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DVD Persona
Ingmar Bergman's 1966 film, photographed by Sven Nykvist, begins when famous actress Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann) freezes on stage in the middle of a performance. Struck dumb by an unknown cause, she winds up in the care of young inexperienced nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson), and together they retreat to the seaside for the summer, where they enter into an uncommon intimacy and clash of wills. Bergman's study of the fragility of the human being and the treachery of life is incredibly moving in its perception and unrivaled imagery. And as always with Bergman and his reappearing ensemble of actors, the performances are flawless. Especially notable is the scene in which Alma recounts for the silent Elisabeth a morally and emotionally ambivalent erotic encounter she had experienced on a beach with a friend and two teenage boys. It is one of the most strangely erotic scenes ever filmed, and not a stitch of clothing is removed. Also of interest, and one of the most intriguing scenes in the film, perhaps among the most intriguing in all of cinema, is when Elisabeth paces barefooted back and forth over a patio on which we know there to be broken glass. It is an achievement in simple suspense from which many an aspiring director of thrillers could learn a bit. For those who've had their fill of predictable plots, irrelevant matter, and apish acting and are looking for something a little more sensual, poetic, and relevant to what life is about beyond the daily grind, this may be a good place to start. --James McGrath
The word "persona" stands for the roles people assume on stage or in the world. It relates back to the masks that actors wore in ancient Greek drama. What happens in art or life when we refuse to wear our masks? What if we can't keep them on? How then are we to live? Persona is perhaps the furthest flight ever made by a filmmaker in search of answers to these questions.
Bergman shot Persona in the mid sixties, a time when all the big constructs - personal identity, the nature of art, the role of the individual in society - were up for grabs. The opening of the movie seems to mirror the intellectual jumble of the times: shots of film stock, a camera, an arc lamp; several disturbing images dredged up from the swamp of the adult unconscious; finally, an adolescent boy in a hospital-like room. The boy gets out of bed and walks toward the blurry, blown-up photograph of a woman's face.
After this disconcerting beginning, Bergman drops us into the actual start of the story. Elisabeth (Liv Ullman) is a famous actress who suddenly refuses to speak. She's sent to a psychiatric institution where she's attended by Alma, a young, seemingly naïve nurse (Bibi Andersson in one of the bravura performances in world cinema). Elisabeth turns on the television in her hospital room and sees one of the sixties' most indelible images: a Vietnamese monk burning himself alive on a sidewalk as a war protest. Perhaps Elisabeth stays silent because she refuses to participate in such a horrific world.
Elisabeth's psychiatrist arranges for a rest cure in a summer cottage on a small island off the Swedish coast, and sends Alma along to care for her. Once on the island, Alma's nurse mask starts to slip. She drinks too much one night and tells Elisabeth about an odd sexual encounter she had several years back with another woman and two boys. We watch the silent Elisabeth drink in Alma's words like a vampire draining the life force from a victim. Elisabeth's voyeurism feels almost repulsive, but then we realize it's no different from our own.
Alma tells Elisabeth that the sexual experience she described led to an abortion, after which she can no longer bear children. Elisabeth then casually reveals Alma's sexual secrets in a letter that Alma peeks at on the way to the post office. This betrayal knocks Alma off center. The kind, deferential nurse deliberately leaves a piece of broken glass where Elisabeth will step on it. Alma doesn't know herself any more, which Bergman dramatizes by cutting to a shot of the film stock snapping in two.
Social conventions are abandoned. Alma gives over to primal emotions - anger, violence, lust, cruelty - to try and break through Elisabeth's wall of silence. Alma attacks Elisabeth for being a monstrous egotist, and accuses her of hating her son and wishing he was dead. Andersson does all the talking in this scene, but the camera is focused exclusively on Ullman's face. Then Andersson repeats the same monologue, word for word, only this time the camera stays fixed on her own face. Now we're not sure if Alma is talking about Elisabeth's son or describing the guilt she felt at aborting her own child. Alma denies that she's like Elisabeth; at the same time, on the screen their two faces merge into one.
