Persona [Criterion Collection] [Blu-ray]

Director: Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman

Overview

Persona is difficult to characterize in simple terms, but it may be helpful to describe this complex film as being an exploration of identity that combines elements of drama, visual poetry, and modern psychology. The central story revolves around a young nurse named Alma (Bibi Andersson) and her patient, a well-known actress named Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann). Elisabet has stopped speaking, and the attending psychiatrist treats the actress by sending her to an isolated seaside cottage under Alma's care. There the nurse, who must do all the talking for both women, becomes a little enamored of the actress. One evening Alma tells Elisabet about some exhilarating sexual experiences she once had and their unpleasant aftermath. Soon after sharing this confidence, the nurse reads a letter Elisabet has written and is shocked to learn that the actress thinks of her as an amusing study. The relationship between the women becomes tense, and they wound each other. Then Alma has a long dream in which her identity merges with that of Elisabet, but when the nurse awakes, both women have apparently come to at least temporary terms with their psychological problems.

Product Details

Release Date:	03/01/2021
UPC:	0715515257312
Original Release:	1966
Rating:	NR
Source:	Criterion Collection
Language:	English
Time:	1:23:00
Sales rank:	8,794

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Bibi Andersson	Nurse Alma,Actor
Liv Ullmann	Actress Elisabeth Vogler
Margaretha Krook	Actor,doctor
Sven Nykvist	Actor
Ingmar Bergman	Actor
Gunnar Björnstrand	Vogler
Jörgen Lindström	le fils d'Elisabet
Gunnar Bjornstrand	Actor
Jorgen Lindstrom	Actor
Lars Johan Werle	Composer

Technical Credits

Ingmar Bergman

Ingmar Bergman	Director,Screenwriter,Producer
Evald Andersson	Special Effects,Sound Effects
Lars-Owe Carlberg	Producer
P.O. Pettersson	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

Persona, Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's brilliant but elusive '60s masterpiece about the mystery of identity, still stands as a monument in the history of world cinema. When stage actress Elisabeth Vogler (Liv Ullmann) suffers a nervous breakdown that renders her mute, she is sent to a seashore cottage and put under the care of nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson). Ullmann and Andersson, standouts among Bergman's stock company, deliver intelligent, poignant performances as they develop one of the most intense and fascinating relationships ever seen onscreen. The film is also known as Masks, and for good reason: The human face has rarely been so thoroughly scrutinized for signs of flickering emotion and hidden identity. And these simple but powerful black-and-white images are hauntingly photographed by the legendary cinematographer (and frequent Bergman collaborator) Sven Nykvist. Less overtly allegorical and more intimate than the master's most well-known film The Seventh Seal, Persona painstakingly examines the limitations of all human relationships -- poetically illuminating the unbridgeable gulfs that separate us from one another.

Barnes & Noble - Monica McIntyre

A watershed film in its economy, symbolism, and frank sexuality, Ingmar Bergman's Persona ranks as one of the director's most personal pieces, breaking from his earlier, more explicit work in favor of the abstract, intuitive style that he would continue to develop in such films as Hour of the Wolf (1968), Shame (1968), and Cries and Whispers (1973). Bergman started work on Persona after a long hospital stay, and he described the seemingly random images that begin the film as a "poem," a proclamation of his renewal as an artist. The opening sequence sets the tone for the film to come, in which the characters are at the mercy not just of fate and desire but of filmmaking itself. Later on, the film comes off its sprockets -- the celluloid literally breaks and melts on screen, before our eyes. At no other time in his career had Bergman seemed more trusting of his performers; he purges Persona of any narrative conventions but its two characters and their seaside setting. The final shot exposes the crew and equipment making the movie, a self-reflexive gesture, as in the later A Passion (1970), which suggests that not even filmmaking can completely dissect the mysteries of the human heart.

All Movie Guide - Michael Hastings