hour of the wolf (M39)

Ingmar Bergman. An unstable artist, max von sydow, and his fearful simple lover live alone on an island. at times he is loving, but at other times he is very harsh. during the summer there is no night and this means he cannot sleep, which does not help his sanity. she becames infected by his insanity and informed by a spirit she finds his diary and reads it. he sometimes tortures her with his tortured sketches. she is also troubled by the reports of his previous love. there are other people on the island and if his sanity is tenuous when he is alone, it is positively fragile when he is in society. the island society, "cannibals" are very harsh, hedonistic, over the hill, getting their kicks from the artist and his mousy tortured wife. in the winter it is dark all the time and max explains the "hour of the wolf" as the time of night when people have nightmares when they sleep or are filled with fear if they stay awake. he tells her of one occasion when he is punished by his father, locked into a closet and told that a tiny animal will eat his feet. this causes him to panic. he then tells the story of meeting a ten year old (or so) boy on the island. he and the boy struggle and he kills the boy with a rock and drowns him. (does the boy represent the boy in himself that he has struggled with and killed?). the cannibals on the island give him a gun and he shoots liv and then goes to the castle to find his ex mistress there, but the cannibals are watching and laughing at him when they start to make love. (he finds her stretched out naked on a slab as if dead. when he touches her "dead" body lovingly she awakens and laughs, a laughter that he does not mind, but when the audience of cannibals laughs in the same tone, he very much minds and becomes filled with hate.
the artist flees the cabin where he lives with liv and is never heard from again. liv wonders whether she loved him too much and thus became infected with his insanity and thus was unable to help him like he needed. or whether she didn't love him enough and thus became susceptible to jealousy and couldn't help him as he needed.