. In this way, neither woman is permitted release or reprieve from the act of role-playing. As Brendan Gill has put so aptly, “we don’t simply wear masks; masks, Bergman implies, are what we are and perhaps all we are, and they are capable, at peril of our lives, of being changed indiscriminately and without warning.”51

Alma finally forces actual words to pass between her patient’s lips in two climactic scenes, the first of which entails a brutal showdown wherein Elizabeth strikes Nurse Alma until she draws blood. When the nurse reaches for a pot of scalding water, Elizabeth finally articulates words through a scream: “No! Don’t do it!” Amidst the noise of the boiling pot and the rapid-paced out-of-focus camera work, the viewer is left questioning what exactly has transpired. The screamed words are blurted out so quickly that one cannot help but wonder—did Elizabeth actually speak? By ultimately using her voice, Elizabeth breaks the spell and sheds her powerful mute-vampire identity. In fact, by the end of the film, Nurse Alma eventually gains the upper hand to such an extent that she is able to literally feed words to her “puppet” patient. With a telling look of defeat, Elizabeth obediently complies and says aloud the word that Alma repeatedly mouths to her at her hospital bedside: “Ingenting”—“Nothing.”

Hour of the Wolf

Bergman’s Hour of the Wolf examines many of the same “cannibalistic” themes as Persona but from the perspective of a man and wife—Johan and Alma

50 Sarah kozloff, Overhearing Film Dialogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 1-6. 51 Brendan Gill, “Masks and Aspects: Review of Persona” (The New Yorker Magazine, 1967) in Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, ed. Lloyd Michaels (Cambridge, Uk: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 166.

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Figure 3a: Lars Johan Werle, Persona, page 1 of autograph score, cue “M11A–M11C”. Opening “Poem”



Figure 3b: Lars Johan Werle, Persona, page 2 of autograph score, cue “M12A–M12B”. Opening “Poem”

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Figure 3c: Lars Johan Werle, Persona, page 3 of autograph score, cue “M12B contin-ued”. Opening “Poem”



Borg. Their identities become so intertwined that Alma begins to see the world through her husband’s eyes—including his darkest psychological demons. By the end of the film, Johan is subsumed by the supernatural world and only Alma remains to tell the tale. Bergman admitted in interview that, like Persona, Hour of the Wolf too was conceived of with a “cannibal” motif in mind.

This cannibal motif, the hour-of-the-wolf motif, goes back a long way. The same applies to the other motifs in Hour of the Wolf: the redistribution of power, the identification problem, the silent versus the speaking role. Names are taken from ETA Hoffman: kreisler, the kapellmeister, Heerbrand the curator, Lindhorst the archivist.52

52 Bergman, Images: My Life in Film, 218.

The opening of Hour of the Wolf features the Borgs’ arrival on an isolated island. All is silent with the exception of the sound of the boat, the sea waves, and the highlighted squeak of the wheelbarrow as the couple carts their possessions up the hill towards their cottage. The visual imagery of this scene (the unloading of the ship and the fortress-like rock formation in the distance) subliminally echoes Merian C. Cooper’s 1933 film King Kong as it is eerily reminiscent of the arrival of the crew to Skull Island.53 Narrative connections are worth mentioning as well: both films entail human–monster love affairs

53 Though scholars have not discussed links between King Kong and Hour of the Wolf, contemporaneous critics acknowledged Bergman’s indebtedness to horror upon its release. In the British Monthly Film Bulletin, Hour of the Wolf was described as manifesting “flamboyant techniques of expressionism, surrealism and Gothic horror.”

Figure 4: Persona, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Bibi Andersson, 1966. The Canadian Press.

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(Veronica Vogler and Johan Vogler Borg; king kong and Ann Darrow) and both are set on islands first thought to be uninhabited and later discovered to be populated with “cannibals.” Furthermore, both films feature self-conscious references to filmmaking. In King Kong, American director Carl Denham is accompanied by his crew and in Hour of the Wolf, filmmaker Ingmar Bergman is heard off-screen talking to his crew in tandem with the following intertitle:

Johan Borg disappeared some years ago without a trace from his home on the island of Baltrum in the Frisian Islands. His wife Alma later left me Johan’s diary, which she had found among his papers. This diary and Alma’s account are the basis of this film.

