BFI Top 50: Persona, Released in 1966, Directed by Ingmar Bergman

What I know going in

I have seen two Bergman films in the past, Wild Strawberries and The Virgin Spring. I was engaged by both and found Bergman’s bleached out, classicist aesthetic appealing. I know that Persona involves a nurse taking care of an aging actress. I also know that the film deals with issues of identity. I am actually a bit worried to watch it as films that deal with identity confusion, like Mullholland Drive, Close-Up, Vertigo, and even L’Avventurawhich I watched a few days ago, all deeply unsettle me for what they suggest about the impermanence and malleability of human identity.

 

Immediate reaction

Wow, well Persona is an entirely different film from the other Bergman works I have seen. Unfortunately, I have not seen enough of his pictures to say whether or not the style of Persona was something Bergman slowly worked up to, but my guess is that this film was a radical departure for him. There are certainly no hints of Persona’s madness in The Virgin Spring or Wild Strawberries.

 

And oh what madness, Persona is a wonderfully insane film. I don’t know what provoked Bergman to make this film, maybe he saw what his peers were doing in the 60’s with movies like Psycho, L’Avventura, and Breathless (movies that mess with structure or develop new techniques), and decided he needed to one-up all of them. In its first few minutes (which consist of a strip of film burning up, a sheep being drained of blood, a nail being driven into a hand, and a young child mindlessly pawing at a projected face), Persona announces that it has no intention of following a typical narrative structure. I don’t if enjoyment is the right word, but the moment I realized this felt bracing and exciting.

 

Alright, on to the actual film now. At its most basic, Persona concerns the nurse Alma (BibiAndersson) taking care of the voluntarily mute, cracked actress Elisabet (LivUllmann). They move to a beachside house, and things quickly escalate as Elisabet and Alma fight each other for control over their own identities. Bergman manages to convey all of this visually. There are moments where both characters are glimpsed wearing the same shirt, the same hat, or the same hair-do. There are also shots where the two actor’s bodies are imposed on top of each other and it becomes impossible to tell where one ends and the next begins.

 

 

 

 An early example of this can be seen in the following image.

Both characters are dressed in black and Alma’s head is completely obscuring Elisabet’s face. They become an amorphous blob; it even looks like Alma has an extra arm jutting, awkwardly out of her. There is also one of the film’s most famous images, a low-level shot where only the lower half of Alma’s and Elisabet’s face are visible. They lean toward each other and their bodies seem impossibly connected for a split second. 

*Side note: The silhouetting of the two faces weirdly reminds me of the optical illusion where facial outlines are hidden in a wine glass.

 

Continuing with dual identity trend, there are shots that go even further than the ones I have mentioned and completely blur the line between the two. Near the very end, when Alma is indicting Elisabet for her lack of motherliness, Bergman splices different sides of each character’s face into a single, terrifying image. There is even an example at the beginning of the film. The projection the child is looking at seems to consist solely of footage where the faces of each lead morph into each other.

 

The film also works as a scathing criticism of how film culture glorifies youth. When Alma and Elisabet first move in to the beach house, Alma begins spilling her soul to the older actress. Obviously, Alma gets something out of this by having a seemingly sympathetic ear to rely, her conversations are incredibly intimate and Bergman shoots them in glorious, beautiful close-up so you can Alma’s fine facial hair, every quiver of her lip, and all the subtle smirks of Elisabet. However, there is also a vampiric element to all of this, as Elisabet seems to gain some sort of energy by listening to the youthful ruminations of Alma. This sinister suggestion is brought to the forefront when Elisabet appears to induce Alma in a trance and later float, ghostlike, into her room to mess with her body. I half expected Elisabet to pop fangs out and start sucking Alma’s blood. That basically happens later on when Alma claws her wrist open and forces Elisabet into drinking it.

