A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are melding together.A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are melding together.A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are melding together.
- Nominated for 1 BAFTA Award
- 8 wins & 4 nominations total
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaAccording to himself, Ingmar Bergman fell in love with Liv Ullmann during the making of the movie.
- GoofsThe part where Alma reads a passage from her book to Elisabeth at the beach was translated clumsily to English version where the passage loses most of its meaning.
- Quotes
The Doctor: I understand, all right. The hopeless dream of being - not seeming, but being. At every waking moment, alert. The gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone. The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. Suicide? No, too vulgar. But you can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don't have to lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you needn't play any parts or make wrong gestures. Or so you thought. But reality is diabolical. Your hiding place isn't watertight. Life trickles in from the outside, and you're forced to react. No one asks if it is true or false, if you're genuine or just a sham. Such things matter only in the theatre, and hardly there either. I understand why you don't speak, why you don't move, why you've created a part for yourself out of apathy. I understand. I admire. You should go on with this part until it is played out, until it loses interest for you. Then you can leave it, just as you've left your other parts one by one.
- Alternate versionsThe American version, released by United Artists, omits a brief close-up shot of an erect penis from the film's pre-credit collage.
- ConnectionsEdited into Histoire(s) du cinéma: Fatale beauté (1994)
- SoundtracksAdagio from Concerto No. 2 in E major for Violin, Strings and Continuo, BWV 1042
Written by Johann Sebastian Bach
The ambitions are clear from the way the film is 'packaged' using the classic projection room effects. Short sequences from classical films emphasize the effect of declaring 'here we have a work of cinema'. The prelude sets up an atmosphere that could be defined as a dream, we are clearly in a world that resembles the real world but which exists only in the eyes and souls of the spectators, built with materials put together by the creator of the film from his own thoughts and dreams about the world. The 'story' could be told in few words, even if it is not a banal story. This is where the interpretations begin. What do we actually see on the screen? An ambiguous relationship between two women, evolving from a patient-care relationship to an attraction that starts to look as a melding of one into the other? Are the two characters the symbols of the two facets of the human personality - the soul and the character - as interpreted by some experts in the psychoanalysis theories? Is there a hint (or more) to a lesbian relationship? Maybe there is an element of class struggle, between the actress active on the intellectual level and the country girl whose strongest emotions are on the erotic plane? Are we dealing with a horror story, a thriller in which there is a physical threat and a struggle between the two women to gain control one over the other? Why did the actress stop talking - personal traumas, maternity failure? What is the connection between the horrors of the outside world (wars, the Holocaust) and the inner storms concealed by the Scandinavian calm? These are just a few of the questions that can be asked and of the possible interpretations.
Comprehensive and ambitious cinematographic constructions involve risks. More than 50 years after the film, the Vietnam War is no longer actuality but history, closer to the Holocaust which is also quoted by the famous photograph of the terrorized little boy in the Warsaw ghetto. The black and white image also gains aesthetic significance, not necessarily obvious and intentional at the time the film was made. Acting is gorgeous, Bergman's two preferred actresses (and lovers), Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann are building on the screen two versions of femininity that at some point merge one into the other, two variants of the director's fascination with women for which he created the most generous roles in his films. Seen for the first time or seen again today, 'Persona' is a cinematic art concentrate and an intellectual challenge that continues to attract and fascinate through its open character and enigmas.
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Details
Box office
- Gross worldwide
- $90,813
- Runtime1 hour 23 minutes
- Color
- Sound mix
- Aspect ratio
- 1.37 : 1
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