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Persona
Directed by	Ingmar Bergman
Produced by	Ingmar Bergman
Written by	Ingmar Bergman
Starring	Bibi Andersson Liv Ullmann
Music by	Lars Johan Werle
Cinematography	Sven Nykvist
Distributed by	AB Svensk Filmindustri (Sweden) United Artists (US)
Release date(s)	October 18, 1966 (Sweden) March 6, 1967 (US)
Running time	85 minutes
Country	Sweden
Language	Swedish

Persona is a film by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and starring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Bergman held this film to be one of his most important; in his book Images, he writes: "Today I feel that in Persona — and later in Cries and Whispers — I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover." He also said that

At some time or other, I said that Persona saved my life — that is no exaggeration. If I had not found the strength to make that film, I would probably have been all washed up. One significant point: for the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success...^[1]

The film explores an encounter between two women: Elisabet, a successful actress who stops speaking for more than a minute during a performance of Electra and later does not speak at all for a long time, and Alma (soul in Spanish and Portuguese), the nurse charged with caring for her. Some critics have seen August Strindberg’s play The Stronger as a source of inspiration for Persona.^[2] Bergman wrote Persona during nine weeks while recovering from pneumonia.^[3] During filming Bergman wanted to call the film A Bit of Cinematography. His producer suggested something more accessible and the title of the film was changed.^[4]

Persona is considered a major artistic work by film critics and filmmakers. The essayist Susan Sontag is one of many critics who have written extensively about it, calling it "Bergman’s masterpiece".^[5] Another critic has described it as "one of this century’s great works of art".^[6] In Sight and Sound’s 1972 poll of the ten greatest films of all time, Persona was ranked at number five.^[7]

Plot

Persona begins with a surreal montage that begins with footage of a camera being fed film and lighting up, followed by a dozen seconds-long pieces of antique footage showing, among other things, a man being crucified and nailed to a cross, and an erect penis. The footage eventually gives way to a small, thin boy, waking up in a hospital bed and walking past unconscious women to press his hand against a massive, blurry image of an unknown woman's face.

The film proper begins when a young nurse, Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson), is charged with the care of stage actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullman), who has, despite any physical or neurological impairment, stopped communicating. The hospital psychiatrist offers her own seaside cottage as a place for Alma to nurse Elisabet back to mental health. In hospital, Elisabet reacts with horror to Thích Quảng Đức's suicide, and with disgust to a radio soap opera.

Isolated in the cottage, Alma begins talking in an endless stream about herself while Elisabet remains silent, showing only facial expressions. Alma expresses her fears and thoughts about the world and herself, and eventually confesses to cheating on her fiancé in a menage a quatre and having his friend abort the resulting baby. Alma tells Elisabet that "none of it fits together" and that the two women are alike, although Elisabet has "a bigger soul". The two women go to sleep, but Alma catches Elisabet watching her sleep.

When Alma, out of curiosity, reads one of Elisabet's letters home, she is hurt by what Elisabet is telling people about her. She accidentally breaks a bottle on the footpath, but doesn't clean it up, instead waiting for Elisabet to cut her feet on the shards. At this point the film appears to disintegrate visually, with scratches and tears replacing Alma's face and the screen flashing white.

An unknown amount of time later, Alma grows despondent, tells Elisabet she's hurt her by talking about her behind her back, and begs her to speak. She flies into a rage and tells Elisabet "You are inaccessible. They said you were mentally healthy, but your sickness is the worst: you act healthily. You act it so well everyone believes it, everyone except me, because I know how rotten you are inside." Very angry, Alma threats throwing boiling water at Elisabet. Elisabeth screams in a reflex to the potential harm. Alma is affected by her scream and starts calming down. Alma begs for forgiveness.

Alma (left) and Elisabet in the second act, highlighting Persona's distinctive cinematography; in this scene, the women wear black as the house is soaked in white sunlight.

That night, Alma watches Elisabet sleep, analyzing her face and the scars she covers with makeup. She hears a man yelling outside, and finds Elisabet's husband, Mr. Vogler, in the garden. Mr. Vogler mistakes Alma for his wife, and despite her repeatedly interjecting with "I'm not your wife", delivers a monologue about his love for her making life endurable (repeating words he wrote to Elisabet in the opening act -- "We must see each other as two anxious children, filled with good will and intention but governed by forces we only partially control"). Elisabet, who has watched the two, places Alma's hand on her husband's face, and Alma surrenders, referring to her self as the mother of his child and making love to Mr. Vogler as Elisabet silently watches. In the morning, despite "living from his fragility", Alma cries.

The climax of the film comes the next morning: Alma catches Elisabet in the kitchen with a pained expression on her face, holding a picture of a small boy. Alma then narrates Elisabet's life story back to her, while the camera focuses tightly on Elisabet's anguished face: Elisabet, knowing she was beautiful and successful, but lacking empathy or motherliness, allowed her husband to impregnate her. She became terrified at the idea of motherhood, and unsuccessfully tried to abort the fetus. As the child was born, she was repulsed by it and prays for its death. The child grows up craving affection.

