Every Little Thing I Adore About 'Persona'

I saw Persona early into my formative film years, likely the first December I was in college when I (foolishly) sat and watched about six Bergman films in one night. A little like 2001 back then my feelings towards it were very academic: I understood there was a lot to unpack, and relished the details- but there was no real emotional connection.

Where Kubrick’s film has only faded in my estimation into superficial cerebral guff, Persona plugs the depths of the human experience in a way few pieces of art could ever hope to match. Born of writer/director Ingmar Bergman’s own desperate depression, as well as isolation, it’s a work all too prescient for this state of lockdown…

 

How much the film’s opening shot, with its shrill, rising music, reminds me of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Bergman had just magicked his way through the inimitable Faith Trilogy, then fallen on hard times with the unjustly maligned All These Women, and Persona was the perfect way to say “fuck you” to anyone saying he’d lost his touch. Abandon all hope ye who enter here.

Case in point: The intro splices in three frames of a cock, and I’m sure that choice of wording is inspiration enough for American TV censors to replace this with a grainy monochrome mock-up of Foghorn Leghorn.

The way we can just barely see the frames of the cartoon that’s about to play through Nykvist’s superb Macro photography.

Its electrifying stuff now, but just imagine how it would have felt for audiences to watch a film open like this in 1966. Let alone long-time fans of Bergman.

Crossfading a stark brick wall to an equally unassuming forest. Why not?

This framing.

The insane detail of these still images.

Bergman wrote Persona while he was held up in hospital, in part because of the serious depression the failure of ‘All These Woman’ infested him with. This is interesting because A. It’s actually very similar to Martin Scorsese’s experience directing ‘New York, New York’ a decade later, right after Taxi Driver, and being devastated by everyone’s response, only for De Niro to visit him in hospital and them both to formulate ‘Raging Bull’. And B. Because this shot of a child grasping at ever-changing faces feels a lot like Bergman directly referencing his unmoored creative process while planning this extraordinarily free film.

The fact the title drop punches in six minutes into a montage that hasn’t explained a fucking thing. Like oh, okay, this is what we’re watching. Love the font and blazing white background on these opening titles, too.

The way we just cut into the ‘actual’ film after all this madness, as if nothing has happened. No use being apologetic about your adventures.

The way we cut to scarcely different angles of Alma listening, and Bergman giving us time to study her face.

Finally, the way this whip-pan down to her fidgeting reveals more about her than either close up.

This scene is purposefully stagey. The fixed angle, the expository dialogue- I’d give most attention to its cheap, echoey sound design. Think about that in the context of the later parts of the film- captured with technical perfection and unremittingly believable performance- and you’ll see through the seams that Bergman is already tricking us into his web…

And how clunky- almost student-filmy this transition is. Hell, I made this mistake in my first short at uni. You can see where David Lynch got his idea for trapping us for the audition in Mulholland Drive.

Elisabet giggling at the play. Such a genuine moment of humanity a lot of films about people with mental health issues, from paranoia to full on psychopathy, fail to illuminate.

This 90 second long shot of Elisabet listening to the radio, as the light non-diegetically fades into almost total darkness. Such an intimate, inevitable way to introduce her mental state.

Sven Nykvist’s lighting, and how unnaturally the TV is placed. It’s a compositional design choice- but they could’ve had it more naturally facing the bed for a patient to watch, and let the screen show as a light source. Makes me wonder if that would’ve ruined their idea for the shot.

Elisabet’s big, bulky coat. Great costume choice.

How dispassionately nasty this head nurse is. Lots of films about psychiatric hospitals demonstrate wardens abusing patients physically, but rarely verbally. And who could be more brutal with their words than Bergman?

I’m not quite sure if its Bergman himself handling this narration, but it brings me back to his first mind-fuck film, and one of his undersung classics: 1949’s ‘Prison’. It’s a brilliant, vibrantly meta film- and I wonder if he’s drawing a connection to it here.

Yet another film-maker who understandably adores Bresson.

Elisabet’s smiling nod.

The graceful editing of these multiple conversations into one cohesive whole across 12 minutes- yet it feels like no time at all. Bergman made a lot of ‘short’ films, usually 90 minutes or less, but it’s a real credit to his style that they actually flow so wondrously. A poorly paced 90 minute film can still feel like an eternity.

The beguiling silence during Alma’s confession. I love it when a film seamlessly slips the comfortable blanket of ambient sound out from under our feet and forces us to sit in the moment and listen- all the more effective given the aforementioned editing.

Elisabet’s grin as Alma sobs. What is she planning?

The ever-so-gentle push in as Elisabet speaks for the first time.

The soft texture of Nykvist’s lighting and grading here. It’s a scene that’s always stuck with me, purely for the way its look feels.

Elisabet rising into frame, looking right at the lens and taking a snap of us for a souvenir. Love it when films involve their audience so playfully, particularly in a cinematic climate of ever-more banal fourth-wall breaking.

The way this impossibly soft fabric almost makes me think she’s still back behind a hospital curtain.

How much coverage Bergman and Nykvist shot of this scene, where all Alma does is read an envelope. It’s such a simple scene but it’s always inspired me never to return to the same shot, unless it means something. One of the reasons Bergman’s films flow so effortlessly is because they don’t snag themselves on what we’ve already seen.

The cut just after the slam of the car door to this:

The shivering proximity of the camera, and the little dapples of staining on the lens.

Alma’s eye jumping to glare at us as the film fractures. Such a piercing, unnecessary little detail.

What a way to open a scene. Forced slow-motion fading into regular, all while a bell-jar bubble of shallow focus coats the whole thing in abstraction- only for a shrill music cue to slice us back into ‘normality’. And again, why the hell not?

The bitter irony in this line.

…And now they’re both back in the hospital…

Bergman’s blocking of faces, ever-exquisite, might have hit its peak in this film.

That whole maxim of limited resources inspiring creativity works for writer’s block, too. Bergman barely has a proper feature-length film with the scarcely 80-minute long Persona, yet he repeats a scene wholesale. He shot both Alma and Elisabet acting and reacting to the same monologue and had no idea how to intercut them, so he just shows us the whole of one actresses’ performance- then the other. Then this. Simple. Beautiful.

Perhaps the most achingly human, insufferably gorgeous shot Nykvist ever captured, right at the tail end of Bergman’s most diabolical film. Most of Persona is pure witchcraft: Doppelgänger drama played straight and pulled out across the autopsy table all at the same time. There’s nothing like it, and like all great films no real point imitating it- but what an extraordinary education on the power of film this monster is.