#0000A/#701: BERGMAN, Ingmar: Persona (1966)
BERGMAN, Ingmar (Sweden)
Persona [1966]
Spine #0000A/Spine #701
Blu-ray
2014 synopsis
By the midsixties, Ingmar Bergman had already conjured many of the cinema's most unforgettable images. But with the radical Persona, this supreme artist attained new levels of visual poetry. In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann plays a stage actor who has inexplicably gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson is the garrulous young nurse caring for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference that would prove to be one of cinema's most influential creations. Acted with astonishing nuance and shot in stark contrast and soft light by the great Sven Nykvist, Persona is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth.
2018 synopsis
By the midsixties, Bergman had already conjured many of the cinema's most unforgettable images. But with the radical Persona, he attained new levels of visual poetry. In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann plays a stage actor who has inexplicably gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson is the garrulous young nurse caring for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference. Performed with astonishing nuance and shot in stark contrast and soft light by Sven Nykvist, the influential Persona is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth.
83 minutes
Black & White
Black & White
Monaural
in Swedish
1:37:1 aspect ratio
Criterion Release 2014/2018
Director/Writer
Ingmar Bergman is one of cinema's greatest directors. He made more than 60 films — many are considered masterpieces, from all different phases of his long career.
Bergman was 48 when he wrote and directed Persona.
Other Bergman films in the Collection:
The Film
The music by Lars Johan Werle is prominent from the start. He scores the intro (described below) with lots of percussion. At other times, he may use a single flute, as Bergman observes a face. The score is magnificent.
Here are some things to keep an eye out for:
Here are some things to keep an eye out for:
- 12:16 A beautiful full-screen ECU of Elisabet (Liv Ullmann)
- The music on the radio is the slow movement of Bach's violin concerto, BWV 1042
- 15:54 The image of the monk's immolation is disturbing to Elisabet, but it also greatly affected Ullmann
- 21:21 I don't know what the Swedish sounds like, but this line from Alma (Bibi Andersson) is wonderful:
- ". . . life oozes in from all sides."
- 22:13 This long tracking shot breaks up the earlier, more static scenes. It is cinematically exciting
- 23:53 Five "pillow shots" of the rocks and water
- 28:09 The infamous erotic story. Apparently, Andersson worked on the dialogue herself; in any case, it is possibly the most erotic story ever told on film.
- Check out the lighting in this scene, as it cuts back and forth between the storyteller and the listener!
- 36:46 A ghostly Elisabet appears to Alma. Again, the lighting
- 38:36 Both women crack the Fourth Wall
- 47:05 As Alma starts to crack up, so does the actual celluloid film, eventually burning out the frame. Alma looks at the camera.
- 51:54 Elisabet speaks her first words: "No, don't!"
- 55:38 Another magnificent tracking shot, but time Elisabet is angry, and Alma is chasing after her. At times, the camera gets further away from the couple, rather than closer
- 58:38 The Warsaw Ghetto photo. At first, we see the entire the photo, then a medium close-up of the scared little boy; an even closer shot and then 11 different shots with varying degrees of closeness and focus. Great filmmaking using a single photograph
- 1:06:24 Four hands converge as Alma tries to see what is under Elisabet's palm. Her son's photo ...
- "We have to talk about this ..."
- 1:08:09 We hear the same story twice; the first time, the camera studies Elisabet's face and reaction -- then Bergman repeats the entire scene, studying Alma, as she speaks
- 1:14:54 The melding of the faces. The public relations materials seem to make a point of how both actresses were so surprised at the image, and thought it to be the face of the other. This seems unlikely, because the image is so obviously distorted
- 1:16:39 Alma freaks out. She babbles:
- "Say nothing. Cut a candle. A kind of otherness. Not now. No, no. Warning and outside time. Unforeseen. When it was supposed to happen, it didn’t, so ... failure. You stand there, but I should do it. Not inward, no. Say collect and advise others. A desperate maybe. I take, yes ... but what is closest? What’s it called? No, no, no. Us, we, me, I. Many words and then disgust, unbearable pain, the nausea."