The camera turns to show Alma's face, and she repeats the same monologue again. At its conclusion, Alma yells out in terror, famously crying "I'm not like you. I don't feel like you. I'm not Elisabet Vogler: you are Elisabet Vogler."

Alma returns to the room later, where Eliasbet is still sitting. She sits down, and cries about her failure. She cuts into her own arm, and presses Elisabet's lips to the wound.

Alma sees Elisabeth packing and then starts packing her stuff and closing the house. She catches a bus alone. At this point, the camera rotates to show the full crew and film equipment. Later, Elisabet has been hospitalised again, and Alma visits her. Alma instructs her harshly, "Repeat after me: nothing. Nothing." Elisabet repeats her words, and Alma delivers the final line of the film: "Good. That's how it should be."

Cast

• Bibi Andersson as Alma, The Nurse
• Liv Ullmann as Elisabet Vogler, The Actress
• Margaretha Krook as The Doctor
• Gunnar Björnstrand as Mr. Vogler
• Jörgen Lindström as The Boy

Critical reception

The film has been interpreted in many different ways and has been the subject of long-standing debates among film fans as well as critics.

Lloyd Michaels sums up what he calls "the most widely held view" of Persona’s content.^[8] According to this view, Persona is "a kind of modernist horror movie"^[9] Elisabet’s condition, described by a doctor as "the hopeless dream to be", is "the shared condition of both life and film art".^[10] Bergman and Elisabet share the same dilemma: they cannot respond authentically to "large catastrophes" (such as the Holocaust or the Vietnam War).^[9] The actress Elisabet responds by stopping speaking: by contrast the filmmaker Bergman emphasizes that "necessary illusions" enable us to live.

Susan Sontag suggests that Persona is constructed as a series of variations on a theme of "doubling".^[11] The subject of the film, Sontag proposes, is "violence of the spirit".^[12] Film scholar P. Adams Sitney offers a completely different reading, arguing that "Persona covertly dramatizes a psychoanalysis from the point of view of a patient".^[13]

Censorship

Two scenes are frequently cut from versions of the film; a brief shot at the beginning depicting an erect penis, and a piece of Alma’s monologue where she uses the phrase "made her come with his hand". These scenes were removed for American distribution, but retained on most American video releases.

When MGM archivist John Kirk restored Persona as part of a larger restoration project, he worked with the original, uncensored version with the brief shot of an erect penis. He also created new subtitles by commissioning several language experts to provide new, accurate translations for the dialogue; this is particularly noticeable during Alma’s graphic sexual descriptions, which some were reluctant to translate without toning down the language.

The original, uncensored version wasn’t widely available in the U.S. until 2004, when MGM’s home video department reissued Persona on DVD, utilizing Kirk’s work.

Influence on other films

Persona's shots of overlapping faces have been widely parodied

• Bergman features prominently in Woody Allen’s films. Another Woman is a variation on Persona, and Love and Death references Persona in its final minutes; two characters are lined up, one facing the camera, the other at a 90-degree angle, with their mouths in the same space, just as in Persona.
• David Lynch's surreal noir Mulholland Dr. is heavily influenced by Persona; including, but not limited to, an actress character and similar questions concerning identity, as well as a visual nod to Persona's famous merging of women's faces.
• Robert Altman’s impressionist film 3 Women is also influenced by Persona as Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek begin to shift roles.
• The Simpsons episode "Lost Verizon" parodies Persona when Bart Simpson finds a new cell phone and prank calls a bar in Sweden called "Inga-bar Beerman's." Upon realizing the call was a prank, the bartender proceeds with existential dialogue while we see heavily contrasted visuals similar to famous scenes in both Persona and Woody Allen's Another Woman.

Awards and honors

• Persona won the 1967 National Society of Film Critics awards for Best Film, Best Director (Bergman) and Best Actress (Andersson).^[14]
• Persona was included in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.^[15]

References

Bibliography

• Bergman, Ingmar (1972). Persona and Shame: The Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman. trans. Keith Bradfield. New York: Grossman Publishers. ISBN 0670158658. 
• Michaels, Lloyd (ed.) (2000). Ingmar Bergman's Persona. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521656982. http://books.google.com/books?id=CR8JsHbnkS0C&dq=0521656982. 
• Sontag, Susan (2002), "Bergman’s Persona", Styles of Radical Will, New York: Picador, pp. 123–146, ISBN 0312420218, http://books.google.com/books?id=cHoIAP6CTkoC&pg=RA1-PA123&vq=%22bergman%27s+persona%22&dq=%22styles+of+radical+will%22&sig=RDjjDjU0MhXH7XdUiqSZhThWmuo 

External links

• Persona at the Internet Movie Database
• Persona at Rotten Tomatoes
• Roger Ebert’s review
• An essay on the film by P. Adams Sitney
• Blog posts by Peter Leithart, prominent Reformed Theologian

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