Vargtimmen, English title,
Hour of the Wolf, is a 1968 film by the Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman.
He explains the title in the following words:
The hour between night and dawn. The hour when most people die, when sleep is deepest, when nightmares are most real. It is the hour when the sleepless are haunted by their deepest fears, when ghost and demons are most powerful, the hour of the wolf is also the hour when most children are born.
Or in his original Swedish:
Vargtimmen är timmen mellan natt och gryning, det är timmen då de flesta människor dör, då sömnen är djupast, då mardrömmarna är verkligast. Den är timmen då den sömnlöse jagas av sin svåraste ångest, då spöken och demoner är mäktigast. Vargtimmen är också den timme då de flesta barn föds.
Most of those statements are not scientifically true, but they make artistic sense for the film. Nevertheless, nothing comes from nothing, and there are certain things that may have inspired him.
The Hour of the Day
There is a very old French expression, "entre chien et loup", "between dog and wolf." The most common explanation is that it is the early morning hours when both wolves and dogs can be out, but the eye is unable to tell which is which in the limited light. However, it was originally used not only for the morning, but for the evening as well.
Infra horam vespertinam, inter canem et lupum.
This was written by Marculfe, abbot of Saint-Denis around the 7th century. He wrote in Latin, not in French, which did not exist as a written language at the time. He uses the expression to write about the evening.
Postea vix summos Aurora rubescere montes
Fecerat, & valles nondum primordia lucis
Attigerant : interque canem distare lupumque
Nullus adhuc poterat aliquid discernere visu.
Guillaume le Breton (1165-1225), poet, cleric and historian wrote the lines above. This is also Latin, but le Breton talks about the difficulty of telling dog from wolf in the morning, not the evening.
Comme le simple oiseau qui cherche sa pasture
Lors qui il ne est, ne iour ne nuit
Quand le veillant Berger
Si i’ est ou Chien, ou Loup,
Ne peut au vrai juger.
Jean-Antoine de Baïf (1532-1589), poet. Here is finally an example in French, even if it is not the kind of French we see today. Baïf also talks about the difficulty of distinguishing dogs from wolves. As he mentions this in the context of a bird looking for pasture, one has to assume that he talks about the early morning hour.
So far, the quotes have only talked about the time of day, not about the anxieties Bergman talks about.
However, considering the limited light, some worry has been expressed by people like the French aristocrat Madame de Sévigné (1626–1696). The expression occurs in several of her letters to her daughter, la comtesse de Grignan. In most cases she talks about the evening, not the morning.
Je n’ose me livrer à l’entre chien et loup, de peur d’éclater en cris et en pleurs; l’obscurité me seroit mauvaise dans l’état où je suis.
Here de Sévigné fears that the darkness of "dog and wolf" will cause her to burst out crying. However, it is mainly a time of day:
On soupe pendant le chien et le loup.
In the short sentence above de Sévigné simply tells her daughter that she has dinner during the "dog and wolf." It is as if she tried to find any excuse to use an expression she clearly is fond of, and I don't blame her.
The simple fact that wolves are active during the night has of course been mentioned since antiquity.
Ac veluti pleno lupus insidiatus ovili
cum fremit ad caulas, ventos perpessus et imbris,nocte super media;
Virgil, Vergilius (70-19 BCE). In the lines from his Aeneid above, he talks about a wolf prowling near the sheep all through the night.
ἄλλος δ᾽ αὖ μέγεθος μὲν ὑπέρτερος, ἅψεα δ᾽ αὖτε
μηκεδανός, πάντεσσι θοώτερος ὦκα λύκοισι:
τὸν μέροπες κίρκον τε καὶ ἅρπαγα κικλήσκουσι. πολλῷ σὺν ῥοίζῳ δὲ μάλ᾽ ὄρθριος εἶσιν ἐπ᾽ ἄγρην
πρώτῃ ὑπ᾽ ἀμφιλύκῃ.
Oppian of Cilicia, a 2nd century author, wrote instructive texts in Greek hexameter. In the quote above from his hunting book Κυνηγετικά (Cynegetica), he writes about a wolf who seeks its prey in the first morning light.
An even more precise time is given by the Chinese, but with a different animal. The Chinese have a system to divide the hours of the day with two hours for each of the animals of the zodiac. The hours 3:00-5:00 a.m. which arguably are closest to Bergman's hour of the wolf, are allocated to 寅虎, yín hǔ, the tiger. Like the wolf, the tiger has a reputation of being particularly dangerous during these hours.
Anxieties
There are some possible scientific reasons for Bergman's wolf hour anxieties.
The hormone melatonin (not to be confused with the melanin pigments in skin and hair) makes sleep easier. The levels of melatonin are typically at their highest in the early morning hours. Blood pressure becomes low in the early morning. Our body temperature is low. The metabolism and heartbeats are slow.
Someone who has problems with their melatonin level can get the body rhythm out of order and that may cause sleep problems and anxiety.
The theme of morning anxieties has been written about in fiction several times the past.
On atteignait l'heure entre loup et chien où les gens sensibles se confient, où les criminels avouent, où les plus silencieux eux-mêmes luttent contre le sommeil à coup d'histoires ou de souvenirs.
Marguerite Yourcenar (1903-1987), French author. In the quote above from Le Coup de grâce (1939), Yourcenar uses the French expression entre "loup et chien" to talk about the hour when sensitive people confide, criminals confess, when the most silent people fight against their sleep.
In a real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day. At that hour the tendency is to refuse to face things as long as possible by retiring into an infantile dream - but one is continually startled out of this by various contacts with the world.
Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940). The Crack-Up part 2, “Pasting It Together.” Fitzgerald does not need to mention wolves, but this is likely one of the most famous quotes about morning anxiety.
Bergman's Inspiration
It is impossible to tell which of the above authors Bergman had read. He may very well have got inspiration from other sources. It is not known how much he was aware of the physiological aspects of the human body in the morning.
However, the expression "hour of the wolf" to describe morning anxiety hardly existed before the 1968 film, and if Bergman did not coin the phrase, he at least popularised it.
