Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's The Magic Flute, with the opera's character Papageno transformed into an evil Birdman. Bergman's interpretation of The Magic Flute is echoed through his character Lindhorst. Bergman credited German author E. T. A. Hoffmann as an additional major influence. Elements of the story also originated from Bergman's manuscript The Cannibals or The Maneaters, which he finished in 1964 and planned to shoot on Hallands Väderö. Bergman abandoned The Cannibals due to pneumonia, after which he wrote and directed Persona instead. Following Persona, he decided to make a reworked version of The Cannibals, under the new title Hour of the Wolf. The term was defined by Bergman in an explanatory note in his screenplay: According to Professor Birgitta Steene, the title is drawn from Swedish folklore, where the "hour of the wolf" refers to the period from 3 a.m. to 5 a.m., supposedly when the most deaths and births occur. Folklorist Bengt af Klintberg recalled that in 1964, Bergman tasked theatre manager Niklas Brunius to research legend about the hour, and Brunius asked Klintberg about it; Klintberg found the term had no roots in Swedish folklore, though there was a "ghost hour" between midnight and 1 a.m. Bergman claimed he first came across the term "hour of the wolf" in a Latin source, though he did not identify the source and may have coined the term himself. He later said that at the time of the story's conception, he was experiencing his own "hour of the wolf", and was "freed" from it upon the production's completion. During the latter stages of post-production of Persona in 1966, Bergman held a meeting to begin planning Hour of the Wolf. He later said the film builds on Persona: Casting Bergman had planned to cast Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann in The Cannibals, having met Ullmann through his regular collaborator Andersson on a Stockholm street. Ullmann placed the meeting in 1964, and said that Bergman recognized her and asked her on the spot if she would like to work with him. Ullmann later became Bergman's lover and became pregnant with their daughter Linn. After a separation Bergman told her he had written a pregnant character, Alma, for her. He mailed her the screenplay for Hour of the Wolf and she returned to Fårö from Norway for the part. Erland Josephson was busy as a managing director of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, but desired