Persona. (15.)
Directed by Ingmar Bergman. 1966.
Starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand, Jörgen Lindström. Black and White. Swedish with subtitles. In Black and White. Opening on New Year's Day, part of a Bergman season at the BFI Southbank, running to mid-March, celebrating the centenary of his birth. 84 mins
New Year's Day is traditionally the day when people approach the future with renewed belief, a hope that things will get better. Or at least they used to; this decade has severely tested this tradition and this January 1st the BFI have acted swiftly to crush down any small spark of optimism by unleashing an Ingmar Bergman season on us.
If you are going to do Bergman than you may as well begin with the film that is his purest expression of Swedish angst, a film where a shot of a man's hand being hammered into the cross can be casually chucked in like it was no big deal. Persona contains both sides of Bergman's work. On the one hand it is a boldly experimental piece of cinema. There are abrasive montage sequences and moments that remind audiences that is a piece of cinema, such as the celluloid catching fire or shots of the film crew at work. Between this meta barrages though, it is very theatrical: a dramatic two-hander, where one of the characters is silent.
The film is two women. Elisabet (Ullman) is an actress who suddenly dries up on stage in the middle of a performance of Electra, and then refuses to speak. She is put in a barren, sparse hospital room with only TV footage of Vietnam for company. When this fail to bring her out of herself she is sent off to convalesce by the seaside in a house on the island of Faro with a nurse Alma (Andersson.) Alma talks, Elisabet doesn't: initially they are friendly, later they are not.
Sven Nykvist's beautiful cinematography is in a black and white that is heavy on the white. All this negative space is usually filled with tight close-ups of one or both of the leads. It looks extraordinary and, thugh we can debate how well the film holds up, its distinctive look certainly made a mark. Bergman is one of the most parodied of directors and, after The Seventh Seal, this is his most parodied and homaged film, even if sometimes those are parodies of its parodies.
Persona was born of an era when Arthouse cinema was at its peak, when artists were expected to be indulgent and inscrutable and audiences would demand their money back if they understood what it was about. It must have been a marvel when it came out but seen today it can be judged to be a little blunt, a little too obvious. It is though still one of cinema's most intense experiences.
Directed by Ingmar Bergman. 1966.
Starring Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand, Jörgen Lindström. Black and White. Swedish with subtitles. In Black and White. Opening on New Year's Day, part of a Bergman season at the BFI Southbank, running to mid-March, celebrating the centenary of his birth. 84 mins
New Year's Day is traditionally the day when people approach the future with renewed belief, a hope that things will get better. Or at least they used to; this decade has severely tested this tradition and this January 1st the BFI have acted swiftly to crush down any small spark of optimism by unleashing an Ingmar Bergman season on us.
If you are going to do Bergman than you may as well begin with the film that is his purest expression of Swedish angst, a film where a shot of a man's hand being hammered into the cross can be casually chucked in like it was no big deal. Persona contains both sides of Bergman's work. On the one hand it is a boldly experimental piece of cinema. There are abrasive montage sequences and moments that remind audiences that is a piece of cinema, such as the celluloid catching fire or shots of the film crew at work. Between this meta barrages though, it is very theatrical: a dramatic two-hander, where one of the characters is silent.
The film is two women. Elisabet (Ullman) is an actress who suddenly dries up on stage in the middle of a performance of Electra, and then refuses to speak. She is put in a barren, sparse hospital room with only TV footage of Vietnam for company. When this fail to bring her out of herself she is sent off to convalesce by the seaside in a house on the island of Faro with a nurse Alma (Andersson.) Alma talks, Elisabet doesn't: initially they are friendly, later they are not.
Sven Nykvist's beautiful cinematography is in a black and white that is heavy on the white. All this negative space is usually filled with tight close-ups of one or both of the leads. It looks extraordinary and, thugh we can debate how well the film holds up, its distinctive look certainly made a mark. Bergman is one of the most parodied of directors and, after The Seventh Seal, this is his most parodied and homaged film, even if sometimes those are parodies of its parodies.
Persona was born of an era when Arthouse cinema was at its peak, when artists were expected to be indulgent and inscrutable and audiences would demand their money back if they understood what it was about. It must have been a marvel when it came out but seen today it can be judged to be a little blunt, a little too obvious. It is though still one of cinema's most intense experiences.
