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I've always been a little scared of Bergman - subtitled, Deep and Meaningful, and long, and I've failed to watch The Seventh Seal since I taped it as part of the BBC Century of Cinema. Time Out's list includes this, the epic Fanny and Alexander and ...
XXXVIII: Ingmar Bergman, Persona (1966)
But for a framing device, this is mostly a monologue, a monologue delivered by Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson) to her patient Elizabet Volger (Liv Ullman). Elizabet is an actor who had some kind of nervous break down in the middle of a performance of Electra and who hasn't spoken again. Alma is to observe her, and does so up at a doctor's summerhouse.
Alma talks. Alma talks for Sweden. In fact, you wonder whether Elizabet will crack and tell her to shut the hell up. Maybe she just can't get a word in edgeways. She talks about how she doesn't feel up to the job. She talks about how much she admires Elizabet. She talks about her fiance. She talks about how she had sex on a beach with two young boys. She talks - and you begins to wonder if she isn't the one who is ill.
Electra is a Greek mythological figure who was appropriated by Jung for a female version of the Oedipus complex; it stands in for supposed neuroses of women (as opposed to men who are also neurotic); in Mourning Becomes Electra (as in the Oresteia) Electra meets her brother at their father's grave and plots to kill their mother and stepfather. Has the play stirred up guilt over or disavowal of murderous thoughts?
At one point in the film the two are visited by Mr Vogel, who seems to have mixed the two of them up; equally camera work makes the couple increasingly difficult to distinguish, even superimposing the two heads. Who is the patient?
Then there is the frame device, which also breaks in mid-film. The film starts with a montage (including a erect penis, cut from pre DVD releases) and splices in what appear to be silent films and an animation, as well as a film countdown. The film is announcing its filmness - more so when the images melt as the celluloid perishes, and the spooling of a real at the end. Bergman had wanted to name the film Kinematografi which points towards artifice, and the name Persona suggests play acting. Is this a Jekyll and Hyde split, a peculiar talking (at) cure, or - ?
Art Cinema never explains, never apologises. It just repays thought.
Totals: 38 [Cinema: 13; DVD: 23; TV: 2]
XXXVIII: Ingmar Bergman, Persona (1966)
But for a framing device, this is mostly a monologue, a monologue delivered by Sister Alma (Bibi Andersson) to her patient Elizabet Volger (Liv Ullman). Elizabet is an actor who had some kind of nervous break down in the middle of a performance of Electra and who hasn't spoken again. Alma is to observe her, and does so up at a doctor's summerhouse.
Alma talks. Alma talks for Sweden. In fact, you wonder whether Elizabet will crack and tell her to shut the hell up. Maybe she just can't get a word in edgeways. She talks about how she doesn't feel up to the job. She talks about how much she admires Elizabet. She talks about her fiance. She talks about how she had sex on a beach with two young boys. She talks - and you begins to wonder if she isn't the one who is ill.
Electra is a Greek mythological figure who was appropriated by Jung for a female version of the Oedipus complex; it stands in for supposed neuroses of women (as opposed to men who are also neurotic); in Mourning Becomes Electra (as in the Oresteia) Electra meets her brother at their father's grave and plots to kill their mother and stepfather. Has the play stirred up guilt over or disavowal of murderous thoughts?
At one point in the film the two are visited by Mr Vogel, who seems to have mixed the two of them up; equally camera work makes the couple increasingly difficult to distinguish, even superimposing the two heads. Who is the patient?
Then there is the frame device, which also breaks in mid-film. The film starts with a montage (including a erect penis, cut from pre DVD releases) and splices in what appear to be silent films and an animation, as well as a film countdown. The film is announcing its filmness - more so when the images melt as the celluloid perishes, and the spooling of a real at the end. Bergman had wanted to name the film Kinematografi which points towards artifice, and the name Persona suggests play acting. Is this a Jekyll and Hyde split, a peculiar talking (at) cure, or - ?
Art Cinema never explains, never apologises. It just repays thought.
Totals: 38 [Cinema: 13; DVD: 23; TV: 2]
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