At the beginning of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s
deceptively minimalist character study, we see the twin elements
of an arc lamp -- the kind that was once used to project moving
pictures onto a theater screen -- come together in a blaze that
floods our vision with light. The movie’s title refers to the
psychological drama that we’re about to witness, but its roots
derive from the Latin word referring to the masks worn on stage
to present characters to an audience. In his book
Mindscreen: Bergman, Godard, and First-Person Film,
historian Bruce Kawin argues quite
eloquently that Persona is a film in which light itself
must find a mask to tell its story. All this goes above and
beyond the simple pleasures offered by an intriguing and
disturbing drama, well-told, which contains some of the most
justly famous sequences in all of film. Nurse Alma is charged
with tending to Elisabeth, a renowned actress who has stopped
speaking as part of a conscious act of withdrawal from the
world's misery. Finally, this is a
picture which demands, and rewards, repeated viewing. What you
get out of Persona is directly proportionate to what you put into it.
Navel-Gazers: 10 Movies
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Reviews by Bryant Frazer bryant@deep-focus.com
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