Persona

 “Cinema’s most essential quality is the possibility to get close to the human face”. Bergman formulates his own credo here: sounding out the human face and where it ends, measuring the thin layer that divides inside from out are central elements in the work of the Swedish director. Bergman’s protagonists look into the camera in close-up again and again: questioning, provoking, doubting, despairing. In PERSONA, they are Elisabeth (Liv Ullmann), an actress who has suddenly stopped speaking, and Alma (Bibi Andersson), the nurse taking care of her. Living withdrawn in a summer house on an island, a symbiotic relationship of mutual dependence develops between the two of them until their identities fuse. (mg)