Movie Masterworks

“You see, this is my life! It always will be! Nothing else! Just us, the cameras, and those wonderful people out there in the dark!… All right, Mr. DeMille, I’m ready for my close-up.”

Synopsis: Gloria Swanson as Norma Desmond, an aging silent film queen, and William Holden as the struggling writer who is held in thrall by her madness, created two of the screen’s most memorable characters in ‘Sunset Boulevard’. Winner of three Academy Awards®, director Billy Wilder’s orchestration of the bizarre tale is a true cinematic classic. From the unforgettable opening sequence through the inevitable unfolding of tragic destiny, the film is the definitive statement on the dark and desperate side of Hollywood. Erich von Stroheim as Desmond’s discoverer, ex-husband and butler, and Nancy Olson as the bright spot in unrelenting ominousness, are equally celebrated for their masterful performances.

Critique: One of the most difficult things to explain is a phenomena that is ground into our collective consciousness so deeply that it becomes an instant cliche. The shock of recognition is immediate, intense & irreversible. We can never go back to seeing the world as we did before. Prior to “Sunset Blvd.,” only employees within the film industry knew the truth about stars like Norma Desmond. They were rich, isolated & unemployable, but why make a film about such a depressing subject? When Billy Wilder did make a film about the twilight world of Norma Desmond & her live-in lover Joe Gillis, Louis B. Mayer told Wilder that he’d disgraced the industry & should be run out of town. Wilder gave Mayer a two-word dismissal evocative of Mayer’s dismissal from MGM the following year, after a 27 year reign. The future belonged to harshly critical mavericks like Wilder: Mayer was history.

Originally, Wilder intended for Joe’s ghost to tell us the story of his wasted life from a slab in the mortuary, surrounded by corpses. Instead, we get the story from the bullet-riddled body in Norma’s swimming pool. The body might have been played by Montgomery Clift, but the story of “Sunset Blvd.” evidently hit too close to home: Clift was living with a fading star from the flapper era, Libby Holman, & he turned down the revealing role. William Holden had never played such a sleazy role as Joe Gillis. He knows that spoon feeding hope to a doomed & desperate woman is wrong, but he doesn’t care. After all, Max the butler is doing the same thing & Max used to be a great director. So was the Oscar-nominated star who played Max Von Mayerling: Erich Von Stroheim. Von Stroheim, who once insisted that film extras wear meticulously accurate underwear, plays a supporting role with all the autocratic swagger he can muster, but Wilder’s pitiless dialogue reveals the truth: Max was Madame Desmond’s husband before he became her butler.

Youth is represented by Nancy Olson as Betty Schaefer & Jack Webb as her fiance Artie Green. Betty & Artie are bursting with unjaded artistry & untested idealism, & are thus the perfect pigeons for a cynic who wants to forget that he’s already sold his soul. The past is represented by glorified versions of Hedda Hopper & Cecil B. DeMille, who play themselves as savvy survivors, & by silent stars Buster Keaton, Anna Q. Nilsson & H.B. Warner, who appear as musty, if still breathing, waxworks at the altar of Gloria Swanson’s Norma. The bright-eyed young girl who’d first bounced around a movie set in 1918 & would still be making movies over 65 years later, gives Norma a jolt of satire amidst the sparks of restless energy. Earlier choices for Norma included Mary Pickford (who could not have played Norma to save her soul) & Pola Negri (who might have been able to give Norma a uniquely exotic spin), but no one was better at capturing a woman who lived in the past than Swanson, who really didn’t give a damn about the past. “Sunset Blvd.” nurtured a new mythology about Hollywood which has persisted since its release in 1950. It fuels the content of tabloids & chat shows. Movie stars do not live happily every after in the year 2000. They can’t gain a pound at the waist or lose a dime at the box office without whispers of their sad last days being routinely recorded with all the delicacy of an ambulance siren. Billy Wilder, who left Hitler’s Germany to toil in the blinding California sun, came, saw & showed us ourself in striking & unforgettable ways. “Sunset Blvd.” drives his indelible observations home.

-Monica Sullivan, Movie Magazine International

“Tomorrow the birds will sing.”

