Please Do Not Forget... 12.18.08: Persona

Posted by Erik Luers on 12.18.2008

One of Bergman's best gets a second look.........

Throughout the 1960s, European art cinema was beginning to play a pivotal role in American movie houses, thanks in no small part to directors Francois Truffaut, Jean-Luc Godard, Michelangelo Antonioni, and Ingmar Bergman. A remarkable influx of their films were being released to critical acclaim and financial success as foreign features were sought out and viewed by the eager masses. In 1963, film critic Andrew Sarris introduced the auteur theory to American audiences (a concept derived from French film theorists), thus inviting a new perspective for cinemagoers to see a director's complete body of work. As the role of the director became more profound and heavily debated, audiences began noting the key themes and concepts present throughout a director's complete filmography.

One such director was the aforementioned Ingmar Bergman, the highly influential existentialist from Sweden who was best known in America for Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, and his two Academy Award winning hits, The Virgin Spring and Through a Glass Darkly. In 1967, his latest effort, simply titled Persona, would arrive in art houses throughout America to confused, bewildered, and somewhat fascinated audiences. Persona was something new and inspiring, difficult and complex. It would change the way many people viewed films, and it would also change the way many filmmakers (including the critically praised David Lynch), made films. Persona's impact in American cinema specifically was groundbreaking, daring, and unmatched.

1967 consisted of a new, daring approach to filmmaking, one which seemed to be constantly alternating itself in the wake of the ongoing Vietnam War. Guess Who's Coming to Dinner was a pivotal piece which touched on interracial relationships, a lifestyle long thought taboo at this point. It also starred three famous actors (Katherine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Sidney Poitier), enticing wider, mainstream audiences to give the film (and its message) an unbiased chance. In the same year, Poitier would also star as Virgil Tibbs, an African-American detective in the deep south, in Norman Jewison's In the Heat of the Night, another film which dealt heavily with race relations, centered between Tibbs and a white sheriff played by Rod Steiger. Mike Nichols re-energized youth angst with The Graduate and Arthur Penn exposed moviegoers to hard, realistic depictions of violence and bloodshed in the Warren Beatty starring vehicle, Bonnie and Clyde. The iconic idea of an American youth rebel became synonymous with late 1960s popular culture.

Persona was released in this country amongst these films to smaller mainstream acceptance. If one were to ask a regular moviegoer today which performance he remembered more: Dustin Hoffman's in The Graduate or Liv Ullmann's in Persona, Hoffman's would be the most frequent answer. Indeed, Bergman's film may not have spoken to everyone (it's too abstract, layered, and all together difficult for most viewers), but its reputation among passionate cinephiles and filmmakers has not diminished. Forty-one years after its New York premiere, Bergman's film still entices, confuses, and provokes. Many have felt that it would take two or three viewings to fully conquer the film and its ideas in a constructive manner, although perhaps the idea of solving the film is insubstantial and futile.

Bergman opens the film by showing a film projector working at full speed, with the film stock being exposed to a bright, glowing yellow light. The projector starts working furiously as different reels become mixed in and entangled with one another, causing the viewer to see a bizarre assortment of shocking images. The montage begins with start up cues and numbers which lead to a quick shot of male genitalia; it seems as if it were taken from an early instructional medical piece. Bergman then gives us a quick glimpse of an animated short, which then cuts away to show a brief, frantic moment from a silent film. The clips seem unrelated, as if played simply to evoke feelings of disgust and anger, though that is too simple a reasoning to argue and stand by.

What Bergman seems to be showing us is the very birth of cinema, from its nuts and bolts (the light, the reels, the projector), through its early conceptions (the animated short, the silent film), and to its current, 1960s, avant garde, documentarian approach to presenting subjects (the slaughtering of animals, people being burned alive in Vietnam). Bergman is, in a sense, summing up film history from its beginnings in 1895 to its present day manifestation (the images hearken to everything from the Lumiere brothers to the French New Wave). If one finds these images shocking, they are correct in their emotions. Bergman is emphasizing the power of the medium and its ability to provoke and enable viewers into feeling various highs and lows. Here, film is used as a stimulant, designed to get you off on its rapidly paced, dangerous imagery. The picture quality becomes much more clear and distinct as the images continue, playing with various forms of focus and graphic imagery.

