In Response to "Persona" (1966) - Ingmar Bergman (Analysis of the Film)

 This movie is a brilliant psychological thriller that no matter when you pause it each frame could be a photograph. Instantly I was reminded of Cindy Sherman's film stills which I must imagine were inspired from this movie. The narrative of the film follows the themes of masking your flaws to play a certain roll, prevalent based on one of the main characters playing an actor. Often you find that the two main protagonists (Alma and Elisabet) replace each other in certain positions to show the parallels in their lives. They come from different backgrounds but hide things in similar ways. The title of the film Persona directly relates to the hand crafted version of ourselves and how we want people to perceive us. One of the themes that stood out to me was how children were often brought up. We have to likely career women and one of them has a child in result due to her infidelity and one has one because of the societal pressures that women hold to have children and to become a mother. The quotation "wow you are so beautiful now" is repeated in a sequence when Elisabet becomes pregnant, was she not beautiful before? Do women need to be mother's to become truly 'beautiful.' the introductory scenes of the children watching the tape and longingly touching the curtain I assume to be Elisabet's child, he seems to suffer some a condition as well referencing to the "child you cut up." The movie is a brilliant display of the consequences of withholding authenticity in ones self.

I did some research on what the film was shot on and we can see it was shot on 35mm film and has characteristic of Orthochromatic film. Orthochromatic film cannot see the colour red, giving the imperfections in skin we cannot see with the naked eye. We also see some of the clothing Elisabet is wearing is likely red, due to the extreme darkness, she may also have blue eyes as her eyes are particularly bright. I thoroughly enjoy the stark contrast in many of the shots and almost chiaroscuro style lighting. The following are some stills I particularly thought were interesting. 








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