Synopsis: ‘City Lights’ begins with an uproarious skewering of pomp and formality, ends with one of the most famous last shots in movie history and, from start to finish, so completely touches the heart and tickles the funny bone that in 1998 it was named one of the American Film Institute’s Top-100 American Films.

Talkies were well entrenched when Charles Chaplin swam against the filmmaking tide with this forever classic that’s silent except for music and sound effects. The story, involving the Tramp’s attempts to get money for an operation that will restore sight to a blind flower girl, provides a star with an ideal framework for sentiment and laughs. The tramp is variously a street sweeper, a boxer, a rich 0poseur, and a rescuer of a suicidal millionaire. His message is unspoken, but universally understood: love is blind.

Critique: City Lights is a product of the closing days of the silent film era. By the time it was released, talking films were in the theaters. Would that half the talkies to come were masterpieces as rewarding as this one! This episode in the tales of the Little Tramp displays Chaplin’s extraordinary skills as actor, writer, director, and composer of the score. The Tramp is everyman, funny and sad, exhibiting Chaplin’s unparalleled ability to observe the vagaries of human behavior. Whether battling with a strand of spaghetti, getting impaled from behind on a statue’s sword, or coming to the rescue of an apache dancer, Chaplin’s screen foibles are of a sort with which any viewer can identify. And he knew exactly when he had made his point, always moving on to his next bit of funny business without overplaying his hand, always propelling his story forward.

The other roles in City Lights are stock characters, there to be foils for the very real tramp. With Chaplin, even stock characters can be memorable. Here we have the blind flower girl with whom he falls in love, played by beautiful Virginia Cherrell (Cary Grant’s first wife), the suicidal rich man who befriends the tramp when drunk, only to forget him when sober, the crooked fighter who leads the tramp into what must be the funniest boxing scene ever filmed.

We laugh and we are touched and we come away a little wiser about the human condition. Nobody before or since has combined slapstick and poignancy to make such a perfectly timed, perfectly modulated entertainment.

-Arthur Lazere, culturevulture.net

My thoughts: Just a beautiful story that showcases Charlie Chaplin’s genius.

“Rosebud.”

Critique: Seldom are films so carefully crafted, and more seldom still do they have so much to say. Citizen Kane, Orson Welles’ masterpiece, which he made at a very early age, is often jokingly called “the best German film Hollywood ever made” due to its similarity to the dark, haunting, surreal pictures Germany was producing at the time. More seriously, it is called, simply, “the best film ever made.”

As with all great films, Citizen Kane’s theme is completely absorbed in its characters. It presents them, then judges them, taking a firm moral stance. The characterization and acting are flawless. Joseph Cotten as Jedediah Leland, Agnes Moorehead as Kane’s mother, and Orson Welles as Kane himself make particularly unforgettable impressions.

The central character, of course, is Charles Foster Kane, who utters the most famous dying word in all of filmdom in the opening scenes. “Rosebud.” But what does it mean? A curious reporter, whose face we never see and whose shoulder we’re always looking over, is determined to find out. He interviews the people Kane was closest to, and they tell their stories in flashback. Audiences of the day were unaccustomed to the non-linear chronology of the narrative; in 1941, it was unconventional to say the least.

The glimpses we get of Kane’s life, from varying points of view, are haunting, tragic, and resounding. Kane’s life was a grand success in politics and business — less so in domestic terms. But had he found what was so important to him that he’d make it his dying thought? Finding out is a fascinating experience, one of the most involving cinema has to offer.

The film is a grand if harsh statement on the human spirit. Equally compelling is how meticulously the film is constructed. Every frame is so purposefully composed, every line of dialogue and stage direction so carefully planned, all to further its theme and punctuate the action. Volumes have been written about the artistry in Citizen Kane and still there is more to say. Conscious decisions were made about every detail — how far apart characters stand from each other, where individual shadows fall, what objects appear in the background, etc. One famous shot involves Kane and Leland talking to each other. Leland is drunk and spouting off at Kane. The camera shoots the scene from floor-level, which, aided by Leland’s wavering drunkenness, turns the moment into a surreal, dreamlike tempest of emotions.

