Persona
Directed by	Ingmar Bergman
Produced by	Ingmar Bergman
Written by	Ingmar Bergman
Starring	Bibi Andersson Liv Ullmann
Music by	Lars Johan Werle
Distributed by	United Artists (USA)
Release date(s)	October 18, 1966 (Sweden) March 6, 1967 (USA)
Running time	85 min.
Language	Swedish
IMDb profile

Persona is a movie by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and featuring 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."^[1] He also said that ImageMetadata File history File links Download high resolution version (570x770, 275 KB) Probably originally a poster from Persona (film). ...   (IPA: in Swedish, but usually IPA: in English) (July 14, 1918 – July 30, 2007) was a Swedish stage and film director. ...   (IPA: in Swedish, but usually IPA: in English) (July 14, 1918 – July 30, 2007) was a Swedish stage and film director. ...   (IPA: in Swedish, but usually IPA: in English) (July 14, 1918 – July 30, 2007) was a Swedish stage and film director. ... Bibi Andersson (born 11 November 1935 in Stockholm) is a Swedish actress. ... Liv Johanne Ullmann (born December 16, 1938) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning Norwegian actress, author and film director. ... The current United Artists logo (a variant was used during the 1980s). ... is the 291st day of the year (292nd in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... is the 65th day of the year (66th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1967 (MCMLXVII) was a common year starting on Sunday of the Gregorian calendar (the link is to a full 1967 calendar). ...   (IPA: in Swedish, but usually IPA: in English) (July 14, 1918 – July 30, 2007) was a Swedish stage and film director. ... Year 1966 (MCMLXVI) was a common year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the 1966 Gregorian calendar. ... Bibi Andersson (born 11 November 1935 in Stockholm) is a Swedish actress. ... Liv Johanne Ullmann (born December 16, 1938) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning Norwegian actress, author and film director. ... Cries and Whispers (original title Viskningar och rop) is a 1973 Swedish film which tells the story of two sisters who watch over their third sisters deathbed, both afraid she might die, but hoping she does. ...

The film explores an encounter between two women: Elisabet a successful actress who has become mute during a performance of Electra, and Alma (soul in Spanish and Portuguese), the nurse charged with caring for her. It is loosely drawn from August Strindberg's play, The Stronger.^{[citation needed]} Electra at the Tomb of Agamemnon In Greek mythology, Electra was daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra. ... The soul, according to many religious and philosophical traditions, is the self-aware essence unique to a particular living being. ... August Strindberg Portrait of August Strindberg by Richard Bergh   (January 22, 1849 – May 14, 1912) was a Swedish writer, playwright, and painter. ...

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".^[2] Another critic has described it as "one of this century's great works of art".^[3]In Sight and Sound's 1972 poll of the ten greatest films of all time, Persona was ranked at number five.^[4] Susan Sontag (January 16, 1933 – December 28, 2004) was a well-known American essayist, novelist, intellectual, filmmaker, and activist. ... Sight and Sound is a British monthly magazine about film. ... Year 1972 (MCMLXXII) was a leap year starting on Saturday (link will display full calendar) of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Plot

Persona takes place mostly at a seaside summer residence in Sweden, where the mute actress Elisabet Vogler (played by Liv Ullmann) has been sent by her psychiatrist to recuperate after her breakdown. A nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson), accompanies and cares for her. The two women spend long summer days enjoying the outdoors. Elisabet says nothing while Alma passes the time telling stories.

Cast

• Bibi Andersson - Alma, The Nurse
• Liv Ullmann - Elisabeth Vogler, The Actress
• Margaretha Krook - The Doctor
• Gunnar Björnstrand - Mr. Vogler
• Jörgen Lindström - The Boy, Elisabeth's Son

Bibi Andersson (born 11 November 1935 in Stockholm) is a Swedish actress. ... Liv Johanne Ullmann (born December 16, 1938) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning Norwegian actress, author and film director. ... Gunnar Björnstrand, (13 November 1909 - 26 May 1986) was a Swedish character actor known for his frequent work with writer/director Ingmar Bergman. ...

Possible interpretations

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. Because Bergman's film is so surrealistic, perverse, and ambiguous, Persona criticism is often colorful and filled with gymnastic rationalizations and explanations of the narrative. Image File history File links Persona_001. ...

