Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.
Ingmar Bergman’s 1966 film Persona is one of the best films I have ever seen. It reaches down into the depths of the subconscious human mind as few films ever have. It is psychodrama at its very best, offering a limitless number of interpretations and meanings. This is a film that can never be completely understood because its ambiguity is inherent. You will think long and hard about the meaning of this film, not from a sense of frustration but with a feeling of probing endless opportunities.
The Story: Alma (Bibi Andersson), a 25-year-old nurse, has been put in charge of the care of Elisabet Volger (Liv Ullmann), a well-known stage actress who inexplicably stopped talking while on stage playing Electra and who has refused to talk or move since. After her first encounter with Elisabet, Alma expresses doubts to the psychiatrist about whether she has enough life experience to effectively deal with a patient who is as strong and cruel as Elisabet. The actress is indeed stronger, more mature, and more experienced than Alma. Alma is still quite innocent and just two years out of her nursing program. Alma is awed by Elisabet’s fame, professional accomplishments, glamor, and magnetism.
Elisabet steadfastly maintains her silence through sheer force of determination. In her hospital room watching television, she recoils from a news broadcast of monks in Vietnam engaging in self-immolation in protest to the Vietnam War. Elisabet receives a letter from her husband, which Alma reads to her. It states in part, “Dearest Elisabet, Since I’m not allowed to see you, I’m writing to you. . . . Do you remember saying, ‘I’m beginning to understand what it means to be married’? You have taught me that we have to see each other as two anxious children, filled with good will and the best intentions, but ruled by powers that we can only partially control.” There is a photo in the envelope of Elisabet’s son. Elisabet takes it from Alma and tears it in half!
The psychiatrist sees no good reason to keep Elisabet hospitalized longer and suggests that she and her nurse, Alma, spend the summer at the psychiatrist’s remote seaside cottage. There, Elisabet continues her silence. Alma must do the speaking for both. Perhaps out of a feeling that communication may encourage Elisabet to open up, Alma begins to pour out her heart and recount some of her own most significant life experiences
Alma, for example, tells Elisabet in detail about a sexual encounter and its tragic aftermath. Alma was engaged at the time but her fiancée had gone to town. Alma went to a secluded beach to sunbathe in the nude, but another girl appeared from a nearby beach and lay down next to her. After a while, the two girls noticed that they were being spied on by two boys from the bushes on a nearby cliff. Alma was embarrassed and felt inclined to cover herself, but the other girl said that she didn’t mind if they looked and rolled over on her back, exposing her lovely breasts. After a while, one of the boys approached and sat near them, feigning a casual attitude. The other girl asked the boy if he wasn’t going to come into her and soon the boy was on top of her, his face immediately next to Alma as he made love to the other girl. When he was done, Alma asked him if he wasn’t going to do her as well. As soon as he was inside her, she had an orgasm and then several more – the best of her life. Later, the other girl called to the remaining boy who was trembling near the bushes and invited him over, giving him manual and oral sex. When Alma returned home, she also made love with her fiancée and found that it was better than ever before. Later, however, Alma discovered that she was pregnant and her husband helped to arrange an abortion, since neither felt ready to have a child. Alma has since suffered profound regret about the abortion. This famous scene in Persona combines both palpable eroticism and terrible despair. It is a scene that effectively illustrates that eroticism does not need to be explicit. Talking about it can be just as stimulating as showing it graphically. There is a comparably erotic verbal scene at the opening of Godard’s Weekend.
Later, Alma is taking letters to the post office when she notices that a letter written by Elisabet has come unsealed. Her curiosity gets the best of her and she can’t resist reading it. It is addressed to the psychiatrist and Alma is offended by the contents of the letter. In it, Elisabet relates some of what Alma has said to her in confidence, but Elisabet expresses mainly a detached, observational interest, as though Alma were some kind of study. Her admiration and (possibly) infatuation with Elisabet begins to shift to anger and contempt, as she feels betrayed. She has opened herself up to Elisabet but received only detached amusement in return.
Alma’s sense of identity begins to be overwhelmed by her close interaction with Elisabet. She identifies with Elisabet, especially because she must do her talking for her. She says early on, “I think I could change myself into you.” Later, there are several sequences (which could possibly be reality but are more likely Alma’s dreams) that further develop the idea. In one, Elisabet enters Alma’s room while she is sleeping, then walks out into a light-bathed adjacent room and nearly disappears into the light. She returns and the two embrace and look into a mirror with their faces side by side. Elisabet brushes back Alma’s hair and the amazing similarity in their faces becomes fully evident. Later, in another such sequence (probably another dream), Elisabet’s husband (Gunnar Bjornstrand) arrives and calls to her. Alma goes to meet him first and he mistakes her for Elisabet. She tries to correct him but he persists in his mistake. Elisabet comes up behind Alma, takes her hand, and uses it to caress the husband’s face. Alma then imagines that she has sex with Elisabet’s husband.
