Hour of the Wolf (1968)

Alma (Liv Ullmann) watches helplessly as her artist husband (Max von Sydow) slowly descends into madness.

*      *      *

The "hour of the wolf" (roughly 3am to 4am) is the hour between night and day. It is a limbo which belongs to neither the morning nor the evening. It is also the time when the line between sanity and insanity starts to blur.

While contemporary audiences might disagree with this movie being labeled as a "horror film", I'd be hard-pressed to think of things more horrific than what the characters in this film endure. This is horror in the German Expressionist sense of the word. Not only is it a film about the horror of losing your own sanity, but also the horror of watching someone you love descend into madness. Both in terms of subject-matter and imagery, this film fits perfectly among horror classics like The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and Nosferatu.