Most of the techniques Welles employed to make the film had been used before, but never in such a dynamic manner, or in such quantity and diversity, or with such consistent effectiveness. And they were all employed in service to the film’s complex subject matter, as is proper but which is often not the case.

What’s Citizen Kane all about? Answering that question is what first-time viewers and long-time critics have been pondering since the film’s release. Coming up with valid insight is not difficult, but comprehending all this film has to offer, even after repeated viewings, is. In other words, there’s always more to see and learn by watching Citizen Kane yet one more time.

At-A-Glance Film Reviews

My thoughts: From a technical perspective, Citizen Kane is the greatest film of all time. But it’s not the most entertaining film of all time.

“Rice, salt, matches …give some. Other people come, find food, not die.”

Synopsis: Against a backdrop of the treacherous mountains, rivers and icy plains of the Siberian wilderness, acclaimed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa (The Seven Samurai, Rashomon) stages an extraordinary adventure of comradeship and survival. For decades, Kurosawa had longed to film Vladimir Arsenyev’s novel and was only able to do so at the invitation of Mosfilm Studios in Russia, who financed an arduous, two-year filmmaking expedition into the far reaches of Siberia.

The Academy Award-winning (Best Foreign-Language Film) Dersu Uzala is the enthralling tale of an eccentric Mongolian frontiersman who is taken on a guide by a Soviet surveying crew. While the soldiers at first perceive Dersu as a naïve and comical relic of an uncivilized age, he quickly proves himself otherwise with displays of ingenuity and bravery unmatched by any member of the inexperienced mapping team, on more than one occasion becoming their unlikely savior.

Critique: Legendary Japanese director Akira Kurosawa ventures outside the Japanese language with Dersu Uzala, a spectacular visual journey through the lives of the eponymous Siberian hunter (Maksim Munzuk) and Russian explorer Arseniev (Yuri Solomin). The auteur displays on screen the awesome power of nature that words simply fail to adequately describe. Kurosawa brings Arseniev’s stirring memoir to life. Dersu and Arseniev undertake two expeditions together through the brutal Siberian wilderness. Their struggle to survive an incredibly dangerous ice storm leaves an indelible imprint on the viewers mind. Although the landscape is undeniably breathtaking, the film is really a human portrait, focusing on the lengthy friendship between the two men. It’s tested by differences in opinion, culture, time and space; the perennial challenges to any human relationship.

-Ky N. Nguyen, Washington Post Diplomat

“Akira Kurosawa transcends the confines of traditional cinema with the startling imagery and camerawork of Dersu Uzala: the barren trees glowing red from the embers of the campfire; the ethereal blue smoke rising as Dersu points out his family’s burial site to Arseniev; the long, static shot of the two men looking at the horizon, juxtaposed between the rising moon and setting sun; the seamless tracking of the soldiers aboard a raft, drifting down the river; the frenetic panning sequence as Dersu and Arseniev struggle to reap grass during the windstorm. To define Dersu Uzala as a story about an aboriginal tribesman is to describe humanity through a two-dimensional photograph. Dersu Uzala is an allegory for the environmental toll of civilization, a testament to a profound, enduring friendship, and a heartbreaking portrait of aging and obsolescence.”

-Acquarello, Strictly Film School

My thoughts: Dersu Uzala has a much different feel and pace than Kurosawa’s other films. It is long, contemplative and primal. I couldn’t help but like the character of Dersu. This is one of the best “buddy” movies I’ve seen.

“We’ve become a race of Peeping Toms. What people ought to do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.”

Synopsis: None of Hitchcock’s films has ever given a clearer view of his genius for suspense than ‘Rear Window’. When professional photographer J.B “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart) is confined to a wheelchair with a broken leg, he becomes obsessed with watching the private dramas of his neighbors play out across the courtyard. When he suspects a salesman may have murdered his nagging wife, Jeffries enlists the help of his glamorous socialite girlfriend (Grace Kelly) to investigate the highly suspicious chain of events…Events that ultimately lead to one of the most memorable and gripping endings in all of film history.

Critique: Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window - made in 1954 and just restored for re-release - is a miraculous film. It’s a witty, sexy, supremely entertaining thriller. It’s also the most provocative meditation on moviegoing ever made.