The relationship between Elisabet and Alma continues to sway in a hostile direction. Alma not only feels the betrayal of Elisabet’s letter but also that Elisabet is trying to take over her identity – to steal her capacity for love and sensuality. Alma lashes out at Elisabet who bloodies her nose in retaliation. Later, Alma leaves a shard of glass where Elisabet is likely to step on it with her bare feet. When Elisabet does step on it, she seems to sense that Alma had left the piece of glass there on purpose. It is Alma who is most damaged by the encounter, since she has violated her role as a nurse as well as becoming spiteful and unfeeling like Elisabet. Later, during a spat, Alma makes a threatening gesture with a pan of boiling water, forcing Elisabet to vocalize, “No, don’t!” This could be interpreted as a small breakthrough, since it is at least an assertion by Elisabet that she wants to live and not to suffer.
Near the end of the summer (in a stunning and famous monologue), Alma confronts Elisabet with her perception about the cause of Elisabet’s silence, accusing her of being unable to bond with her son. It seems that Elisabet had been told by a friend that she lacked maternal qualities. To disprove that reproach to herself, Elisabet had gotten pregnant but soon regretted her choice, as her actress’ body began to balloon out. Then, the birth process was painful and prolonged and apparently the child was born deformed. Immediately after the boy’s difficult birth, we was given over to nursemaids and relatives so that Elisabet could return to the stage. Elisabet can barely stand to see the boy despite his desperate obsession with her as his mother. This monologue is repeated twice in the film, verbatim. The first time through, we watch Elisabet’s face in close-up as she listens to Alma’s accusations. The second time, we watch Alma’s face as she speaks the monologue. At the end of the monologue, there is an amazing composite image that consists of one half of Elisabet’s face and the other half Alma’s. Reportedly, the two actresses had no idea that this was going to be done and when they first saw it screened, each thought it was the face of the other actress.
Gradually, Alma manages to reassert her own distinct identity, separating herself from Elisabet. She says, “I’ve learned quite a lot.” Then, in a stare-down, she adds, “Let’s see how long I can holdout.” It is Elisabet who has to look away. Alma has become stronger while Elisabet has become weaker. Alma then says, “I’ll never be like you. I change all the time. You can do what you want. You won’t get to me.” She then throws a mock tantrum, pounding on the table. “Say nothing . . . cut a candle,” she adds. As a nurse, her job is to try to drain Elisabet of her pain, but it’s never enough. At one point Elisabet even bites Alma’s arm and sucks her blood like a vampire. Alma whacks her repeatedly. Later, Alma tells Elisabet to say with her “Nothing, No.” Elisabet says, “Nothing” (only the second time she has spoken since the play). “There, that’s how it should be,” says Alma. Elisabet has at least expressed her feelings, which are the “nothing” of complete dissociation and detachment.
Soon, Elisabet is seen packing to leave the summer cottage. Then, Alma is closing the cottage up. Alma sees a brief reprise of herself and Elisabet in the mirror. As Alma walks out, suitcases in hand, there is a brief shot of the camera crew on a crane. In the lens of the large camera, Elisabet’s body is stretched out on the floor, seemingly dead. Alma gets on a bus alone. There is a shot of the ground outside the cottage as if something were buried there. Presumably, it’s just the death and burial of Elisabet’s hold on Alma’s psyche. Alma is moving on.
Themes: This film is extraordinarily rich in its thematic complexity and there are probably no “correct” interpretations. It lends itself to a multiplicity of viewpoints. The first issue worthy of exploration is the why of Elisabet’s sudden withdrawal from the world. It is probably safe to start with the proposition that Elisabet is refusing to maintain the lie of her persona. Elisabet, as an actress, has more than the typical dilemma with the inconsistency between inner self and public mask because actors have two layers of facade – the one that is worn as a person and the additional one put on as an actor. Beyond that, I would suggest four factors that could be contributing to her psychiatric problem, singly or in combination.