Sontag suggests that Persona is constructed as a series of variations on a theme of "doubling".^[5] The subject of the film, Sontag proposes, is "violence of the spirit".^[6] 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".^[7] While the film has been widely and variously interpreted, many critics^{[attribution needed]} agree that it explores the intricacies of the doctor-patient relationship, in particular the phenomenon of transference. While Elisabet is ostensibly the patient, her silence suggests a reversal: in psychoanalysis the doctor is silent and the patient speaks. Thus Alma might be seen as the patient and Elisabet, the silent analyst. P. Adams Sitney (born August 9, 1944 in New Haven, Connecticut)[1], is an historian of American avant-garde cinema. ... Transference is a phenomenon in psychology characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings for one person to another. ...

Following are some of the most popular interpretations of the film.^{[citation needed]}

First reading

Elisabet and the nurse are one and the same person.^{[citation needed]} They are "split" when the actress does not want to act any more, and retires to her own self. The term "does not want to act" depicts two things: firstly, she does not want to act as a job, and secondly, in a more distant, but more appropriate interpretation, she does not want to act to the outside world (e.g. in the movie the nurse part of the personality says this: "But you played the part. The part of a pregnant, happy mother.") The nurse is nothing more than the outside appearance of the same person—this is why Mr. Vogler recognises her (and not Elisabet) as Mrs. Vogler. Elisabet is the inner self of the same person: she is a quiet, strong personality. This interpretation is suggested when the two half-faces of the nurse and Elisabet are put together into one picture, one face (note also that the nurse says during the beginning that she thought that Elisabet is very similar to her).

Second reading

Alma is the nurse who is supposed to be treating Elisabet, but this is gradually reversed.^{[citation needed]} Simply by talking to Elisabet, Alma develops a feeling of closeness to her and comes to divulge intimate secrets, even though Elisabet has not reciprocated. This transference effect is shattered when Alma reads Elisabet's letter to her doctor, mentioning that Alma has childishly fallen in love with Elisabet and that it is interesting to study Alma. Suddenly, Alma realizes that she has been only an object for Elisabet, and lashes out against her. Yet the film progresses to a complex confusion of Elisabet's and Alma's characters, felt perhaps most strikingly when Elisabet's blind husband visits and mistakes Alma for Elisabet; Alma hesitates at first, but then embraces the role, beginning by saying the things to him that Elisabet cannot or will not say, and then "breaking down" (deconstruction) much as we can imagine Elisabet did. Transference is a phenomenon in psychology characterized by unconscious redirection of feelings for one person to another. ... Deconstruction is a term in contemporary philosophy, literary criticism, and the social sciences, denoting a process by which the texts and languages of Western philosophy (in particular) appear to shift and complicate in meaning when read in light of the assumptions and absences they reveal within themselves. ...

Third reading

Other readings of Persona use a psychoanalytic frame of reference. One reading of this sort can be found in Daniel Shaw's interpretation.

Brechtian alienation technique

Many critics^{[attribution needed]} believe that Persona is one of the first films to make use of the Brechtian alienation technique (Verfremdungseffekt), used to call attention to and/or interrupt the fictional world of the movie, and to remind the viewer of the necessarily artificial nature of the medium. Some notable uses of the technique in Persona are at the beginning and end, where you see a reel of film being loaded; in the middle, when Elisabet steps on glass and the film appears to burn; and later on, when the camera turns around to display the crew filming a scene with Elisabet. Epic theater, also known as theater of alienation or theater of politics, is a theater movement arising in the early to mid-20th century, inextricably linked to the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. ... Bertolt Brecht (February 10, 1898 - August 14, 1956) was an influential German dramatist, stage director, and poet of the 20th century. ...

The fact is that Persona is not the first film to be self-referential. In fact, self-referential gestures such as these are found throughout film history—the very first film ever made includes self-referential moments— and many such films even pre-date Brecht. A few notable examples of films that are deeply self-referential include Kinugasa's A Page of Madness (1926), Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929), Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), Maya Deren's Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) and Bergman's own Dreams (1955) and The Magician (1958). There are hundreds of others. KINUGASA Teinosuke (Japanese: 衣笠貞之助) (born 1 January 1896 in Mie-ken, Japan; died 26 February 1982 in Kyoto, Japan) is a Japanese film director. ... A Page of Madness ) is a silent film by Japanese film director Kinugasa Teinosuke, made in the early 1920s. ... Dziga Vertov Dziga Vertov (Russian: , January 2, 1896–February 12, 1954) was a Russian documentary film and newsreel director. ... Opening shot A street in the morning In this shot, Mikhail Kaufman acts as a cameraman risking his life in search of the best shot Man with a Movie Camera, sometimes The Man with the Movie Camera, The Man with a Camera, The Man With the Kinocamera, or Living Russia... Federico Fellini (January 20, 1920 – October 31, 1993) was one of the most influential and widely revered film-makers of the 20th century. ... 8½ (Italian: Otto e Mezzo) is a 1963 film written and directed by Italian director Federico Fellini. ... Maya Deren Maya Deren (April 29, 1917 – October 13, 1961), born Eleanora Derenkowsky, was an American avant-garde filmmaker and film theorist of the 1940s and 1950s. ... Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) is a short experimental film directed by husband and wife team, Maya Deren and Alexander Hammid. ... Dreams (original title Kvinnodröm) is a 1955 Swedish film by Ingmar Bergman. ... Ansiktet or The Magician is a movie directed and written by Ingmar Bergman. ...