On its face, it’s an allegory so transparent it risks banality. Photographer L.B. Jefferies (James Stewart), immobilized with a shattered leg, spends his convalescence spying on his neighbors. Alone in his apartment, he has a multiplex to himself, with a different genre playing in each window. There’s Miss Lonelyhearts’ tearful melodrama, the romantic farce of Miss Torso and her suitors, and the stark drama of the travelling salesman and his bedridden wife, which soon begins to look instead like a murder mystery.

The film remains unsettling because Hitchcock took such sadistic glee in implicating the audience in Jefferies’ voyeurism. When his girlfriend admonishes him for his ghoulishness, she’s talking to us as well. Hitchcock is rigorously exacting in the extent to which he forces us to experience the events through Jefferies. The camera angles match his position (when he uses a camera’s zoom lens to get a better view, we finally get the closer shots we’ve been craving) and the soundtrack reveals only what he could hear, burying his neighbors’ conversations in the ambient drone of city buses. The scenes are kept short and always end in fades. This has the effect of making the material seem abrupt and somehow unfinished, leaving us hanging on for more, as desperate as Jefferies for the next revelation. When he finally pushes past simple voyeurism and begins to act on his suspicions, the risks he takes on become our risks; our identification with him is so complete that moments that might have been nicely suspenseful jolts in a typical thriller become terrifying.

-Gary Mairs, Culturevulture.net

“Do you think I’m just anyone? Do you?”

Synopsis: The dramatic portrait of the famed British officer’s journey to the Middle East, ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ is one of the most critically acclaimed and beloved films of all time. Assigned to Arabia during World War I, Lawrence courageously unites the warring Arab factions into a strong guerrilla front and leads them to brilliant victories in treacherous desert battlefields, where they eventually defeat the ruling Turkish Empire.

Critique: Lawrence of Arabia is often regarded as David Lean’s masterpiece and contains some of the most amazing photography ever captured on film.

The plot involves the true story of T E Lawrence, a young English officer who led the Arabs to victory in their revolt against their Turkish imperial master during the First World War but who then after achieving so much fame and glory died in a motorbike accident that could have been suicide.

The most famous features of the film are the photography of the desert and the music. Maurice Jarre’s famous theme is now synomous with anything dry and deserty. David Lean spent several years in Jordan and Morocco making the film and is said to have spent days waiting for the “right” sunrise. However his perfectionism paid off and the shots are fantastic with wonderful pieces of editing.

However Lawrence of Arabia is not just a sandy visual feast. The performances are also superb. Claude Rains is suitably suave as the diplomat and Jack Hawkins appropriately brusque as General Allenby. Alec Guiness is almost unrecognisible in his amazing turn as Prince Feisal. However it is the performances of the two young leads (Omar Sharif as Ali and Peter O’Toole as Lawrence himself) which deserve the most credit. Neither actor had starred in an international film before Lawrence of Arabia but they proved themselves worthy of their casting and, of course, went on to have very successful careers.

Through their subtle performances, O’Toole and Sharif make one of the most interesting aspects of the film the interaction of the two main characters. When Lawrence first meets Ali, the latter guns down a fellow Arab for drinking at a well belonging to Ali. Lawrence accuses Ali of being “silly, barbarous and cruel” and yet ultimately as the plot unfolds it is shown that it is Ali who is the more humane and rational of the two for, as his career takes off, Lawrence becomes caught up in his own glory that increasingly brings out his sadism and near insanity. Lawrence of Arabia exemplifies Lean’s amazing eye for beautiful shots and brilliant editing, but is also a sensitive study of an enigmatic and tragic figure.

Review by Alicia Forsyth Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97

“Whatever God does is for the best.”

Synopsis: One of the greatest directors of modern cinema, Satyajit Ray became an instant success with his debut film, PATHER PANCHALI (Song of the Little Road). The first Indian film to ever become a hit in the West, PATHER PANCHALI is the moving story of a rural family cursed with bad luck. Father Hari is a dreamer and poet, while his hard-working wife struggles to feed the family. But Durga, a free-spirited and petty thief, brings tragedy to the family in a moment’s carelessness. Awarded many prizes at film festivals all over the world, PATHER PANCHALI catapulted Satyajit Ray to international acclaim and launched one of the cinema’s most distinguished careers. Pather Panchali is part of the Apu Trilogy, along with Aparajito and The World of Apu.

