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Directors / Bergman

(15/08/2007)

I saw this film last night for the nth time. Maybe I saw it on TV in the 70's. Yes probably about ten years after it first came out. Didn't think much of it the first time.

Last night I noticed how different it is from other Bergman films - in the self-conscious use of film techniques. The fast cutting in the titles with (almost) subliminal images flashed onto the screen, the repeated scene in the body of the film, ...and the whole film, credits and all, bracketed by the projector's arc lamp blazing to life out of the blackness and dying back to black at the end.

The film is in 'black and white', but the colour of the film is white. White for blindness, clinical white for the insane asylum, white for the blank canvas, white for cold aloofness, white for isolation, white for the light of the projector. The film has a feeling over being 'over-exposed', although I don't suppose that technically it is.

It's a powerful story of the relationship between two women sharing a summer house on an island, a mental nurse and her charge, who have been sent to her doctor's summer house to recuperate from, ...from whatever it is that ails her soul. Quite disturbing, but not in a bad way. It's full of symbolism that I don't completely get. For instance, I'm not so familiar with the Electra character that the patient had been playing, though it must be relevant given that there are two women here in a psychiatric context and there is some psycho-analytic concept called the 'Electra Complex' - kind of counterpart to the Oedipus Complex. Freudian stuff. Penis envy is involved somehow, and rivalry with the mother for father's affection. Muderous hatred of mother covered over because of the need for her love and support. That's it: Electra killed her mother out of loyalty to her father, didn't she?

Bibi Anderson and Liv Ulmann. It's not an easy film to watch - nor an easy one to understand - but I really recommend it. Half-heartedly. Let me know if you understand what it's about, won't you.

It's strange: I'm sounding ambivalent about it, and I normally don't like self-conscious, overly symbolic, heavy-handed films, and yet I have to say that Persona is one of Bergman's best films. If I was going to recommend six films of his to watch, Persona would be in there, along with The Seventh Seal, Fanny and Alexander, Cries and Whispers, Wild Strawberries, and Smiles of a Summer Night.