Film of the Week #74 - Persona

johnny_ultimate

Persona

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0060827/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YTS-AuF5U0

I first watched Persona a day or two after Ingmar Bergman’s death last summer. Before that I had only seen the Seventh Seal, which I loved at the time but had never bothered searching out any other Bergman stuff. So aside from that film, all I knew of Bergman was that he was some sort of acclaimed director that Woody Allen loved. After watching Persona, I instantly understood what all the fuss was about.

The film tells the story of Alma (Bibi Andersson) who is given the job of caring for actress Elisabeth (Liv Ullman), who has had a serious nervous breakdown on stage. The two women move to a secluded house in order to try and get Elisabeth better, and to try and help her speak again. The rest of the film shows how Elisabeth’s pessimistic outlook on life leads to Alma discarding her optimistic shell and uncovering the dark recesses of her personality.

In many ways this is a very theatrical film: the two main characters are the only people on camera for the vast majority of the film (barring the opening/closing montage, a brief cameo from Bergman regular Gunnar Bjornstrandt, and one actress briefly appearing as Elisabeth’s doctor) with very little music. But this isn’t a simple film: it’s a thematically complex and very ambitious piece of work. The focus on the two leads allows Bergman to emphasise the themes and issues being discussed. It is also a really shocking and challenging film: my favourite scene (Alma’s infamous recollection of a day on the beach: a scene that proves that words can be a thousand times more effective than images) pushed the taboos of the time to the limit (especially in America, where the scene was predictably toned down).

The whole thing is held together by the two actresses, who each provide extraordinary performances. The wonderful and beautiful Bibi Andersson provides probably her best Bergman performance (after fantastic roles in Wild Strawberries and the Seventh Seal): the way her character transforms is remarkable, perhaps reaching its climax in the iconic sequence in which Alma and Elisabeth’s faces blur into each other: one of the most effective and memorable images in cinema history. As for Ullman herself, this was her first Bergman, and while she may have bettered her performance here in later work like Shame or Autumn Sonata, she still gives a very otherworldly, engrossing and (mostly) mute performance here. Her ability to act without dialogue is stunning, and it’s easy to understand how she became Bergman’s muse for countless films.

The whole thing looks wonderful too. Sven Nykvist was Bergman’s cinematographer of choice for decades, and this film shows why. The lighting, the framing: everything is hypnotic. One sequence in which Ullman walks through a corridor bathed in light while Andersson sleeps is probably the best example of the camerawork. I wouldn’t normally pick up on the lighting in films, but Nykvist is a master, and it’s impossible not to notice his artistry.

But as fantastic as the other players are (and trust me, they are amazing), this is Bergman’s show. It was the culmination of his work to this point. The opening montage of surreal imagery is a reminder of his favourite themes: a spider god, a penis (which got the film into some hot water in America), film, religious imagery and even the boy from his previous film The Silence show we’re in familiar territory. As great as his early films were, this is Bergman at his finest: Persona is a heady cocktail of themes. It is a reflection on life, death, sex, marriage, friendship, reality and the cinematic form itself (the repeated imagery of the projector constantly reminding us we are watching a mediated story). It’s almost impossible to grasp the complexity of the film in one sitting: it is very heavy viewing, and typically bleak too. It’s enhanced when you know a bit about the man himself: after reading his autobiography, it’s pretty telling that Alma is an actress (he both worshipped and loathed actors), while one whole scene is copy and pasted entirely from a letter he himself received. And it marks the transformation from early Bergman to late Bergman: Shame, Hour of the Wolf, The Passion of Anna, Autumn Sonata, Cries and Whispers and the like are the natural continuation of the claustrophobic style kickstarted by Persona and the preceding Silence of God trilogy.

Not many films have completely altered the way I watch films, but Persona did. I’m still working my way through his huge back catalogue (watched Cries and Whispers only yesterday, which is every bit as good as Persona). It’s a film that made me more ambitious when rooting down things to watch. It’s a film that has influenced countless directors, David Lynch in particular: the opening montage (and Bergman’s surrealistic next film, Hour of the Wolf) was Lynchian a good decade before Eraserhead, while the second half of the film blurs the lines of reality in a very similar way to Mullholland Drive. Persona is just truly a one-of-a-kind film: the shocking, intense and endlessly challenging masterpiece of the greatest film director who ever lived.

faceman

I knew this one would come back and bite me in the backside someday. I havent watched this one yet despite the fact i have a copy at home. Its a good excuse for me to watch it now over the next few days!

Great write up btw.