Critique: Imagine for a moment that a twenty-nine year old commercial artist living in Calcutta decides out of the blue that he’d like to make a movie based on a complex multi-volume novel. He has no money, no connections, and few resources of any kind. He teams up with a still photographer who has never previously operated a motion picture camera. They borrow a 16 mm motion picture camera. They choose a bunch of children with no acting experience without so much as conducting screen tests. For one of the adult leads, they find an eighty year-old hunched-over wreck of a woman who had done some acting decades earlier but who is presently living in a brothel. (She initially thinks they’ve come looking for sexual services!) They enlist the services of an unknown solo musician to provide the musical score. The script involves precious little in the way of a plot, providing instead mainly a stark portrayal of abject poverty. Two of the five main characters die over the course of the film. How would you rate the chances of success for such a project? I know . . . not good! Now, consider that the resultant film went on to win the top prize at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival in 1956. It revolutionized filmmaking in its country of origin – India. It has impacted many filmmakers throughout the world by its intimate and poetic portrayal of the simplicities of daily living. It is widely regarded by filmmakers and critics as an unqualified masterpiece.

Pather Panchali accomplishes something that great films achieve: it finds the core of universal truths and human feelings while telling its plaintive tale in a culturally specific context. This film captures what appears to me, as an outsider, to be the essence of life in India. It is about the struggles and deprivations related to poverty and death of loved ones.

-Metalluk

My thoughts: Have you ever noticed some photographs are more powerful in Black & White? The cinematography in Pather Panchali is of that quality. Images ingrained in my memory are of children playing in a downpour and a distant train chugging across a field of wheat.

“You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people, my friend: Those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.”

Isn’t it ironic that one of the greatest Westerns ever made was directed by an Italian, filmed mostly in Spain with an international cast, and dubbed? Usually, I regard watching a foreign language film dubbed rather than with subtitles as a sin, but this is the only exception. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is not just a Spaghetti Western, it’s THE spaghetti western. It’s the film that made Clint Eastwood a star and turned the Western genre upside down. Before it was a simple formula, white hats vs. black hats, everything was clear cut and there is usually a happy ending. Now in GB&U, we have anti-heroes, morally ambiguous characters, likable because of their flare, wandering through a story with many twists and turns. The sensational opening credits indicate The Good, the Bad and the Ugly will not be typical Western fare. Bright reds, greens and blues are splashed across the characters faces to the sound of gunfire while trumpets blare. When the director’s name, Sergio Leone appears, everything gets blown away by cannon fire.

In the opening scenes we are introduced to the main players. First the Ugly, a bandit played by Eli Wallach, who has all the cunning avarice of a hungry predator or a Richard Hatch. Tuco “the rat” has lived a hard life which has hardened him in turn. His sole motivation is money. Then we meet the Bad, who wears a black hat and rides a black horse, played by Lee Van Cleef. Sentenza, the bad, is a cold blooded murderer with piercing dispassionate eyes. We can almost smell the malice he emanates off the screen. He is just as greedy as Tuco but totally amoral. Lastly the man with no name, the Good is introduced. Only known as “Blondie,” the Good is a laconic gunman played by Clint Eastwood. The film’s title is a bit of a stretch because all three men are bad; it’s just a matter of degree. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, are all preternaturally good with a gun and they all have a unique style. They roam the vast barren landscapes fearlessly, until chance and greed bring them together, and set them on a quest for $200,000 in gold.