From here, fantasy and reality blur even further. In one gruesome sequence, Elisabeth literally sucks the blood from Alma's arm. Alma briefly surrenders. A look of sexual pleasure flits across her face, but then she recoils and slaps Elisabeth viciously across the cheek. In another dreamlike scene, Alma, back in uniform at the hospital, wakes up Elisabeth and holds her. "It's all nothing," Alma says. Which is what all of Bergman's authorial intrusions into Alma and Elisabeth's story seem to be telling us: creative illusions are just that, no thing. Yet they signify everything, and great artists will surrender their social and psychological security in service to them.
The two women pack up and leave the cottage. The movie ends with a series of images that relate back to the opening. There's Elisabeth back on stage - is she cured, or has she succumbed to a worse illness than silence and withdrawal? We see a closeup of a mask sculpture that we saw before outside the cottage, then a cut to the film crew, including the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist behind his camera. Alma flags down a bus, presumably headed back to her "normal" life as a hospital nurse. We see the little boy from the opening sequence again, looking at images of Ullman's and Andersson's faces. The film unspools, and we're staring at a screen gone to black.
For movie that deals with such abstract ideas, Persona is surprising sensual. The camera caresses the faces of Ullman and Andersson; they caress each other; Sven Nykvist sculpts the light into pleasing, mysterious textures. Using only a black and white palette, Bergman turns morning into twilight, sun to shadow, beautiful faces into harpy masks. The rhythms of physical reality shift and morph like the psychological foundations of Alma's identity.
In a sense, Bergman has recast the Icarus myth. Elisabeth soars above accepted social constraints, but may not be able to return to normal life. Too much self-knowledge that she can't emotionally handle melts Alma down, as surely as solar heat melts wax wings. In this, as in his other movies, Bergman, despite his own bouts of incapacitating doubt and despair, simply refuses to stop flying right toward the sun.
probably the most important movie of the last 50 years
Whoa, man. Take a deep breath. Here we have it: the cinematic equivalent of "Hamlet" -- meaning, the piece of work that re-writes all the rules on its own terms, and so creates a newer, bigger idea of the "Self" in art (and thus, in the world).
Nothing you can say about this thing can fully encompass what it IS. There's a whole universe in there. Do I know what this movie "really" means? Of course not! (or, only a little bit.)
Some movies are like a deep, clear well that people can drink from, and get refreshed by, again and again over time. But "Persona" is like the enormous underground aquifer that feeds all of those wells. Almost every really serious movie that's been made since 1966 has had to come to terms with it: either they are kinda-sorta attempted re-makes of "Persona" (everything from 'Two-Lane Blacktop' to 'Apocalypse Now'), or else they are struggling to avoid its immense gravitational pull -- the way that American novelists from the '70s until now had to either imitate "Gravity's Rainbow," or else pretend that it didn't exist. You can never really get to the bottom of this movie: it shows you something new and startling every time you watch it.
What's really astonishing is that it all unfolds on such a "small" scale: the whole thing is really just two women in a hospital and then a summer house, with no big sets, no effects, and almost no "story" to speak of. Kind of like splitting the atom: you had no idea so much energy was hidden inside that tiny speck.
One of the five or so films* that I would use to try and explain to space-aliens what "movies" are, and why they're so cool, and so important. And don't get me started on that opening sequence....
(* -- for those who care, the others are "Casablanca," "Young Frankenstein," Renoir's "Grand Illusion," Romero's "Night of the Living Dead," "Apocalypse Now," and a choice handful of Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck shorts.)
Ghost Story...
Persona is probably my favorite Ingmar Bergman film. Watching it again, I now realize that it is a ghost story. Were ever characters more haunted than Bergman's? Everything about the film is eerie, especially the music. Everything has the feel of a horror film, even though nothing "scary" actually happens. The horror is of Being and Nothingness. Persona does what so much of horror literature attempts - undermine our conceptions of what is real. Bergman is not content to do only that - he undermines the conventions of moviemaking as well: half-way through the movie, the film breaks and needs to be re-started.
It is almost impossible to summarize the "plot." Liv Ullman's character decides to stop talking. She is sent to a summer home in care of a nurse - Bibi Anderson. Gradually, the two personalities begin to merge until we realize that there may have only been one person in the house to begin with.