In the original 1967 release of Hour of the Wolf, there is an extended prologue and postlude to the film with a cameo from Bergman himself, Max von Sydow, and Liv Ullmann.54 In the 1968 re-release with the revamped prologue, opening credits are flashed on a black background accompanied by the sounds of construction, people rummaging about, chatter, laughing, and Bergman’s off-screen (acousmêtre) shout: “Quiet all, rolling… Camera, Action.” On the topic of cutting the original framing scenes featuring the cameo, Bergman admitted that he had a change of heart, realizing he was “guilty of a self-deception” and that he had misguidedly made the Hour of the Wolf too personal.55

It is no wonder that Bergman originally planned a self-reflexive-style prologue as the film itself revels in a complex and layered web of metanarratives, positioning a story (Johan’s account of life events in his journal) within a story (Johan and Alma’s life) within a story (Alma’s account of events as told to the filmmaker). For the latter of these “stories,” we are introduced to Alma at the beginning of the film, who speaks candidly to the “filmmaker” (Bergman) through an into-the-camera monologue.

We learn here that she is pregnant with Johan’s baby. Pregnancy itself often constitutes the stuff of horror—not only in cinematic practice (e.g., Rosemary’s Baby, Alien, Splice, and Prometheus) but also in theory. According to Julia kristeva, pregnancy and childbirth represent par excellence the unknown “abject within” involving the expulsion of a human being, blood, the placenta, and feces.56 To counter Alma’s experience of

54 For the 1968 re-release, Bergman ended up cutting out the entire postlude and part of the prologue.55 Bergman, Images: My Life in Film, 215.56 On pregnancy kristeva writes, “Cells fuse, split, and proliferate; volumes grow, tissues stretch, and body fluids change rhythm, speeding up or slowing down. Within the body, growing as a graft, indomitable, there is an

the unknown “abject within,” Johan acquaints himself with a more tangible “abject without” that is both seen and heard. A visual artist with an overactive imagination, Johan has gained access to a world of ghosts and ghouls that inhabit a castle near their home. Early in the film, he shows Alma his drawings of the ghosts he has met:

Now look. I haven’t shown these to anyone. You see I made these sketches. This is the one who turns up most often. And he’s almost harmless. I think he’s homosexual. And then there’s the old lady—the one always threatening to take off her hat. Do you know what happens if she does? Her face comes off along with it, you see. And here: He’s the worst of the lot… I call him the birdman. I don’t know if it’s a real beak or only a mask. He’s so strangely quick and he’s related to Papageno of the Magic Flute. And the others. The meat-eaters, the insects, and especially the spider men. Here the schoolmaster, his pointer in his trousers. And then all the cast-iron cackling women.

Johan has trouble sleeping through the night because of a fear of the dark and, like a vampire, waits until dawn to go to bed. Alma keeps him company on one of his sleepless nights. As he stares at his timepiece, which ticks loudly, he asks Alma to contemplate the length of a full minute with him. To the accompaniment of the sound of the tick-tock of a clock, it is precisely a minute that Johan measures, suggesting to the viewer that, in this moment, the film is at least temporarily grounded in reality.

The next day is when Alma too starts to see the ghosts of Johan’s imagination. At the clothesline, an old woman dressed in white encourages Alma to seek out and read Johan’s journal. The apparition of the old woman is synchronized with the sound of wind, birds crowing, and ocean waves which become so loud that, at times, the old woman’s lips are moving while her voice is entirely masked or muted. This aural out-of-focus moment suggests a temporary communication disconnect between real and imaginary worlds. Alma follows her advice, gaining uncensored access to her husband’s private thoughts. While she reads the journal, Bergman revisits the loud tick-tock of the clock. As Alma becomes more entangled in his private world, she acquaints herself with a cast of ghosts who are enamored with her husband’s art. Her jealousy consumes her when she realizes that Johan has painted a portrait of the beautiful ghost Veronica Vogler, and that the pair have been engaging in secret love-trysts while Johan has been on his seaside painting excursions.

other.” Julia kristeva, The Powers of Horror (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 237.