I won’t divulge any more of the plot on the off chance you are one of the few who have not seen this great flick. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, debuted in Rome with about a 3 hour run time. It was felt this was too long for American audiences so the runtime was reduced to about 161 minutes. A new DVD version was recently released that restores the American version to match the original Italian version. One of my favorite things about the new release is the 5.1 surround sound. It really makes Ennio Morricone’s score, one of the most original in movie history, come to life. I still get chills when Tuco searches for the grave in the “ecstasy of gold” sequence. The restored footage needed to be re-dubbed since it was originally spoken in Italian. Ironically, the voice actor for the late Lee Van Cleef sounds more authentic than Clint Eastwood and Eli Wallach. Eastwood’s and Wallach’s voices have changed from 40 years ago but the restored scenes play well. The new transfer is first rate. The cinematography ranges from wide panoramas showing the vastness of “Texas” to extreme close-ups of the actors. I also like the little details Leone includes in GB&U. You see the steam rise from the food eaten by Sentenza and a wayward mongrel scared off by Tuco when he enters the cemetery. The ending of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly is one of the best I’ve seen. Only Sergio Leone could draw out the tension for so long. Quentin Tarantino called The Good, the Bad and the Ugly the “best directed movie of all time.” As far as “Westerns” go, only Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid comes close in terms of entertainment value.

“Fasten your seatbelts, it’s going to be a bumpy night!”

Synopsis: The “dialogue is scintillating, characters…extraordinary, direction…perfect and production as fine as anything 20th Century Fox has turned out” in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s “captivating” (Variety) Oscar winner for Best Picture. From the moment she glimpses her idol at the stage door, Eve Harrington (Anne Baxter) moves relentlessly towards her goal: taking the reins of power from the great actress Margo Channing (Bette Davis). The cunning Eve maneuvers her way into Margo’s Broadway role, becomes a sensation and even causes turmoil in the lives of Margo’s director boyfriend (Gary Merrill), her playwright (Hugh Marlowe) and his wife (Celeste Holm). Only the cynical drama critic (Oscar winner George Sanders) sees through Eve, admiring her audacity and perfect pattern of deceit. Thelma Ritter and Marilyn Monroe co-star in this acclaimed classic, which won six Academy Awards and received the most nominations (14) in film history.

Critique: All About Eve isn’t just a great movie about the theater, it’s a great movie about talent. Talent has nothing to do with being a nice person; if it did, Celeste Holm’s long-suffering wife would be center stage, not catty Margo Channing. It used to be, in old musicals, the snooty star would break her foot, and the sweet, plucky understudy would be vaulted to stardom. Mankiewicz’s tale is a variation on that chestnut–in this case the ingenue, Anne Baxter’s Eve Harrington, is a snake, and she still gets pretty much what she wants.

The reason? She may not be good, but she’s good at what she does. Ability beats virtue any day. Which is why Mankiewicz can’t bring himself to punish Bette Davis’ glorious Margo for her ego, her temper, and her insecurity. As George Sanders’ deliciously wicked theater critic Addison DeWitt tells her, “You’re maudlin and full of self-pity. You’re marvelous.”

Even if you’ve seen All About Eve a dozen times, there’s always something new to catch in Mankiewicz’s sumptuous, spiked plum pudding of a script–the knowing banter between Margo and her director boyfriend Bill (Gary Merrill), the way Margo smirks at hateful Addison before chomping down hard on a stalk of celery. Every character has been blessed with a viper’s tongue, down to Margo’s skeptical maid (the perpetually underrated Thelma Ritter), and it’s a pleasure to hear them bicker: No other movie makes being smart and cynical look like more fun.

-Jim Ridley NashvilleScene

My thoughts: I had never seen Betty Davis until seeing her in All About Eve. What she lacked in beauty she made up for in raw force of personality. A young Marilyn Monroe also steals scenes, drawing the camera to her like a magnet. Along with the film’s personalities, it’s the dialogue that makes All About Eve so memorable. If I had to sum this movie up in one word, it would be “sharp”… sharp dress, sharp minds, and sharp tongues.

Well, I finally got the chance to see Persona on the silver screen! The Gene Siskel Film Center is showing a 14 program series entitled European Art Cinema. I went along with my father and his friend Paul. They’re administrators at Prairie State College. The show wasn’t a sellout like Tokyo Story was last year, so we got great seats. I suspect the lower attendance was because Persona is far less accessible than Ozu’s film. We had a wonderful cinema experience. Best of all, after watching Persona, we went to a coffee shop and discussed the film for a while. There was a lot to talk about.