Do the images in this sequence add up to anything in regards to the overall narrative structure of the film? In this writer's humble opinion, the answer is a resounding yes. The film's narrative style disregards and even rejects structure, working strictly on the basis of a primal, emotional level, designed to entice through visual imagery. Bergman has described the film as having " touched wordless secrets only the cinema can discover", shedding further light on the fact that the imagery is the focal point of the piece. However, Bergman had not given up on his strict religious, Lutheran upbringing, as indicated by two key images present in the montage. The first is the appearance of the spider which walks across the mesmerizing white backdrop. As Karin discovered God to be a spider in an upstairs closet in Through a Glass Darkly, Bergman is significantly presenting it here again, perhaps as a nod (or homage) to his earlier film. The image certainly correlates nicely with Karin's fear of the arachnid in the earlier film.

The second key image is the visceral, brutally frank depiction of the two nails being hammered into the hands of a man we never see. As the camera lingers on the blood that pours out, viewers will correctly identify this image as being in reference to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Bergman uses this ingrained image to indicate Christian faith and the guilt and suffering that can come along with it. As the clenched fist slowly releases (indicating death), Bergman continues on to new visual stimulation involving a young boy and his fascination for two women and their faces.

These two women, Sister Alma and Elisabet Volger (played respectively by Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann), become the two subjects that Persona then focuses its attention on. As Elisabet, a stage actress, suddenly stops speaking one day, Sister Alma, a nurse, tends to her, attempting to discover the reason for her newfound solitude. Throughout the film, Elisabeth observes and listens to Alma, but she does not utter a single word until the end of the film (unless we are to believe that Elisabeth does whisper to Alma at the summer house, "go to bed. Otherwise, you'll fall asleep at the table," thirty-five minutes into the film, which Alma then repeats to herself without acknowledging Elisabet's whisper).

Why does Bergman deprive this character of speech? Perhaps he is presenting her as a woman in protest, fed up with the gender roles assigned to her by society. This society in question, one in which she unwillingly abides to, is filled with destruction and horror, as indicated by the scene in which Elisabet stands in a corner, terrified, observing the graphic depiction of Vietnamese people on television. As she stands in shock, she covers her mouth, preventing any outside influence from invading her body. Simply put, no words will come out and she will not allow any outside forces to come in. By not engaging in verbal interaction, she is allowed to be herself and remain uninfluenced (and unexposed) to others. By remaining silent, Bergman also gives Elisabet control over Alma; in a private letter written by Elizabet, Alma, being friendly and open, is condemned and ridiculed for being such a verbal creature. Alma's desire and need to befriend her patient ultimately provides her character's downfall. Alma becomes the patient (and Elisabet the nurse) as Bergman cleverly reverses the roles by presenting them as two sides of the same coin. The roles are interchangeable as Bergman shows these two women as being of a similar ilk.

As the similarities between the two characters coincide, the question may arise as to whether there really are two women to begin with. As implied by their somewhat shared facial structures (Bergman has said that he got the idea for Persona by observing the similarities between the two actresses' faces), Alma and Elisabet may very well be one and the same. Frequent Bergman collaborator, cinematographer Sven Nykvist, consistently shoots the women in profile, relying on intimate closeups of the women's faces to imply their sameness.

Interestingly, Bergman stages one crucial scene from two different angles, allowing Alma's monologue, criticizing Elisabet's mothering, to be played out twice. The first time the monologue is given, the camera stays on Elisabet's face for four minutes, capturing her subtle reactions to Alma's deprecating speech. Bergman than has the scene play out once more, although this time, the camera stays on Alma (the speaker's) face. When the monologue concludes, Bergman combines the two women's faces together, split down the middle, enabling a visual trick to possess distinct meaning. The two have combined and become one (similar to the dream sequence in which Elisabet caresses Alma and pushes the hair off of her forehead, erotically soothing and comforting her).

This vast idea of duality influenced American filmmaker, David Lynch, to create a television series, Mulholland Dr., based on a similar concept. Lynch had delved into the world of television ten years earlier with his hit show, Twin Peaks, and was ready to take another foray into primetime. When ABC executives deemed the pilot too weird and nonsensical (criticisms that Persona unfairly received), the show was canned, and Lynch was forced to present his story within a two and a half hour feature running time. The result was something invigorating.

At its core, Mulholland Dr. is about two women, Betty and Rita (played by Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring) who become friends through a series of strange events; Rita doesn't show up on Betty's doorstep but rather, in her shower. Lynch, claiming to be a huge fan of Bergman's earlier film, robs Rita of an important character trait: her memory. As Bergman literally silenced Elisabet, Lynch was using Rita's handicap to envelop a similar sense of mystery. Who was she? Where did she come from? Why were there people out to kill her? The viewer is never given an answer. Rita is completely about what we cannot understand, and how no amount of clues will help us in our questioning. She has arrived in Betty's life unexpectedly, hoping to successfully start a new life by putting an end to her old one.