The strange cast of ghostly characters in Hour of the Wolf provides Bergman with carte blanche to revel in a realm of acoustical beings. His ghosts are more interesting, however, than the invisible varieties that go bump in the night as they live in a rich world of music, voices, and sound effects. They talk all at once in multiple layers of counterpoint with a density akin to a polylingual medieval motet. They also speak in truths, breaking all social mores and rules of etiquette, constantly doling out their candid thoughts. Two scenes stand out in this respect. The first takes place on the castle grounds, where Johan and Alma take a pre-dinner stroll. They are unable to get a word in edgewise as the unruly ghosts simultaneously vocalize their every thought. When they have dinner in the ghost’s castle, Bergman provides a 360-degree view of the massive table where, as Alma and Johan

eat silently, the ghosts create an impenetrable wall of conversation. What we hear is a cacophony resulting from a confluence of one-way monologues. Together, the ghosts create a dense texture of conversational wallpaper. With everyone speaking at once, and no listeners in the room, the scene represents the breakdown of verbal communication.57 The table arrangement, incidentally, must have intrigued Bergman no end. He fixates on illustrating the table throughout his shooting script and even features it on the first page immediately following the title.

Following dinner, the ghosts, Alma, and Johan gather round to watch a strange marionette spectacle of Mozart’s Magic Flute. The puppet master, Archivist

57This is a scene-type, according to Chion, called the “meal scene,” resembling a theater play when “stage directions call for ‘crowd noise’ using ad-libbing.” See Chion, Audio Vision, 180.

Figure 5: Hour of the Wolf, Liv Ullmann, 1968. The Canadian Press.

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Lindhorst (a type of Papageno birdman character who sprouts wings near the end of the film), pulls the strings from above a little stage and an eerie close-up reveals that Tamino is not a puppet at all—he is a small human being of flesh and blood. Bergman features close-ups of everyone in the room (in the style of his Magic Flute film of 1975). The camera reveals that even the ghosts are momentarily mesmerized by the puppet spectacle and silenced by the music.58 Tamino, the marionette-man, complains that he is unable to perceive truth—an ironic reference to how Bergman himself cleverly blends the boundaries of performance, dream, and reality. Given Bergman’s penchant for acoustical beings, it is no wonder that, of all the scenes of the Magic Flute, he chooses to depict the “conversation” between Tamino

58 Per Broman, “Silence and Sound in Ingmar Bergman’s Films,” in Music, Sound and Filmmakers: Sonic Style in Cinema, ed. James Wierzbicki (New York: Routledge, 2012): 25.

and the Invisible Chorus. Here, Tamino’s search for Pamina echoes Alma’s search for her own husband at the end of the film. Like Pamina, Johan disappears into the darkness.59

Tamino: O eternal night, when will you disappear? When will the light find my eyes?

Invisible Chorus: Soon, soon, young one, or never.

Tamino: Soon, soon, soon you say, or never? You invisible ones, tell me, Lives then

Pamina still?

Invisible Chorus: Pamina, Pamina, yes she lives.60

59 Sarah kozloff, Invisible Storytellers: Voice-over Narration in American Fiction Film (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). The work of kozloff on narration is particularly pertinent here. Broman refers to this scene as an “incantation, a voice from the other side, brought forward through music” in “Music in the Films of Ingmar Bergman,” 23.60 After this scene, Tamino begins to play his flute and sing “Wie stark ist nich dein Zauberton.” When he hears the off-stage sound of Papageno’s panpipes in the distance he rushes toward the sound thinking that Pamina might be found.

Figure 6: Hour of the Wolf, The Ghosts, 1968. The Canadian Press.



The Music of Hour of the Wolf

Music from the score by Lars Johan Werle is reserved only for the second half of the film, and is introduced first as a musical interlude following the dinner party/Magic Flute performance at Von Merken’s castle. The music is launched in tandem with the intertitle: “Vargtimmen” [Hour of the Wolf]. Werle’s music for the remainder of the film is used almost exclusively in scenes where Johan is in contact with the world of the ghosts that inhabit the island. This is similar to how Bergman uses avant-garde music in Persona—for scenes where fantasy and reality blend.