1. The shrink's theory: Since the psychiatrist has studied Elisabet’s situation most closely, there is probably at least some credence in her assessment. The psychiatrist tells Elisabeth that she understands that she has stopped talking because of “the gulf between what you are with others and what you are alone . . . every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace. . . No one asks if it is true or false, if you’re genuine or just a sham . . . You can refuse to move, refuse to talk, so that you don’t have to lie.” She speculates Elisabeth has a “hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out.”
2. The horror of the world we live in: This factor is suggested by Elisabeth recoiling from the news broadcast of the Buddhist monks burning themselves to death. It is later reinforced when Alma discovers Elisabet studying a photograph of Jews being herded up from the Warsaw ghetto. There is a boy in the foreground of the photograph with Nazi rifles being pointed at his head.
3. Alma’s theory: In the twice repeated monologue near the end of the film, Alma attributes Elisabeth’s withdrawal to her inability to connect with her son. A natural question arises as to how Alma came by her conclusion and whether she had somehow gathered information in support of her rather detailed accusation. It seems evident, however, from Elisabet’s reaction during Alma’s monologue, that Alma is on target for the most part at least.
4. The Electra complex: Since Bergman took the trouble to inform us about the name of the play (Electra) that Elisabeth was performing in when she decided to stop speaking, it seems likely that the nature of that play ought to be a relevant clue as well. Knowing the story of Electra and the reference made to it in the field of Psychology makes it all the more likely. Electra is a famous character in Greek mythology, best known for her hatred of her mother and devotion to her father. Electra’s mother, Clytemnestra, took a lover Aegisthus and together the two murdered Electra’s father, Agamemnon. Consequently, Electra despised her mother. Electra had her younger brother, Orestes, sent into hiding until he was grown, to ensure that he was not also killed. When Orestes became a man, he returned and with the help of Electra avenged his father by killing both his mother and Aegisthus. The so-called “Electra Complex” in Psychology is essentially the inverse of the more famous “Oedipal Complex.” The Electra Complex refers to a girl or woman who is highly attached psychologically to her father and who dislikes her mother or views her mother as a rival. Although we know nothing directly about the relationship of either Elisabeth or Alma to their respective mothers, I think that it is important to the story of Persona that both of these women have core issues in relation to their own motherhood or potential motherhood. Elisabeth cannot relate in a normal maternal way to her son and Alma is distressed about having “killed” her potential offspring by means of an abortion. If one then recalls that Bergman, in his earlier film Wild Strawberries, was at great pains to illustrate how lack of ability to express warmth is often passed from one generation to another, it is a fair assumption that Elisabet’s inability to feel normal maternal attachment was probably the result of herself having a mother who was cold and detached. I believe that the issues inherent in the play Electra finally struck too close to home for Elisabet to be able to continue to play it as a role. She realized that she was not entitled to portray the persona of Electra because she herself was a failure as a mother.
At the very least, it is clear that a central focus of Persona, as in many Bergman films, is the sometimes failure (more often in Scandinavian and Germanic cultures than in most others because of their reserve) of parents to provide their children with warm affection. Recall that both the opening and the closing of the film features a boy reaching toward his mother’s face but unable to touch it. Elisabet could be equated with Clytemnestra and her son with Orestes, who had to be sent into hiding to protect him from his own mother. Elisabet has also functionally “killed” her husband by refusing to see him and closing him out of her life. Or Alma could be likened to Electra and the stronger, more experienced Elisabet to Clytemnestra. Alma, in the end, stands up to Elisabet and exacts a degree of revenge.
A second issue that one wants to explore in thinking about Persona is the slippery slope of personal identity. Alma’s identity is shifting and ambiguous because she is young and flexible in her make-up. Flexibility is good but being too easily swayed by a wayward influence is not. Just as Elisabet’s profession as an actress was relevant to her psychological gestalt, so to is Alma’s. All people in care-giving professions are at risk of being psychologically drained by their needy clients. Alma found her vitality was being drained from her by Elisabet. Since Elisabeth did not speak, she was all take and no give at the level of communication and the same could be said more broadly of the psychological facet of her relationships with her son and with Alma. Elisabeth was herself still a needy child, in a sense (recall her husband’s comment that she taught him that “we have to see each other as two anxious children”). That may or may not work as a basis for a marriage relationship, but a person certainly cannot be “an anxious child” and also be an effective, nurturing parent to a child.
