Persona (1967)

Subtitle option

My copy defaults to no subtitles (rather than, say, English, which is what I'd expect for a region 1 DVD). Do all copies have that default? August 7, 2008

INGMAR BERGMAN, OPUS 27

***** 1966. Written and directed by Ingmar Bergman. When the actress Elisabeth Vogler decides not to talk anymore, her doctor asks Alma, a nurse, to accompany her for a holiday in a house near the sea. Both women get along well until the day Alma discovers by reading one of the actress's letters that Elisabeth is in fact observing her. PERSONA is a film about cinema, about lies, about masks. PERSONA is a film which could arouse in you the passion for cinema, PERSONA is a masterpiece.

In the bonus section of the DVD, you'll find interviews of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson recorded in 2002, a featurette about the film with interviews of Liv, Bibi and Ingmar Bergman and finally a great commentary by Bergman biographer Marc Gervais: subtle and humorous.

A DVD zone your library. July 21, 2008

Persona, or personae?

"Persona" isn't one of my favorite Bergman films, although better people than I--including Susan Sontag and Bergman himself--consider it his masterpiece. I'm sure that part of my uneasiness with it is that I just can't quite figure out what's going on in it. Is it a parable about the various personae we all wear to protect ourselves from not only the prying eyes of others but also from our own inner scrutiny? Are Alma and Elisabet alter egos of one and the same person, with Alma being the wild, untamed id and Elisabet the more constricted superego (I realize that this neat Freudian division fails to do justice to the richness of either character)? Is the film the story about two actually different women, one of whom--Alma--is sinking deeper and deeper into psychosis and increasingly abusing the other? All of these interpretations (and others, I'm sure) could be drawn from the film.

My best guess is that "Persona" (or better, I think, "personae," since Alma and Elisabet, in addition to perhaps being masks themselves, each wear multiple masks--masks on top of masks, if you will) is the story of the split in humans that stories such as Hesse's Narcissus and Goldmund, Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and Dostoevsky's The Double explore: the reserved, contemplative, Apollonian side of us and the frenzied, ecstatic Dionysian side. The two can co-exist, but they can frequently feud against one another. Alma the Dionysian and Elisabet the Apollonian, each projecting onto the other, each intimately attracted to and violently repulsed by the other, each longing for and fearing integration: this, I think, might be what's going on in the film. If so, "Persona" really is an important parable about what it means to be human.

The acting is superb. Bibi Andersson is astounding in the sheer energy she brings to the role of Alma, and Liv Ullmann's ability to convey deep and various emotions with only subtle facial expressions takes away my breath. But one of the reasons the film isn't my favorite is that I think the famous opening scenes are distractions, and smack too much of the self-consciously arty hijinks that gets so much European cinema mocked at.

Does this mean that the film doesn't deserve 5 stars? Not a bit. July 10, 2008

Great film, Good quality DVD

This is one of Bergman's best and more challenging films. If you have any interest in Bergman or in film this is definitely a must see. I just wish Criterion released this, as they've always been more generous on the supplement side. That minor quibble aside, this is a great film, by one of the medium's true masters. (I've run out of clichés so I'll end the review here)

-Note if you're just starting out getting to know Bergman, I suggest Wild Strawberries or Smiles of a Summer Night- March 3, 2008

Bergman's Dissonance

Because of its incongruous mixture of images, the opening montage of this film brings to mind the adagio introduction at the beginning of the first movement of Mozart's String Quartet in C Major (K. 465), the so-called "Dissonance". The both introductions clearly create the feeling of angst.

This rather complex film reminds us how our knowledge of ourselves, and especially of others, has its natural, insurmountable limits. Because we all wear masks (at least to some degree) our knowledge of what exactly is going on inside someone's mind (including our own) simply cannot be complete. In this respect we do not live in some sort of a perfect, unambiguous, deterministic, Newtonian world, but rather we live in a world akin to that of quantum mechanics, with all its uncertainties and probabilities. Other people, no matter how hard they try, can never understand us completely. December 4, 2007

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