While Bergman made Elisabet mute so that she could withhold information from Alma (and the viewer), Lynch has written Rita as memory stricken, prompting her to have no other choice than to withhold information. She keeps quiet as a result of a technicality. Both Elisabet and Rita serve as their story's MacGuffin, enabling the viewer to contemplate (or expand) on the women's unknown backstories, however difficult and altogether inconclusive that may be. Rita is not withholding information by choice (Elisabet seems to be doing so out of anger), but is as confused and distraught as Betty and Alma.

At times, the two leads in both films are depicted as being sexually aroused (or eroticized) by one another. One particular scene late in Lynch's film has the two women lying in bed together nude, kissing and fondling each other passionately. Betty is attracted to Rita's mystery, and thus, is sexually alive as a result. When the two women embrace, it seems somewhat natural, as if animalistic; the act seems so spontaneous and void of the complexities relationships seem to bring.

The scene's impromptu rawness is eerily similar to a particular sequence in Persona, where Elisabet enters Alma's room and begins to hold and caress her. In both films the two women are in highly sexualized states and, since the opposite woman is the only other person in their lives, they use sex to effectively communicate. Since Elisabet does not possess speech and Rita not have a memory to draw from, the two women resort to primal needs and urges to interact with one another. If they are not bonding due to their love for one another, they are emerging because of their similarities; for them, sex is a form of vanity.

The idea of eroticism being present throughout these women's personal journeys is perhaps even more clearly realized when Alma describes her wild, promiscuous night on the beach a few years prior. Alma picks apart each detail in descriptive fashion, as she vividly recalls the two boys with whom she engaged in sexually charged games. As this intense monologue is given, Elisabet lays quietly on the bed, taking in every word. Bergman's wording is heavily graphic (the English dubbed versions remove most of the explicit dialogue), which, in effect, only adds to the erotic tension on display. The two women are fascinated by the story, Alma perhaps because of the realization of what had happened, and Elisabet because of the sexual advances Alma seems to subliminally be making.

Similarly, Rita, in an attempt to sexually gratify Betty, wears a blonde, 1950s movie star style, wig; she's Marilyn Monroe on Sunset Blvd. By having Rita conform to Betty's appearance, they are losing their individuality by becoming one. If Lynch would have made the two women's faces merge, he may have been accused of blatantly stealing from Bergman, although Mulholland Dr.'s narrative would justify the editing trick as well.

As Mulholland Dr. concludes, the viewer is unsure as to whether or not Betty and Rita are the same person, or just strangers with matching identities. Betty is revealed to be an envious, emotionally fragile woman who worships Rita's stellar image (the two have never met), and Rita is actually a famous, desirable actress. Rita has become what Betty always aspired to be: a successful femme fatale in Hollywood. Were the first two hours of the film fictional, or were we seeing the story unfold exclusively through Betty's (now known as Diane) eyes?

Betty is apparently jealous and suffers from schizophrenia. Rita has been given back her memory (although the "real" Rita never lost it to begin with), and is therefore granted full control of her career. She is the actress in power. Elisabeth too is depicted as an actress in control, and she too loses her handicap when she regains (or chooses to use) her speech. Alma and Betty are fascinated by the idea of a female artist, and they subsequently submit their power over to them.

Although Mulholland Dr. borrows heavily from Persona (the concept of combining two women's physical and emotional handicaps and structures), the film is able to branch out and become something entirely new. Bergman's film provided the influential themes and ideas, and Lynch used them to benefit and strengthen his film's narrative. Persona's impact is felt not only through Lynch's work, but by aspiring screenwriters and directors the world over.

Bergman's film is a puzzle that opens itself up to discussion but, ultimately, cannot be solved. As previously noted, attempting to solve the film is not necessary (or particularly encouraged) in enjoying what Bergman has accomplished here. Film intellectual Susan Sontag writes, "the insufficiency of the clues Bergman has planted must be taken to indicate that he intends the film to remain partly encoded. The viewer can only move toward, but never achieve, certainty about the action" . Persona and its director have brought forth so many new filmmakers that it goes without saying that the film is a masterpiece, one stemming from both the here and now and the ever mysterious unconscious.