When a stage actor inexplicably goes mute, she and her caretaker are wrapped up in a mysterious, but transcendent, emotional and spiritual transference. Bergman’s radical, nuanced, and profound Persona is not to be missed. 60th anniversary screening.
Persona is the first collaboration between Bergman and his eventual long-term collaborator Liv Ullman. Ullman is Elisabet, who, after losing her ability to speak, is looked after by Alma (a transcendent Bibi Andersson) in a remote beach house. Over the next several weeks, as Alma struggles to reach her mute patient, the two women find themselves experiencing a strange emotional convergence. Visually, the film is equally stark and stunning, and Bergman, Ullman, and Andersson produce a penetrating existential look into subjectivity and psychosis. [83 min; drama, thriller; Swedish with English subtitles]
"Persona still conveys a power to lift the scalp and scramble the brain, and the fact that it's out-of-time says less about it being dated than it does about it remaining a radically visionary work." — Geoff Pevere, The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
"One of the screen's supreme works and perhaps Ingmar Bergman's finest film, Persona is also his most radical in form and technique." — Michael Wilmington, Chicago Tribune
"Persona is a film we return to over the years, for the beauty of its images and because we hope to understand its mysteries." — Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times
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