The best example of a sound cue used for “startle effect” can be found in a scene wherein Johan wields power over Alma with a gun supplied by

Ghost Heerbrand (Ulf Johanson).61 Johan becomes increasingly agitated and suddenly barks at his wife to: “get up from the table now! … Now walk towards the door! … Now walk through it! … You go down the steps. It’s not dark anymore. You will find your way!” He then takes aim and shoots the gun at Alma three times. Each gunshot is filmed from a different point of view: 1) Johan with the gun directed at the viewer; 2) a close-up of Johan’s face with the gun; and 3) a close-up of the barrel of the gun. Rather than using a Foley artist’s gunshot sound effect, Bergman opts instead to use the music of Werle, who scores the cues (B, C, D in Figure 8) for brass, piano, and percussion. The accompanying graphic notation indicates a thickening

61 The violence between Alma and Johan is akin to the vampiristic showdown between Nurse Alma and Elizabeth in Persona.

Figure 7: Hour of the Wolf, original shooting script. This shows placement of the ghosts, Alma, and Johan around the dinner table and their interactive dialogue. The Ingmar Bergman Foundation, Stockholm, Document F045.

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density/texture in the piano and percussion parts which underscores the gradual close-ups on the barrel of the gun.

Werle’s score is heard in another scene in tandem with Johan’s two confessions to Alma. We learn that Johan has an obsessive compulsion to keep vigil every night until dawn as, according to Swedish folklore, the hours between 3 and 5 a.m. mark the “hour of

the wolf,” associated with the time most babies are born and most adults die. Johan recalls an episode of punishment from childhood when he asked his father for “as many strokes as possible.” He also recalls being locked in a cupboard with what he imagined was a little person who wanted to bite him.62

62 The story echoes Bergman’s own memoirs and a similar scene of punishment involving Alexander and his stepfather in Fanny and Alexander.

Figure 8: Hour of the Wolf, Lars Johan Werle, Three Orchestrated Gunshots



For the second confession, Johan reveals to Alma that his recent “snakebite” was not actually a snakebite. Suddenly, Bergman cuts to a muted flashback scene underscored with no less than six minutes of music by Werle. The image is overexposed, bathed in a light that is eerily reminiscent of the humiliation scene of the clown in Sawdust and Tinsel. As it unfolds, Johan fishes at the seaside. His painting easel is set up along the rocky shoreline and a boy—approximately 12 or 13 years of age—keeps a watchful distance as he rifles through Johan’s belongings, curiously smells Johan’s boots, and investigates his painting rag. The accompanying soundtrack is non-diegetic and aleatoric. Werle’s score indicates that musicians are to play a series of 3-4 tones in any order with crescendi and decrescendi. These random note combinations, in turn, form cluster chords. As indicated at the bottom of the score (see Figure 9), at rehearsal I and J the first groups of instruments (flutes, clarinets, tuba, viola) play until rehearsal k (minute 2.41) where a new group (including oboe, horn, trumpet, tuba) takes over, followed by rehearsal L (minute 4.28) where the third and final group of instruments (flute, trombone, violin) finishes the sequence.

As the boy and Johan make eye contact, a new orchestral timbre is introduced that sounds like a swarm of bees—perhaps a musical echo of Borg’s fear of being bitten. When the boy poses on the rocks seductively, Johan responds in homophobic discomfort by screaming mutely in his direction. When the boy gets too close to Johan, Werle heightens the musical tension by adding a tuba and upper woodwinds to the texture, an ostinato accompaniment, bending tones, and percussion.

After the boy bites Johan and jumps on his back, Johan slams him against the cliff. The boy’s six screams almost certainly mark an acousmatic moment. After all, these are not the screams of a prepubescent boy but rather of an animalistic entity—reminiscent of the electronically produced bird sounds of Hitchcock’s Psycho. The boy becomes quiet. But just when we think Johan is safe from harm, in typical monster fashion, the boy begins to stir—prompting Johan to use a rock to repeatedly bash the boy until he is lifeless.

