Persona - Special Edition
"'Persona' (1966) is a film we return to over the years, for the beauty of its images and because we hope to understand its mysteries. It is apparently not a difficult film: Everything that happens is perfectly clear, and even the dream sequences are clear--as dreams. But it suggests buried truths, and we despair of finding them. "Persona" was one of the first movies I reviewed, in 1967. I did not think I understood it. A third of a century later I know most of what I am ever likely to know about films, and I think I understand that the best approach to "Persona" is a literal one." "Bergman shows us everyday actions and the words of ordinary conversation. And Sven Nykvist's cinematography shows them in haunting images. One of them, of two faces, one frontal, one in profile, has become one of the most famous images of the cinema." "Elizabeth (Liv Ullmann) stops speaking in the middle of Electra, and will not speak again. A psychiatrist thinks it might help if Elizabeth and Nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) spend the summer at her isolated house. Held in the same box of space and time, the two women somehow merge." "Most of what we think of as "ourselves" is not direct
experience of the world, but a mental broadcast made of ideas, memories,
media input, other people, jobs, roles, duties, lusts, hopes, fears.
Elizabeth chooses to be who she is' Alma is not strong enough to choose
not to be Elizabeth. The title is the key. "Persona." Singular."
------ Roger Ebert DVD
Curator's Comments: Read Roger Ebert's essay on this DVD Classic. Director:Ingmar Bergman Country: Sweden
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