Persona is a movie by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and featuring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann. Ingmar Bergman Ingmar Bergman   listen? (pronounced in Swedish, but usually in American English, IPA in Unicode notation) (born July 14, 1918) is a Swedish stage and film director who is one of the key film auteurs in the second-half of the twentieth century. ... 1966 was a common year starting on Saturday (link goes to calendar) // Events January January 1 - In a coup, Colonel Jean-Bédel Bokassa ousts president David Dacko and takes over the Central African Republic. ... Ullman with Roger Moore and Sacheen Littlefeather at the Academy Awards in 1973. ...

David Lynch's film Mulholland Dr. (2001) shares strong similarities with Bergman's "Persona", and this has lead many film scholars to speculate that "Mulholland Dr." may have been either wholly or partially inspired by this classic Bergman film. This article needs to be cleaned up to conform to a higher standard of quality. ... Mulholland Dr. is a motion picture, released in 2001 and directed by David Lynch. ... 2001: A Space Odyssey Dr. Dre 2001 2001 is a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Film refers to the celluloid media on which movies are printed Film is a term that encompasses motion pictures as individual projects, as well as the field in general. ...

This film is famous for having one of the most erotic scenes in film history while deliberately hiding the even most remotely sexually arousing parts of the actors (e.g. knee, shoulder, etc).

Plot

The movie takes place mostly at a seaside summer residence, where actress Elisabeth Vogler has been sent to recuperate by her psychiatrist after remaining silent for a long time. Her nurse Alma is sent to accompany her.

The main plot is about the two personalities exchanging places, switching from one body to the other, so at the end, the nurse is Elisabeth Vogler and Elisabeth Vogler is the nurse. On a second level, the movie discusses what makes a person a person and if all our roles as humans are just as exchangeable. It also paints a harsh picture of human relationships and the little betrayals in life that people inflict on their loved ones.

Brechtian Alienation Technique

Persona is one of the first films to make use of the Brechtian alienation technique (verfremdungseffekt); destroying the fantasy-world of your movie. 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 Vogler steps on glass and the film appears to burn; and later on, when the camera turns around to display the entire crew. 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 director Bertolt Brecht. ...

Possible interpretations

The movie can be interpreted in the following way: Elisabeth and the nurse are one and the same person. 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 Elisabeth) as Mrs. Vogler. Elisabeth is the inner self of the same person: she is a quiet, strong personality. This interpretation is suggested by the director when the two half-faces of the nurse&Elisabeth are put together into one picture, one face (Note also that the nurse says during the beggining that she thougth that Elisabeth is very similar to her)

Censorship

Two scenes are frequently cut from versions of the film; a brief shot at the beginning depicting an erect penis (removed in the American DVDs, but not the Accent release), 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.

External link

• Persona at the Internet Movie Database