Production Values: There is so much that could be said about the exceptional production values of this film. It is quite simply one of the most skillful films ever made in every respect. This film was made concurrent with the rise of the French New Wave, the influence of which was felt around the world of filmmaking. The idea of film as separate from or in addition to reality as opposed to striving for realism was all the rage. In Persona, Bergman joined in with the movement advocating “distanciation,” which means taking pains to make sure that viewers are aware that they are watching a film – a work of art – and not a mirror of reality. Persona is an exercise in voyeurism in more ways than one.
Bergman frames his film with three scenes, in particular, devoted to providing distanciation: one at the beginning, one in the middle, and the third at the end. The opening sequence is a montage of seemingly haphazard images having to do mostly with filmmaking. It begins with two objects that are initially hard to identify but which are glowing with a kind of white hot aura. The glow becomes stronger and a spark finally jumps between the two objects. This is a close-up image of a carbon arc lamp of the type used in movie projectors of that time period. Next we see some spinning reels, strips of film coursing through a projector, the word “start”, and the inverted countdown of numbers from 10 to 1 that occur typically at the beginning of a film. Then we seen a brief silent-era vintage cartoon sequence, except that we also see the edges of the film strip with frames and sprocket holes. There are some random symbolic images that include a spider, an erect penis, a skeleton, spiked hands (as in the crucifixion), corpses, corpses “awakening”, and finally a boy on a slab juggling the sheet that covers him in a vain effort to get comfortable. The boy sees an image that looks like a blurry face, reaches for it but can’t quite touch it. The image comes into focus but oscillates almost imperceptibly between the image of Bibi Anderson and that of Liv Ullmann.
The middle distanciation sequence looks like the film suddenly breaking. It occurs immediately after Elisabet steps on the piece of glass purposely left in her path by Alma – when their relationship (patient and nurse) has shattered in sense. This sequence also serves as a sudden reminder that we are in a film, not real life. The film quickly splices itself together and we are off and running once again with the story. In the closing distanciation segment, the boy is reaching out again and then the arc of the carbon lamp goes out, signaling the end of the film.
One remarkable aspect of Persona is the great similarity in the faces of the two actresses. Supposedly Bergman got the idea for the film from seeing the two actresses in public and noticing how much they looked alike. Bergman plays up this interesting resemblance to the hilt. There are moments when the two characters seem close to becoming one. In one dream sequence, they stand next to one another almost embracing, turn and face the mirror, and appear almost to be a two headed person. There is the opening in which the image that the boy is reaching out for morphs back and forth between the two faces. Then there is the famous composite image consisting of one-half of each actress’s face. One also has to wonder how well Bergman was himself able to mentally distinguish between the two lovely young ladies – in real life. At the time that Persona was filmed, Bergman and Bibi Andersson had broken off a long-time relationship and during the filming, Bergman began a relationship with Ullmann that ultimately produced a child. During the production of Persona, Bibi Andersson actually got stuck providing a sympathetic ear (playing the nurse!) for both Bergman and Ullmann as they sorted out the problems of their burgeoning relationship.
The cinematography was provided by the great Sven Nykvist. As in all Bergman films, the images are extraordinary in both composition and lighting technique. This film is quite simply visually stunning. The emphasis is on facial close-ups with gray and black backgrounds so that nothing detracts from the nuances of the facial lines and expression. Bergman once stated that “The human face is the great subject of the cinema. Everything is there.” Not since Dreyer’s featuring of Falconetti’s face in Passion of Joan of Arc, had there been comparable emphasis on facial close-ups. The three jarring distanciation sequences are also cinematographic marvels.
Persona is almost entirely a two person film. The performances by Andersson and Ullmann are nothing short of magnificent. Ullmann, who had to rely entirely on facial expressions and gestures, is utterly mesmerizing. She wordlessly conveys emotions ranging from fear, anger, and indifference to pleasure and even erotic desire. Andersson’s performance, however, is even better. She delivers a virtuoso tour de force.
Bottom-Line:Persona is a haunting and enigmatic cinematic poem. DO NOT RENT THIS FILM! Buy it instead! You’ll want to watch it over and over again, if not immediately, over a period of years. This great Bergman film has it all – thematic depth, intrigue, eroticism, expressive lighting and images, beautiful actresses in stunning performances, self-aware filming technique, seamless editing, and an effective soundtrack of mainly concrete music. The DVD includes an audio commentary tract with Bergman biographer Marc Gervais, a featurette called “A Poem in Images,” interviews with Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann, a photo gallery, and the original theatrical trailer. I especially liked the interviews with the two stars. Persona is in Swedish with English subtitles. It has a running time of just 81 minutes and you’ll wish it were more.
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