# Persona (1966)

### reviewed by
Ivana Redwine

     PERSONA (1966)
    A Film Review by Ivana Redwine
    Copyright 1999 Ivana Redwine

There are some films that never let you go. For me, Ingmar Bergman's "Persona" (1966) is such a film. Because it has great depth and resonance, new facets of meaning emerge with each viewing. Yet it defies being completely understood, but that is part of its beauty and power.

When I first saw "Persona," I didn't quite know what to make of it. I thought it was a haunting, enigmatic cinepoem, but my mind was unable to grasp it all at once. Much as a wonderfully complex novel demands careful, multiple readings, I knew I would have to see the film several times to start to gauge its depth, even though it's only 81 minutes long.

Every time I watch this film, my mind still reels a little, but that's not surprising. There's a kind of psychological vertigo operating in "Persona" that complements its theme of slippery, shifting, ambiguous personal identity. And Bergman takes great pains to make the people in his audience sharply conscious of the fact that they are watching a movie. Thus, the film is also about the vampiric voyeurism that is inherently part of cinema and the corresponding loss of self it produces.

In "Persona," much of the viewer's time is spent looking at the faces of a pair of women who are very similar in appearance, and as the story progresses there are moments when the two women seem to become one. In a striking sequence near the beginning of the film, an adolescent boy reaches for an image of a huge face apparently projected on a screen that he can almost--but not quite--touch. The face shown in this sequence alternates between the visages of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson, the actresses who portray the main characters in the film. And much later in the movie, in one of the most stunning images in all of cinema, a composite face is formed, half Ullmann's face and the other half Andersson's. There is, in fact, much loving, lingering camera work devoted to faces throughout the film, and it struck me as reminiscent of the incredibly emotive things they used to do with faces in silent films.

The story in "Persona" is deceptively simple. It revolves around Alma (Andersson), a 25-year-old nurse put in charge of Elisabet Vogler (Ullmann), a well-known stage and screen actress who has suddenly, inexplicably stopped speaking. Elisabet steadfastly maintains her silence, evidently through the sheer strength of her will. Early on, Alma expresses feelings of inadequacy to the psychiatrist in charge of the case, fearing that this patient might require a more experienced nurse.

Nothing seems to be really wrong with Elisabet, except for her stubborn refusal to speak. When there seems no good reason for the actress to remain at the hospital any longer, the attending psychiatrist suggests that she stay at a rustic seaside cottage for a while under Alma's supervision. There the nurse does all the talking for both of them. A little in awe of the actress, the nurse is caught up in her glamour and magnetism. Slowly, Alma becomes taken over by Elisabet's persona and temporarily loses part of her own identity in the process.

One evening at the cottage while the two women are relaxing and sipping wine, Alma confesses to Elisabet an incident where, even though she was engaged to be married, she had sex with strangers without her fiance's knowledge. But the nurse goes on to tell of the incident's painful consequences and how she still feels tormented by it. In some ways, the telling of this story makes for a highly erotically charged scene, yet I found that at the same time Alma's feelings of desperation and despair all but cancel out the eroticism.

Not long after sharing this confidence, Alma reads a letter which Elisabet has given her to mail and makes the discovery that the actress regards her as an interesting study, perhaps something she can use in her acting someday. Alma's feelings of disappointment and betrayal as she reads the letter make for a heartbreaking moment of shattered illusions, superbly realized by Bibi Andersson.

In reprisal for her perceived betrayal, the nurse lashes out in an attempt to emotionally wound her patient, and this causes Elisabet to retaliate in kind. The conflict between the two women heightens until we are eventually drawn into a lengthy dream where Alma's identity temporarily merges with Elisabet's, and this dream sequence adds to the film's enormous emotional impact.

It is during this dream sequence that a stunning repeated monologue occurs. It unfolds twice, and each time it is seen from a different point of view. What Bergman does here is completely unexpected, and I was at first taken aback by it, although after seeing it many times, I see it as a stroke of genius. Although I doubt that I ever will completely understand it, I am always affected by its haunting resonance.

Twice Alma speaks the same rather lengthy monologue, in which she accuses Elisabet of being unable to bond with her own son, and each time the words and delivery are almost exactly the same. At this point, the two women's personas are so difficult to differentiate that the scene has the eerie, evocative effect of something seen from each side of a mirror. The first time Alma's monologue is delivered the camera focuses on Elisabet's face, the second time on Alma's.

At the end of Alma's repeated monologue, the fusion of the two identities is indicated by the famous image of the composite face which is half Elisabet's and half Alma's. But before the dream ends, Alma somehow manages to reassert her separate identity. To my mind, this extended dream sequence is a tour de force--managing to be simultaneously both surreal and super-real.

When Alma awakens from her dream, she finds Elisabet packing a suitcase, and both women seem to have come to some strange sort of closure that allows them to keep their respective demons at bay, at least for a while. The women prepare to leave the beach cottage, apparently ready to return to their normal lives and their separate identities.

"Persona" is hardly a film that uses strictly linear storytelling, and I would be remiss if I failed to point out that there are some short, visually jarring sequences at the beginning, roughly at the middle, and near the end of the film. These sequences show such things as film projector components, film winding over spools, a segment from an animated cartoon, a fragment from a silent farce involving a skeleton, a spider, the slaughter of a lamb, a human hand pierced by a spike, and views of hospital grounds and a morgue. These sequences are not directly part of the narrative as described above, but are about filmmaking itself, and I like to think of them as a kind of matrix that surrounds and defines the story of Alma and Elisabet.

Bergman's films are so dear to me that I find it impossible to single out just one as my favorite, and while I love "Wild Strawberries" (1957) and "The Seventh Seal" (1956), "Persona" is definitely one of my favorites as well. It has an uncanny ability to reach down into the depths of the subconscious with its dream-like quality, and on this basis alone, I believe this Swedish film must be considered a masterpiece of world cinema. It also features a point-perfect visual sense, superb cinematography by Sven Nykvist, and extraordinary performances by Andersson and Ullmann, both of whom have extremely difficult roles. Andersson carries the weight of delivering almost all the dialogue in the film, while Ullmann must rely on her facial expressions, body language, and magnetic presence to take her where words cannot. And Ullmann does so with such mesmerizing force that she makes it credible that the nurse could come close to losing herself for a while under the actress' spell.

Although "Persona" is one of my favorites, I realize it's not a film for everyone. The critic John Simon wrote that it was probably "the most difficult film ever made." Although I don't completely agree with him, I can certainly understand his point. "Persona" initially baffled me, yet each time I see it, I comprehend just a bit more. "Persona" is a difficult film, but if you're up for a challenge, it's an intellectually rewarding and emotionally rich experience.

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