Persona

Persona (1966) takes place between two women, one of whom never speaks. Elisabet is a stage actress. In the middle of a performance she falls silent and never speaks again. No medical cause is found. Her care goes to a young nurse called Alma and the two are sent to a summer house. A one sided relationship forms there. Alma talks, Elisabet listens. The more Alma talks the more she gives away, until she is telling things she has told nobody. Then she realises the other woman is not only listening but collecting. At one point the film breaks itself. The image burns, the strip tears, the projection seems to stop. Bergman put it there to remind the audience it is watching a film, and it became one of the most imitated moves in cinema. The best known image is two half faces joined. Liv Ullmann's and Bibi Andersson's become a single face, and the whole subject of the film sits in that frame. Bergman wrote it in hospital while seriously ill, and later said the film kept him going. It is short but dense. It runs 83 minutes. Good for: art cinema, Bergman, and performance. Less good for: there is almost no plot, nothing is explained, and it may not settle on one viewing.