- 1:19:27 Ullmann speaks her only other dialogue:
- "Ingenting." ("Nothing")
- The film ends as it began: inside a movie projector.
Film Rating (0-60):
57
The ExtrasThe Booklet
- "The Persistence of Persona," by Thomas Elsaesser
- Brilliant, lengthy essay on technique, meaning and cultural significance. Elsaesser sums up Persona in a paragraph:
- "Bergman, self-confessed charlatan and conjurer, lover of the magic lantern and lifelong devotee to masters of Swedish silent cinema, is remarkably honest with his characters, but also with his audience. If the prologue of Persona recapitulates, as it were, the pleasures and terrors of cinema experienced by Bergman as a child, the metacinema reference to camera and celluloid toward the end freely admits to the artifice, but also to the self-deception and self-indulgence, that moviemaking entails. In this respect, he was perhaps ahead of both his admirers and his critics, as if the controversies and challenges that Persona continues to provoke were preprogrammed into its very conception: not only the iconic images that are worth a thousand words but also the silences that launched a thousand commentaries."
- Bergman on Persona
- Great 1970 interview. Bergman is free with his inner feelings and excellent descriptions of his work processes, including his lifelong relationship with the famous cinematographer, Sven Nykvist.
- Bibi Andersson on Bergman
- From 1977; excellent viewpoint from the actress with whom Bergman had a long relationship before he fell in love with Ullmann on this shoot!
Commentary
None, unfortunately.
Video essay
about the nearly seven-minute prologue, by Bergman scholar Peter Cowie. This groundbreaking cinematic opening sequence begins with the hot bulbs inside a movie projector, an erect penis after the "7" in the celluloid countdown, an old cartoon showing a woman splashing water on her breasts, some hands, some silly silent cinema, a large spider, a slaughtered sheep, some stigmata, some woods, some dead people and finally (at 4:08), a young boy in a bed, covered by a white sheet, reading a book. He eventually looks right into the camera (as Elisabet will explicitly do with her camera in a later scene) before trying to touch an unfocused image of a woman. This is one of Persona's iconic images, and it reappears at the end of the film.
Video interview 1
with Ullmann and filmmaker Paul Schrader.
Video interview 2
excerpted archival interviews with Bergman, Ullmann, and Andersson.
On-set footage
with audio commentary by Bergman historian Birgitta Steene.
Liv & Ingmar, a 2012 feature documentary directed by Dheeraj Akolkar.
Theatrical trailer
A narrator intones praise for the film as images of different scenes are shown. Good intro, gives nothing away.
Extras Rating (0-40):
None, unfortunately.
Video essay
about the nearly seven-minute prologue, by Bergman scholar Peter Cowie. This groundbreaking cinematic opening sequence begins with the hot bulbs inside a movie projector, an erect penis after the "7" in the celluloid countdown, an old cartoon showing a woman splashing water on her breasts, some hands, some silly silent cinema, a large spider, a slaughtered sheep, some stigmata, some woods, some dead people and finally (at 4:08), a young boy in a bed, covered by a white sheet, reading a book. He eventually looks right into the camera (as Elisabet will explicitly do with her camera in a later scene) before trying to touch an unfocused image of a woman. This is one of Persona's iconic images, and it reappears at the end of the film.
Video interview 1
with Ullmann and filmmaker Paul Schrader.
Video interview 2
excerpted archival interviews with Bergman, Ullmann, and Andersson.
On-set footage
with audio commentary by Bergman historian Birgitta Steene.
Liv & Ingmar, a 2012 feature documentary directed by Dheeraj Akolkar.
Theatrical trailer
A narrator intones praise for the film as images of different scenes are shown. Good intro, gives nothing away.
Extras Rating (0-40):
37
57 + 37 =94
Comments
Post a Comment