Persona (1966)

Who Am I?

By Jeffrey M. Anderson

Buy Persona on DVD

Ingmar Bergman's most actively astonishing film, Persona (1966), is also his hardest to pin down. After a prologue of seemingly random images, ranging from the confusing to the disturbing, we begin the story of an actress (Liv Ullmann) who suddenly stops speaking while onstage. She's entrusted to the care of a young, beautiful nurse (Bibi Andersson) and sent to a remote seaside cottage to recover. While there, the nurse begins opening up and spilling her soul to the actress, eventually becoming frustrated and finally winning the upper hand in an intensely psychological power struggle. In one scene, Andersson describes a sexual encounter between herself, a girlfriend, and two men on a beach, and it's so vivid you might imagine you've seen it played out. Bergman continually reminds us that we're watching a film by inserting phony "broken" splices and such. He also plays upon the fact that the two women look very much alike by pushing them together in his shots, overlapping their faces and even superimposing one over the other. One clue may lie in the young boy who rises from a table and looks directly into the camera. Bergman then cuts to his point of view and we see a giant blurry face watching him. Could it be us, the viewers, entering this fierce and bizarre contest of wills? Regardless, Persona is one of Bergman's greatest works and an absolute must-see.

DVD Details: MGM'sPersona DVD comes with a featurette, interviews with Ullmann and Andersson, an audio commentary track by Bergman's American biographer Marc Gervais, a photo gallery (with some of the most striking stills ever shot on any movie set) and the theatrical trailer.

Starring: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand
Written by: Ingmar Bergman
Directed by: Ingmar Bergman
MPAA Rating: Unrated
Language: Swedish with English subtitles
Running Time: 83 minutes
Date: May 13, 2004