Opening sequence

Persona's startling opening sequence has invited many creative interpretations.^{[citation needed]} In Persona, there are several sequences which consist of a series of seemingly random shots in quick succession. A film projector starting up, a vampiric spider, a boy being woken up, a child's hand on a blurry mother's face, a bloodied lamb, a nail being driven into a hand (in some versions of this sequence there is an image of an erect penis, as well) —and although Bergman himself invites viewers to interpret the sequences like a poem, the most plausible reading would be to understand these images as examples of "screen memories" (cf. Sigmund Freud)—those childhood images that are either true or not, but often, when understood in the structure of psychoanalysis represent some sort of "trauma" (dream). It is noteworthy that many of the images chosen by Bergman have "classical" interpretations in psychoanalytic text. The crucifixion scene, for example, is commonly understood in psychoanalysis as representing the "trauma" of the primal scene: e.g. the child's experience of seeing his parents having sex.^{[citation needed]} Sigmund Freud (IPA: ), born Sigismund Schlomo Freud (May 6, 1856 – September 23, 1939), was an Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who co-founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology. ...

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 says her lover "made her come with his hand" and implies they were children or teenagers. These changes 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 recollection of an orgy, which some were reluctant to translate without toning down some of the details. For alternate meanings of MGM, see MGM (disambiguation). ...

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.

Other films

David Lynch's films Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006) share similarities with Bergman's Persona. David Keith Lynch (born January 20, 1946, in Missoula, Montana) is an American filmmaker. ... Mulholland Drive (often abbreviated Mulholland Dr.) is a 2001 Academy Award-nominated psychological thriller written and directed by David Lynch. ... Year 2001 (MMI) was a common year starting on Monday (link displays the 2001 Gregorian calendar). ... This article is about the film. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ...

Bergman features prominently in Woody Allen's work. 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. Woody Allen (born Allen Stewart Königsberg on December 1, 1935) is a three-time Academy Award-winning American film director, writer, actor, jazz musician, comedian, and playwright. ... Another Woman is a 1988 Woody Allen film about an emotionally reticent woman. ... Love and Death is a 1975 comedy by Woody Allen. ...

Robert Altman's expressionist film 3 Women is also influenced by Persona as Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek begin to shift roles. Robert Bernard Altman (February 20, 1925 – November 20, 2006) was an American film director known for making films that are highly naturalistic, but with a stylized perspective. ... 3 Women is a 1977 film directed by Robert Altman. ... Shelley Alexis Duvall (born July 7, 1949) is an award winning American film and television actress. ... Mary Elizabeth Sissy Spacek (born December 25, 1949) is an Academy Award-winning American actress and singer. ...

Liv Ullmann's costume in the film (black headband, black turtleneck and black pants) is echoed by Pepper Binkley's costume as "Michelle" in Let Them Chirp Awhile, a 2007 independent film by director Jonathan Blitstein. Blitstein intended to draw similarities between the two characters' isolation. Liv Johanne Ullmann (born December 16, 1938) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe-winning Norwegian actress, author and film director. ... Pepper Binkley is an American actress. ... Let Them Chirp Awhile is an independent film comedy by Jonathan Blitstein which was filmed in eighteen days in New York, NY during October 2006. ... Jonathan Blitstein (born in Lake Forest, Illinois) is an American indie filmmaker. ...

Awards and recognition

• Persona won the the 1967 National Society of Film Critics awards for Best Film, Best Director (Bergman) and Best Actress (Andersson).^[8]
• Persona was included in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.^[9]

The National Society of Film Critics or NSFC is an American film critic organization. ...

References

Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 211th day of the year (212th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ... Year 2007 (MMVII) is now the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the AD/CE era. ... is the 211th day of the year (212th in leap years) in the Gregorian calendar. ...

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. 
• Sontag, Susan (2002), "Bergman's Persona", Styles of Radical Will, New York: Picador, ISBN 0312420218, at 123-146

External links

• Persona at the Internet Movie Database
• Persona at Rotten Tomatoes
• Roger Ebert's review
• Review of Persona
• An essay on the film by P. Adams Sitney