Persona is an art film if ever there was one. It stands next to 2001: A Space Odyssey as one of the great experimental pictures of the 1960's. It contains one of the most erotic scenes in cinema, even though there is no nudity. It foreshadows a new era of filmmaking.
The DVD transfer is pristine, however it is NOT letterboxed. For some reason the subtitles remain white, instead of the more user-friendly yellow. There is also an invaluable featurette on the making of the film with interviews of all the principals, including Bergman. A must for any serious DVD collection.
People who aren't "turned off" & disgusted by the current state of the world (enviromentally, politically, culturally, sociologically, etc.) will immediately understand this film and appreciate its beauty! Upon the first time seeing it, I felt it was unfocused and confused. The second time, when it occured to me that these people were living in front of the backdrop of something emotionally emasculating (random slaughtering, War, whatever you want to supplement), I realized what a masterpiece this film is. That uneasy feeling that life is unraveling all around you, that human beings are destroying each other, even though you don't directly see it...Bergman captures that feeling beautifully.
At three brief hours, La Dolce Vita, a piece of cynical, engrossing social commentary, stands as Federico Fellini's timeless masterpiece. A rich, detailed panorama of Rome's modern decadence and sophisticated immorality, the film is episodic in structure but held tightly in focus by the wandering protagonist through whom we witness the sordid action. Marcello Rubini (extraordinarily played by Marcello Mastroianni) is a tabloid reporter trapped in a shallow high-society existence. A man of paradoxical emotional juxtapositions (cool but tortured, sexy but impotent), he dreams about writing something important but remains seduced by the money and prestige that accompany his shallow position. He romanticizes finding true love but acts unfazed upon finding that his girlfriend has taken... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Marcello Mastroianni - Anita Ekberg Director(s): Federico Fellini DVD Release Date: Released the 21 September 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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This 1966 masterpiece by Michelangelo Antonioni (The Passenger) is set in the heady atmosphere of Swinging London, and stars David Hemmings as an unsmiling fashion photographer hooked on ephemeral meaning attached to anything: art, sex, work, relationships, drugs, events. When a real mystery falls into his lap, he probes the evidence for some reliable truth, but finds it hard to reckon with. Vanessa Redgrave plays an enigmatic woman whose desperation to cover something up only seems like one more phenomenon in Hemmings's disinterested purview. This is one of the key films of the decade, and still an unsettling and lasting experience. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vanessa Redgrave - David Hemmings Director(s): Michelangelo Antonioni DVD Release Date: Released the 17 February 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Arguably the greatest of American films, Orson Welles's 1941 masterpiece, made when he was only 26, still unfurls like a dream and carries the viewer along the mysterious currents of time and memory to reach a mature (if ambiguous) conclusion: people are the sum of their contradictions, and can't be known easily. Welles plays newspaper magnate Charles Foster Kane, taken from his mother as a boy and made the ward of a rich industrialist. The result is that every well-meaning or tyrannical or self-destructive move he makes for the rest of his life appears in some way to be a reaction to that deeply wounding event. Written by Welles and Herman J. Mankiewicz, and photographed by Gregg Toland, the film is the sum of Welles's awesome ambitions as an artist in Hollywood. He pushes the limits of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Joseph Cotten - Orson Welles Director(s): Orson Welles DVD Release Date: Released the 25 September 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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One doesn't think of Ingmar Bergman as a director of action or thriller (genre) movies. But he directs the war sequences in "Shame" with stunning confidence. It seems he could have made many more big (even epic) movies if he had been so inclined. This film features Bergman veterans Von Sydow and Ullmann as ordinary people who are turned into refugees by a ferocious war in which they get caught. They lose everything, are harassed, beaten and exploited. Eventually the neurotic Von Sydow proves he will do anything to survive. Simone Weil once wrote "the great mystery of life is not suffering, but affliction." That is: suffering brings out the best in some people, others it turns into beasts. This movie asks that most painful question: what would you do in the same situation? The film... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Liv Ullmann - Max von Sydow Director(s): Ingmar Bergman DVD Release Date: Released the 20 April 2004 Usually ships within 24 hours
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