 

I am sure as I delve into the literature about Persona I will find a lot of symbols and cues that I missed, but I just want to say that I really enjoyed my experience with the film. I expected to Persona to be interesting, but I was not expecting something so radical, especially from Bergman. For some reason I keep returning to the image that bookends the film, that of the small child grasping at footage from the film. Some small part of me believes that Bergman sees this state as desirable. That he was worried that film had lost its power to leave audiences in a state of wonderment and confusion. I posited one motive for Persona’s radicalness at the beginning of this review, but I am starting to think that Bergman simply wanted to return audiences to the spectacle of silent film, only to do so he had to destroy film itself in the process.

 

Further thoughts

Near the beginning of PersonaElisabet’s psychiatrist states the following to her:

 

“You can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react.”

 

This quote helped me wrangle with the bifurcated structure of the film. The first part of the film (the scenes in the hospital and the early scenes at the beach house) follows an almost logical narrative. However, after Elisabet steps on the piece of glass left by Alma (in an act of revenge for making light of her secrets) the film breaks down. It is if that tiny puncture causes all of Elisabet’s repressed emotions to come flooding out. The next half of the film, as if overwhelmed by Elisabet’s unchecked id, is dominated by dream logic. We even get an extreme close-up of an eye, as if the camera wants to enter Elisabet’s mind. Appropriately, this section takes on a stream of consciousness feel and it becomes impossible to decipher what is real and what is not.

 

I have read a lot about Persona in the intervening week and have come across a few tantalizing theories regarding the film. There is the idea that Elisabet and Alma are the same person, with Elisabet being real and Alma being a manifestation of her inner thoughts, feelings, and desires. It is interesting, and helps makes sense of how similar Alma’s and Elisabet’s worries about motherhood are, but I think this interpretation take some of the horror out of the film. Another intriguing idea is seeing Elisabet as a silent, uncaring God. Apparently God is represented in other Bergman films as a spider, which shows up briefly at the beginning, and the film undoubtedly has numerous references to religion, the burning monk and the nail scenes come to mind. However, I find the film more complex if Elisabet is simply a woman so fed up with life that she voluntary chooses muteness. The final idea I came across is that Elisabet is representation of Bergman’s own mother. Bergman had a strict, religious upbringing and a tyrannical father. You could read Elisabet’s coldness and ambivalence towards her son as Bergman’s own frustrations, but this reading requires looking outside of the film, something I do not like to do. I even came up with my own interpretation that Alma’s interactions with Elisabet’s husband are Elisabet’s dreams. This would explain the odd placement of Elisabet’s face in these scenes.

 

My favorite reading comes from one of the original reviews of the film by Mauritz Edstrom:

 

“Ingmar Bergman's new film 'Persona', as I see it, is a reminder of our proximity to the ultimate borderline, where language breaks down, images are rent asunder and reality dissolves. It touches me as a personal confession, a howl of despair or a cry against darkness and silence [...] A defiant cry, an attempt to ward off the threat that lies in this despair.”

 

This quote fits well with my own reading of Persona as this desperate, radical attempt to shock the audience into recognizing and dealing with the horrors of 20^th century life. This also helps explain the inclusion of the Vietnam footage, the Holocaust photograph, and the crucifixion recreation. By invoking these larger terrors, Bergman places the existential identity crisis at the heart of the film into larger context. When you recognize that these horrific acts occur, how do you not shut down like Elisabet? This context also gives the final line in the film “nothing” a haunting layer. Is Bergman suggesting that his own film has no meaning? I do not think so, although after watching the film three times this suggestion did strike me as painfully amusing. Instead, it suggests that there is no wider meaning to anything. That atrocities, whether huge in scale or deeply personal, don’t represent a decline in morality or a silent god, but simply exist. Persona is Bergman’s attempt to yell back at that void.

 

Why is the film on this list?

Persona is a wild film. It constantly reminds viewers of its own artificiality, yet remains powerful. It attempts to explore existential concerns and fears, yet seems to ultimately embrace nihilism. This wonderful, insane, daring film is one of the definitive examples of avant-garde film and more than earns its place on this list.