My thoughts: Directed by Ingmar Bergman, Persona (1966) is a sight to behold on a big theater screen. Persona starts with a demonstration of how imagery can have a powerful effect on us. Images of an erect penis, Christ’s hand being nailed to a cross, a lamb having is throat sliced open flash across the screen. As we watch the blood pour from the lamb’s neck, we see its eyes dim in death, and we are horrified. We see a boy in a morgue caressing the viewer’s face through a camera lens. Our perspective is from the outside looking in. Perspective shifts, and we notice that the location where we once stood as viewers, is replaced by interchanging images of Elisabet and Alma. We are now in the room with the boy, from the inside looking out.

After the opening credits, we cut to a hospital where we meet Alma, a nurse played by Bibi Andersson. We also meet Elisabet Vogler, an actress played by Liv Ullmann. We learn that Elisabet has stopped speaking, by personal choice not illness, during a theater rendition of Elektra. Why has Elisabet stopped speaking? The doctor describes Elisabet’s state of mind as, “The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace.” Like Eleanor Rigby, Elisabet keeps her face in a jar by the door. She is a woman in crises. Not speaking is her defense against the nihilism threatening to annihilate her. Alma, assigned to care of her, is intimidated by the display of mental strength such a choice entails.

Soon after the two women are introduced, Elisabet watches news footage of the Vietnam War in which a man is burned alive. Elisabet’s reaction to the burning man on television illustrates the power of imagery upon her. She is as horrified as we were during Persona’s opening series of images. This is why she is also visibly shaken by the photo of the boy being abducted by the Nazis, later in the film. Real world images affect Persona’s characters just as they affect us, the viewers. I think Ingmar Bergman is showing viewers that influence flows in both directions during the creative process, from film maker to viewer and from viewer to film maker. In essence, the film’s identity was influenced by Bergman’s conception of viewer expectations. I am sure he wanted people to appreciate Persona, his artwork. Conversely, film as art shapes the viewer. My world view, part of my identity, has certainly been influenced by the movies I’ve seen. It’s a symbiotic relationship. This is also reflected in the relationship between Alma and Elisabet. One influences the identity of the other. Bergman’s use of imagery to express this idea was radically innovative. He wanted to deconstruct the film medium and show us, his audience, what movie making truly is. Sine scientia ars nihil est, “Art without knowledge is nothing.” Alma, describes herself at one point as “All lies and imitation.” Perhaps, this is what Bergman constantly reminds the viewer of, that Persona is only a film, a deception, the face in a jar kept by the door.

The rest of Persona takes place at the doctor’s seaside home. It’s here that Elisabet and Alma develop a close friendly relationship. So close, that Alma is slowly being dragged into her charge’s existential struggle and losing herself in the process. For Elisabet, being an actress grants her the ability to project her identity, her soul, if you will. Conversely, Elisabet’s audience lives through her vicariously. For instance, we are Liv Ullmann’s, the actress’s audience, and we identify with the persona she projects on the screen. Elisabet’s sheer mental strength, coupled with Alma’s tractability, the intimacy in which the two women live, and the circumstance of one woman having to speak for the other, result in Elisabet imprinting her identity onto Alma. Because Alma is taking on Elisabet’s persona, she too is going through an ontological self examination. However, she is not as strong as Elisabet. The imprinting is symbolized during a beautiful dream sequence, shot in a glowing twilight, in which Elisabet visits a sleeping Alma.

We don’t know for sure if Elisabet’s visit to Alma was a dream or reality. When asked, Elisabet denies she visited Alma during the night. I’ll take her word for it because there are are other dream sequences later in the film. The two actresses each play half of one complete persona. Alma does all the verbal communication for this persona while Elisabet speaks only through facial expression and body language. Eventually, we realize the women have also exchanged roles. Alma, once the care giver, becomes emotionally needful while Elisabet, once the patient, becomes clinically observant. This exchange of role is symbolized by the juxtaposition of the actress’s heads and then the exchange of their positions on the screen, left to right and right to left.

I think the malleability of Alma’s psyche is alluded to in a confession about a sexual experience she had on a beach from which she got pregnant and consequently, had an abortion. I won’t relate the full account here as Alma does a much better job in the movie. Suffice to say, Alma shares a lover in the presence of another woman on the beach, as she does later in a dream with Mr. Vogler. Meaning, Alma is interchangeable with these women, even during intercourse! The audience is drawn into the scene though verbal intimacy. When Alma confesses to Elisabet her experience, we are in the room with them, privy to an erotic secret being unveiled. The beach story becomes much more vivid because we must imagine the event; it’s not visualized for us on film.