Accompanying each violent attack (including the bites, kicks, and the bashing with the stone), are sounds of orchestral instruments, the striking of piano strings and tape manipulation (backwards tape passages). Like a typical mute, the boy holds absolute power over Johan up until the moment when he undergoes de-acousmatization and we hear his screams. Note that the scene is entirely bathed in the

sounds of Werle’s score, meaning that the screams are truly notable as they mark the only moment that a voice is heard. As the boy dies, his body bobs up and down with the waves and the last view is of his hair fanned out on the surface of the water.

Listening to Ghosts

The boy is not the only monstrous mute in Hour of the Wolf. Alma too is presented early in the film as a semi-mute when it is explained how much Johan enjoys the fact that his wife is a quiet person.63 Through the beginning of the film, Alma demonstrates naïvety and submissiveness while Johan guides most of the conversation. After the dinner party and after reading his diary, Alma becomes progressively more vocal and demands that he stop cavorting with the ghosts. Meanwhile, increasingly despondent, Johan stops answering his wife’s questions. Therefore, as with Persona, there is a gradual shift of power as Johan and Alma switch roles. And, most importantly here, it is in the voice itself that we find evidence of this change in power-dynamic.

Eventually, Johan is so amalgamated into the world of the ghosts that he becomes mute and disappears. We learn about Johan’s disappearance through the framing camera speech at the beginning and end of the film.64 Unlike the framing device of the disembodied voice-over, which implies superior knowledge (and is usually in the male voice), Alma’s testimonials are “embodied” voice-overs creating what Silverman might characterize as an “impression of an access to the immediate, the innermost, and the uncensored.”65 Furthermore, with a voice-over such as this, Silverman explains, “the narrational situation is naturalized; it is as if the voice-over narrator were intimately telling his true feelings to the viewer, who, by the necessity of the confessional structure, is holding a listener’s position."66

However, just because of the confessional nature, and Alma’s demure and naïve mannerisms, are we to deduce that her account of Johan’s final days alive

63 Alma’s quietness is unfathomable enough that Johan implores her during their sleepless night together: “say something. Talk to me Alma.” 64 The camera speech is defined by Chion as an instance when “a character speaks directly into the camera” with the “deliberate omission of the reverse shot, [placing] the spectator in the position of his or her invisible interlocutor.” Michel Chion, Film: A Sound Art, trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 358-359. 65 kaja Silverman, The Acoustic Mirror: The Female Voice in Psychoanalysis and Cinema (Indiana University Press, 1988), 52. Silverman writes, “in spite of the transcended body, the voice-over bears a definite sign of gender, or rather, the masculine gender, since the female voice-over is extremely rare in the Hollywood film” (48-49).66 Silverman, Acoustic Mirror, 48-49.

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Figure 9: Hour of the Wolf, Lars Johan Werle, Johan Borg and the Murder of the Boy

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is accurate? Part of the story is admittedly contained in the private journal that Alma has presented to the filmmaker. But where does Johan’s account stop and Alma’s begin? Through the act of reading the private journal of her late husband, has she become the host body for his voice and thoughts? Has his story become her own? Is this why she too can see the ghosts? Are her framing “camera speeches” as confessional, intimate, and sincere as we are led to believe or does Alma have something to hide? At the end of the film she says something peculiar to suggest that Johan and Alma might have met a fate similar to that of Elizabeth Vogler and Nurse Alma in Persona, wherein both individuals have fused into one. Alma Borg herself cannot make sense of what has transpired, as manifest in her final muddled soliloquy which trails off mid-sentence—thus echoing her husband’s disappearance into thin air with her own verbal “vanishing act”:

Isn’t it true that when a woman has lived a long time with a man, isn’t it true that she finally becomes like that man? Since she loves him and tries to think like him and see like him. They say that can change a person. Was that why I began to see those ghosts? Or were they there anyways. I mean if I loved him less and not bothered about everything there around him could I have protected him better then? Or was it that I didn’t love him enough that made me so jealous? Was that why those “cannibals” as he called them, was that why we came to such grief? I thought I was so close to him. Sometimes he also said he was close to me. One time he said it with certainty. If only I could have followed him all the time. There’s so much to keep pondering. So many questions, sometimes I don’t know which way is which, and I get completely … (she looks off to the side then back to the camera as scene fades).

