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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

“

At some time or other, I said that Persona saved my life — that is no exaggeration. If I had not found the strength to make that film, I would probably have been all washed up. One significant point: for the first time I did not care in the least whether the result would be a commercial success...[1]

”

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. Some critics have seen August Strindberg's play, The Stronger as a source of inspiration for Persona.^[2] Bergman wrote Persona during nine weeks while recovering from pneumonia.^[3] During filming Bergman wanted to call the film A Bit of Cinematography. His producer suggested something more accesible and the film's title was changed. ^[4]

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".^[5] Another critic has described it as "one of this century's great works of art".^[6]In Sight and Sound's 1972 poll of the ten greatest films of all time, Persona was ranked at number five.^[7]

Contents 1 Plot 2 Cast 3 Possible interpretations 3.1 First reading 3.2 Second reading 3.3 Third reading 3.4 Brechtian alienation technique 3.5 Opening sequence 4 Censorship 5 Other films 6 Awards and recognition 7 References 8 Bibliography 9 External links

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.

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

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.

Lloyd Michaels sums up what he calls "the most widely held view" of Persona's content".^[8] According to this view, Persona is "a kind of modernist horror movie"^[9] Elisabet's condition, diagnosed by the psychiatrist as "the hopeless dream to be", is "the shared condition of both life and film art".^[10] Bergman and Elisabet share the same dilemma: they cannot respond authentically to "large catastrophes" (such as the holocaust or Vietnam).^[11] The actress Elisabet responds by stopping speaking: by contrast the filmmaker Bergman emphasizes that "necessary illusions" enable us to live.

Sontag suggests that Persona is constructed as a series of variations on a theme of "doubling".^[12] The subject of the film, Sontag proposes, is "violence of the spirit".^[13] 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".^[14] 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.

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

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).

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.

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

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.

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.

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]}

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.

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.

David Lynch's films Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006) share similarities with Bergman's Persona.

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.

Robert Altman's expressionist film 3 Women is also influenced by Persona as Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek begin to shift roles.

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.

• Persona won the 1967 National Society of Film Critics awards for Best Film, Best Director (Bergman) and Best Actress (Andersson).^[15]
• Persona was included in The New York Times Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made.^[16]

• 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, pp. 123-146, ISBN 0312420218, <http://books.google.com/books?id=cHoIAP6CTkoC&pg=RA1-PA123&vq=%22bergman%27s+persona%22&dq=%22styles+of+radical+will%22&sig=RDjjDjU0MhXH7XdUiqSZhThWmuo>

• 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

v • d • e The films of Ingmar Bergman
1940s	Crisis • It Rains on Our Love • A Ship to India • Music in Darkness • Port of Call • Prison • Thirst
1950s	To Joy • This Can't Happen Here • Summer Interlude • Secrets of Women • Summer with Monika • Sawdust and Tinsel • A Lesson in Love • Dreams • Smiles of a Summer Night • The Seventh Seal • Wild Strawberries • Brink of Life • The Magician
1960s	The Virgin Spring • The Devil's Eye • Through a Glass Darkly • Winter Light • The Silence • All These Women • Persona • Hour of the Wolf • Shame • The Rite • The Passion of Anna
1970s	The Touch • Cries and Whispers • Scenes from a Marriage • The Magic Flute • Face to Face • The Serpent's Egg • Autumn Sonata
1980s	From the Life of the Marionettes • Fanny and Alexander • Karin's Face • After the Rehearsal
1990s	In the Presence of a Clown
2000s	The Image Makers • Saraband

v • d • e Cinema of Sweden
Actors • Directors • Films A-Z • Chronology of films • Cinematographers • Composers • Editors • Producers • Screenwriters