The story takes a violent turn after Alma discovers, in a letter from Elisabet to her doctor, that Elisabet is “studying her.” After confessing so much to Elisabet, Alma feels betrayed and becomes violent. Alma purposefully leaves a shard of broken glass where Elisabet will step bare footed. After Elisabet steps on the glass, she gives Alma a look as if to say, “I know you did this deliberately.” This is the first conflict in Persona between the two women. Right after this, the film appears to break and burn, as if a connection is severed, not only between Alma and Elisabet, but between viewer and film. This is Bergman’s deconstruction of film as art. He is telling us this is simply a film, “All lies and imitation” As with Elisabet’s accusing look to Alma, he is telling us deliberately.

When the film resumes, Alma confronts Elisabet about the letter and they get into a fight. Alma apologizes. Later that night, Alma dreams she is waking up from a nightmare but she is still dreaming. She dreams Mr. Vogler mistaking her for Elisabet. She tries to play the role of Elisabet but cannot continue the deception. “It’s all lies and imitation,” she screams.

The dream continues in another scene where Elisabet is concealing a photo of her son. Alma notices it and says, “We have to talk about it.” We notice that the women are dressed like twins, both wearing black. Filmed with two cameras, this scene is so interesting because it’s repeated twice from different perspectives. First, we see the scene delivered through Alma’s vantage point, looking at Elisabet’s face. When Elisabet refuses to speak, Alma speaks for her. She accuses Elisabet of being repulsed by motherhood, of thinking of her baby boy as disgusting, and that she wished him stillborn. The baby was removed and raised by relatives. Elisabet returned to her work as an actress however, the boy developed a deep love for his mother which she never returned. By Elisabet’s body language, we know Alma’s accusations are accurate. The same scene is shown again so that we see it from Elisabet’s perspective, looking at Alma’s face. From this viewpoint, we learn from reading Alma’s facial expressions that she is not only speaking about Elisabet’s coldness and indifference, but about her own feelings toward her aborted son. With this realization, Alma starts to choke on her words, to desperately deny she is Elisabet and assert her identity. It’s too late. To wit, the famous shot of half of Alma’s face and half of Elizabeth’s face combined to make a single face.

After the dual monologue scene, Alma’s dream continues. Elisabet is still dressed in black but now Alma is dressed in her nurse’s uniform. Alma again confronts Elisabet but again Elisabet’s personality is too strong. Alma pounds the table in frustration and again her sentences become incomprehensible. She cuts her arm open with her fingernail until blood flows and presents it to Elisabet. Elisabet drinks her blood, metaphorically sucking the soul out of Alma. In the last scene of Alma’s dream, Elisabet is back in the hospital, Alma’s domain. Alma asks Elisabet to speak, to say “Nothing.” This time it’s Elisabet who acquiesces and she repeats, “Nothing.” Alma wakes up. We see Elisabet pack a suitcase and Alma also prepares to return to the hospital. Alma boards a bus and as the camera tracks to follow, it focuses on a patch of earth which is, I think, the symbolic burial site for the women’s sons. Indeed, the boy in the morgue caressing the faces of Alma and Elisabet is the last shot of Persona before the film projector light goes out.

I wanted to experience Persona on the big screen and I’m glad I got the chance. Sven Nykvist’s gorgeous cinematography was on full display, with close-ups of Alma and Elisabet communicating volumes, non-verbally, about their state of mind. The close ups in the Alma’s second dream allowed me to see the reaction of each woman. It reminded me of the image of the boy in the morgue, perhaps Elisabet’s son or Alma’s, caressing the women’s faces when the film began. Close-ups made viewing an intimate experience and I haven’t seen any movie with better. They gave me a first person perspective, the same perspective the actresses have of each other. Bergman once said, “The human face is the great subject of the cinema. Everything is there.” Aside from great imagery, both verbal and visual, it’s the nuanced performances of Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullmann that really make this movie unforgettable.