Remarkably, in one of the final scenes in which we see Johan, he is dressed in a silk robe with makeup and enters a morgue in which a body double for Veronica Vogler (Mona Seilitz) lies nude on a table. His procession to the morgue is accompanied by music by Werle, an indication that nothing that is about to unfold is based in reality. It soon becomes clear that Vogler is not dead after all when she (the true Veronica Vogler (Ingrid Thulin) rises and begins to seduce Johan.67 Johan becomes increasingly agitated and, as the camera focuses in close-up on his lips he moves his mouth, but we hear nothing at all. It is in this interesting twist, that Johan becomes a mute

67 This scene has remarkable links to events from Bergman’s own life. In The Magic Lantern he writes about being shut in a mortuary alone with corpses at the Sophiahemmet at age 10. Bergman, The Magic Lantern, 203-204.

before our eyes. Perhaps we can assume that we are witnessing the precise moment he decides to join the group of ghouls and specters of the castle? As he passes into the shadows, Alma absorbs him, becoming an acousmêtre-hybrid. She and her husband become forever fused into one and it is the (as yet) mute child inside her—the “abject within”—that is a metaphor for the merge.

Coda

Bergman is known for populating his films with invisible musicians, singing marionettes, whispering monsters, groaning cadavers, musical automatons, and acousmatic specters. This article has proposed horror film theories to help shed light on how we might better understand the aural realms in which these characters are situated. In Persona and Hour of the Wolf, aspects of horror are palpable not only in Bergman's musical scores and sound effects, but also in the vocal qualities of his characters. Bergman's actors, artists, dancers, and musicians are familiar with duplicity and metaphorical “masks” that they wear out of selfishness, narcissism, and as “a strategy used to profit from others.”68 They are prime candidates for mute or acousmêtre roles as they are accustomed to displacing their bodies from their voices and hiding behind aural and visual facades.69 In order to assert power, Bergman’s characters willingly leap into acousmêtre or mute roles, straddling the liminal space between on-screen and off-screen, conscious and unconscious, visual and aural. Chion suggests that mutes and acousmêtres are typically drained of their powers when they undergo a symbolic unveiling. However, Bergman’s characters in Persona and Hour of the Wolf actually become more powerful by mutating into monstrous mute-acousmêtre hybrids or by merging with other characters.

To this end, it is important to note that Bergman often associated cannibals with artists and he identified “cannibalism” as the artist’s “primary motivation.” In his famous “snakeskin speech” written for the Erasmus Award ceremonies in Amsterdam in the spring of 1965 (which he was unable to attend), Bergman described the artist as an insect capturing food from his surroundings and parasitically feeding

68 Livingston writes about Bergman’s recurring narrative themes pertaining to masks, identity, art, language, and human communication. Paisley Livingston, Ingmar Bergman and the Rituals of Art (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1982), 20. 69 Livingston, Rituals of Art, passim. Laura Hubner, The Films of Ingmar Bergman: Illusions of Light and Darkness (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), passim.



on his audience. In turn, he viewed the audience as mutually guilty and vulnerable.70 In this way Bergman’s artists hunt for hosts—victims whose bodies and minds they can inhabit. They typically seek out fans or lovers who open themselves up freely and naïvely to acousmatic invasion-of-the-body-snatcher-like takeovers. Bergman’s mutes and acoustical beings share many similarities with the monsters, ghosts and ghouls of the horror genre. They inhabit in-between spaces, straddling diegetic and non-diegetic with one foot on-screen and one foot off-screen, positioned between the ghostly and the material. Bergman’s monsters may not have the abject qualities associated with the werewolves, vampires, zombies, and witches of true horror films, but through their clean demeanors and plain-faces they are arguably more frightening. They seem to be so noble with their artistic temperaments—they act, they dance, they sing, they write, they paint, they compose—and in the shadows, they look to consume their unsuspecting victims while playing a maniacal form of dress-up.

70 This resonates with a dinnertime conversation between Bergman, Ulla Ryghe, and Vilgot Sjöman about cannibalism in artists. Bergman and Ulla purportedly admitted to having their own inner cannibals. Sjöman reports on their conversation: “the cannibal in them is always ready and waiting to note down, to observe… the cannibal in the artist is a lusty devil. Always knows a thousand expedients.” Sjöman, L136, 159-160.

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