Persona

60th Anniversary!

Featuring a post-film Enzian Film Club discussion with Dr. Nicole Richter from Rollins College.

There are great films, there are influential films, and then there is Persona.

By the mid-sixties, Ingmar Bergman had already conjured many of the cinema’s most unforgettable images. But with Persona, Bergman shattered the conventions of cinematic storytelling, helping redefine what film could be as an art form. A landmark of modernist cinema, its fractured narrative, dreamlike imagery, and exploration of identity have inspired generations of filmmakers, from David Lynch and beyond.

In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann (Cries & Whispers, Scenes from a Marriage) plays a stage actor who has inexplicably gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson (The Seventh Seal) is the garrulous young nurse caring for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference that would prove to be one of cinema’s most influential creations. Acted with astonishing nuance and shot in stark contrast and soft light by 2-time Oscar®-winner Sven Nykvist (Fanny and Alexander), Persona is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth. Sixty years later, Bergman's most daring work remains as provocative, mysterious, and endlessly discussable as ever.

_{1966, 83 minutes, Sweden, In Swedish and English with English Subtitles, directed by Ingmar Bergman, Unrated}