Hour of the Wolf is a story film, with a beginning, a middle, and an end (though, as Godard said in another context, "not necessarily in that order"); it displays specific literary references, as opposed to Persona's general filmic ones; and it confronts the stylistic innovations of certain nouvelle vague directors in a way more consistent with what we recognize as good old Bergman. (p. 36)

[Rare] in a Bergman film is the reliance on "outside sources." In Hour of the Wolf, the model is Mozart's The Magic Flute and, though a specific reference to it during the party seems at first superfluous, we later realize that it is doubly relevant: because the film is a retelling of the Magic Flute story, and because, whereas the dramas from Through a Glass Darkly to Persona were "chamber" films … Hour of the Wolf is frankly operatic. The settings are expansive...