Persona (1966)

This is a unique entry within the "Reviews and Musings" section. Presented here is a collection of notes I made while rewatching Persona (1966) on August 6th, 2020, in preparation for a film discussion and analysis I was set to have the following day. I first saw Persona during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years at college and was quite blown away by it. My overall rating for the film was 4 stars out of a possible 4. It was the 210th film to receive my highest rating distinction.

Precursor-

1) I find it strange that I never wrote anything after watching Persona the first time around, despite remembering that I spent about an hour researching the film and reading film theories and interpretations of it shortly after completion.

During-

1) I remembered the opening being incredibly abstract, but not this abstract.

2) It never occurred to me when I first watched it, but I immediately recognized every single cut in the opening credits sequence and noticed that they had varying levels of importance to the film that would follow, and at the same time were all unfathomably important.

3) I forgot how claustrophobic the film was, with Sven Nykvist’s camerawork.

4) I also never realized how much each scene feels like it’s a part of a play, perhaps because the film itself feels nothing like a play when analyzed with all the pieces put together.

5) At times, Persona has a documentary feel, perhaps as a way to make the characters and story more relatable, to make the film simpler, and to add a sense of realism.

6) During the letter reading sequence, it is fascinating that Bergman waits to show you Elisabet’s (Liv Ullman) reaction until she cannot take it anymore. This showcases two things: the reserve that we come to realize that Elisabet has, or tries to have, during this strange psychological situation of hers & the growing uneasiness of Alma (Bibi Andersson) to continue reading, as evident not by her asking if she should continue, but by the facial expressions she makes after looking upon the face we cannot see. This willingness to push forward foreshadows that Alma will not only get in too deep when things progress and accelerate, but that she will continue pushing forward (likely to no end, even after the film ends).

7) Less profound but perhaps more revealing, Elisabet may not speak and rarely motions with her head, but she does laugh and hum. She is able to witness some of the stereotypical signs of happiness.

8) At the 37:00 mark, when Alma goes to sleep and Elisabet spies on her, it appears to be both in a dream state and in a dark and foreboding night by the docks, complete with a fogginess between the two rooms and a ship’s horn continually sounding in the background. Ending at 39:04, that sequence shows the first transformation of the two women into the same entity. Alma baring her soul and past experiences of great pleasure and pain to an accepting and listening Elisabet knocks through the first threshold. Even as Alma learns that Elisabet is taking great enjoyment in researching her and studying her mannerisms, speech, and self, it is too late to stop the transformation.

9) Elisabet can also feel pain, as evident by her stepping on the broken glass that Alma purposely neglected to pick up.

10) I completely forgot about the abstract sequence shortly after Elisabet softly calls out in pain and Alma, with a steely resolve, stares just beyond the camera’s left shoulder.

11) Fear. This is what can force Elisabet to speak. In a sincere admission, I would guarantee that everyone, if they had the will to stay silent, would still invoke the feelings that Elisabet does: signs of happiness, signs of pain, and signs of fear.

12) The second stage of transformation is in full swing, following Alma sobbing on the beach and the camera cutting between a solemn, emotionless Alma sitting on a bluff and a restless, slightly emotional Elisabet pacing throughout the house, which has served as the incubation chamber for their new, singular identity.

13) 1:03:51- I realize it now. The reason for Elisabet often wearing the all-black attire: she is Death (harkening back to Death of Bergman’s own The Seventh Seal). It resembles the death of her first state of being. In turn, Alma wearing white shows her purity and innocence tied to her first state of being. Throughout the picture as she begins to wear black (i.e. the swimsuit, the raincoat), we begin to see her change. She has become corrupted, showing a change away from her original and true self. But at night, she still wears all white, she is still pure when she is all alone and left to her subconscious. This changes with the climactic dream sequence when Elisabet’s husband (Gunnar Björnstrand) takes Alma for Elisabet while she first encourages it and then watches it with cold indifference. When Alma and the husband are lying down, her white nightgown as been sullied, turned gray. In the next scene, when we see the two of them together, they are both wearing the Death outfit. Their previous selves are gone, they are now one in the same.

14) Yet they are still independent of each other. We get the monologue twice, once seeing Elisabet’s reaction to the words, the other seeing Alma’s expression during her delivery. Despite now melding into one consciousness and one entity, they each still have their own subconscious.

15) The dream is the third transformation.

16) The monologue is the fourth, and despite one subconscious (that of Alma) rebutting and rebuking the other (that of Elisabet), they are still the same, only with one part trying desperately to escape. This is a futile act, as the audience knows, but Alma refuses to accept this.

17) The tables have turned: they are one, but one side will always convince itself that it is now independent. This change cannot be refuted, and the roles of each woman has flipped. Elisabet went from mentally violent towards Alma by tormenting her with silence to trying to rebel when subject to a head-on approach and admission of power by Alma. She is shocked and horrified by the transition, but accepts it nonetheless. Alma went from the hunted to the hunter. She is no longer the innocent lamb nor the tricked servant shocked by the cruelty subjected to her, she has become the physically violent and superior consciousness. And even still, Elisabet is in control, as everything that Alma will do from here on out in her own life will be reactionary based on how she feels she needs to act to both continue being the dominant consciousness within the hybrid entity and prove that she is independent of Elisabet as a mind, as a soul, and as a conscious being.