Persona

Ingmar Bergman's most personal and original film

A young nurse, Alma, is put in charge of Elisabeth Vogler: an actress who is seemingly healthy in all respects, but will not talk. As they spend time together, Alma speaks to Elisabeth constantly, never receiving any answer. The time they spend together only strengthens the crushing realization that one does not exist.

Released	18 Oct 1966
Genres	Drama
Runtime	1 hour, 23 minutes
Countries	Sweden

Liked by

Andrei Tarkovsky

Source: Sight and Sound ↗
From the opening credits to Bibi Anderson’s sexual monologue, to how the eyes of Liv Ullman look at the camera, or how each silent moment is lit and framed, sober and perfect: you know you are witnessing greatness. This is a walk in the mind of Bergman.

Alejandro González Iñárritu

Source: BFI ↗
I love all of Bergman’s films, but his later period has had the biggest impact on me, starting with Persona. The film marked the advent of a new period for him; I know that he wrote it when he was in the hospital and thought he was going to die. It adopts a dream logic in a really forward-thinking way, and like Altman’s Three Women, is an example of a proto-Lynchian dream movie. I was thinking about that when we were making Hereditary, how it gradually adopts a nightmare logic.

Ari Aster

Source: Criterion ↗