Persona (1966)
Country: SV
Technical: bw 81m
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand
Synopsis:
A nurse tends an actress who has grown terrified of merely 'seeming' and turned in on herself so that she not only no longer acts, she does not react. Gradually the nurse learns to speak for her and confides in her until she is no longer necessary as a separate 'persona' for study, but becomes the physical half of a newly formed whole.
Review:
Bergman's most brutally modernist film is a caustic comment on the artist's parasitic rôle. At times one is unsure whether to laugh grimly or not, at others the straining for effect has dated somewhat, so that one does when one shouldn't. Nevertheless, stylistically it is a bold stroke, even featuring one scene where a long painful speech about maternal hate is repeated for the reverse angles of speaker/listener, like some cinematic parataxis; the effect is to allow us to study the technique of performance without the director's intervention.
Country: SV
Technical: bw 81m
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand
Synopsis:
A nurse tends an actress who has grown terrified of merely 'seeming' and turned in on herself so that she not only no longer acts, she does not react. Gradually the nurse learns to speak for her and confides in her until she is no longer necessary as a separate 'persona' for study, but becomes the physical half of a newly formed whole.
Review:
Bergman's most brutally modernist film is a caustic comment on the artist's parasitic rôle. At times one is unsure whether to laugh grimly or not, at others the straining for effect has dated somewhat, so that one does when one shouldn't. Nevertheless, stylistically it is a bold stroke, even featuring one scene where a long painful speech about maternal hate is repeated for the reverse angles of speaker/listener, like some cinematic parataxis; the effect is to allow us to study the technique of performance without the director's intervention.
Country: SV
Technical: bw 81m
Director: Ingmar Bergman
Cast: Liv Ullmann, Bibi Andersson, Gunnar Bjornstrand
Synopsis:
A nurse tends an actress who has grown terrified of merely 'seeming' and turned in on herself so that she not only no longer acts, she does not react. Gradually the nurse learns to speak for her and confides in her until she is no longer necessary as a separate 'persona' for study, but becomes the physical half of a newly formed whole.
Review:
Bergman's most brutally modernist film is a caustic comment on the artist's parasitic rôle. At times one is unsure whether to laugh grimly or not, at others the straining for effect has dated somewhat, so that one does when one shouldn't. Nevertheless, stylistically it is a bold stroke, even featuring one scene where a long painful speech about maternal hate is repeated for the reverse angles of speaker/listener, like some cinematic parataxis; the effect is to allow us to study the technique of performance without the director's intervention.