Film Screening: Persona

Ingmar Bergman: A Tribute in Film concludes with a screening of the masterpiece Persona (1966). In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann plays a stage actor who has inexplicably gone mute. Isolated in a remote island cottage with the young nurse caring for her (Bibi Andersson), the two women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference that would prove to be one of cinema’s most influential creations.

Shot in stark contrast and soft light by the great Sven Nykvist, Persona is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth. A remarkably rich work about identity , this spare, intense film inspired later works by Kubrick, Altman, and Lynch, and was considered by Susan Sontag to be one of the greatest films ever made.