Barr - Unraveling of Character in Bergman's Persona - Lit Film Quarterly

8/13/2019 Barr - Unraveling of Character in Bergman's Persona - Lit Film Quarterly

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In the late fifties. lngmar Bergman assaulted and occasionally astonished our newlychristened an hous e s with The Se venth Seal Wild Strawberries. The Magician andThe virgin Spring Ever since, he has attracted the kind of stro ng. part isan responsesthat few major directors provoke . He seemed an arti st with a singular style and setof concerns, Some found these films philosophically invigorating, probing. andartisticaJly honest ; to others they were theological fol-de-rol. pretentious , heavy-handedly literary and tbeatn catce ven specio us, But to all he was a recogniza ble phenomenon . one who could . for example, be tellingly parodi ed in The DoveGradually, other e qua lly distin t Bergmans arrived . The beachhead established . a retrospecti ve searc h discovered the is land pictures. tales of slimmer loversmevitably forced to return, come autumn. to the grisly. inhibiting. dark city . Thencame the religious or chamber films. the tri logy that wondered whether God was reallya spider who descended from a helicopte r and refused to talk verbosely); at least thisis how the unconverted might well have rendered Through A Glass Darkly WimerLight. and The Silence

After The Silence 1963). Bergman became the Bergman of psychoanalytic introspection. His form . his style. his thrust all conspired to present the image If a latter-dayDostoev sky. a relentless pursuer of psychic realities. For very good reason. Bergmangained the reputation of being part icularly absorbed with the psychological recessesand underpinnings of his characters. Obviously, none of these phases was hermetically isolated from its siblings; characters. motifs. settings, images, and even nameshad a way of spilling across per iods . But in such distinct and unequal films as ourof the Wolf Face to Face. Cries and Whispl rs. Scenes From A Marriage. and evenin the recent and declaredly final ) Fanny and Alexander the common prevailingconcern is the perso nal psychologies and psycho logical interactions of the characters.Sometimes the results are undistinguished and eas ily enough dismissed as a mixtureof histrionics and pop-Freud ace to Face is . I think . b a poor player that strutsand frets in the shadow of its betters). Sometimes the tapestry is particularly well andrichly wrought: Scenes and Fanny . In the case of Persona my especial interest here .the result is a supreme contribution to the art of psychological observat ion, dissection.and analysis or implication).

Persona more completely than Cries ami Whispers and Scenes From A MllrriaKe-and certainly more successfully than Face to Face . undertakes to explore and hopefullyto Fathom the nature of a person and even of human identity . Whereas Cries W Whispers and Scenes with exquisite care and subtlety. anatomize their protagonistsand are satisfied to stop there. Persona ex tends its inquiry . creating sufficie nt momentum to question the inquiry itself. By the end of this felicitous hybrid of cinematic


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24 ersona

magic and psychological leger-de-main, we are urged to give up as implausible ourstruggles to decode the personalities or psychologies of either Elizabeth or Alma.Bergman establishes an elaborate systemof doubles that discredits any facile distinctionbetween the two women, one her and the other her We may at first seem to beclosing in on (understanding) one of them, but in fact we end up with a drama whosefocus is more general and theoretical . Persona docs not so much ferret out an individualbeing as use two characters to call into question theexistence of discernible individualhuman identities.Persona can be entered as a work of an in a number of apparently diverse ways .Literally from the first shots to the final ones it is concerned with itself as a film, or ,as more than a few have commented, it is a film about filmmaking. This involves orleads to another major subject: the role of art and artists in our society. ElizabethVogler s profession , Alma s reflections on it, and at least one important denotationof the title occupy the center spots in such a discussion of the film .Persona likewise, could persuasively be viewed as a film where illness is a principalissue-mental illness. The first realistic sections of the story take place in a hospital .When Elizabeth and Alma move to the doctor s island home, Bergman cunningly andwittily simulates the diode of psychoanalyst and analysand. Tbe touchy boundarydistinguishing dream or illusion from waking reality pervades the film. TIle imagesrhernselves-cof personae, of doublings and reflections, of light and dark , of glass,clothing. of city versus country and private versus social worlds, of seasons, and ofblood and pain are so developed that they also could provide a full study of Persona.But pursuing any of these inviting avenues is likely to be frustrating ndunsatisfying .Concentrating, for example, on the clever way that Bergman replicates the classicalpsychoanalytic situation unhappily ignores more than it illuminates. A modernistdisquisition of the setf-reflexivity of the film (as David Vierling orrerS I) slights therich drama of character. And so on. . . . The dangers of one -sided interpretationsare of course familiar; they distort and diminish that which they purport to illuminate.What makes the issue and the warning pertinent here is that the separate facets ofPersona are particu larly seductive and the totality seems so hazardous to venture .Let me offer as the most useful and encompassing view of PtrSOM that it is a filmabout the enigma or perplex of human identity. Ostensibly setting out to unravelan abnormal , acting-out individual , Persona soon enough questions our endeavorsto comprehend discrete identities. Many critics. John Simon most notably among thefilm s admirers, have asserted that it is a very difficult film (indeed. it is probablythe most difficult film ever made 2). suggest that surely this is a gross exaggeration,that it is not really very difficult-neither in the sense that Finnegan s Wake is difficultbecause of its intricate, dense texture nor that Don Quixote is troublesome becauseof its equivocal tone . What males Persona seem difficult is the tenacious pursuingof an inadequate perspective or the refusal to accept the film s inextricable fusion ofthe real and the fantastic or subjective. Finding. first, that its protagonist (ei ther one )is essentially unknowable in any ordinary or classical sense , and , subsequently, thatthe pursuit of an individual s personality (or persona) makes suspect t very idea ofhuman identity as a distinct. fathomable quality, only compounds the sense ofdifficulty.We habitually assume that Oedipus and even Hamlet are comprehensible, that they(or that Othello and (ago) are distinguishable, and that the quest for such comprehensionis a meaningful and vital undertaking. That these verities might be questioned is notdifficult to grasp so much as it is irksome to accept. (Likewise. we customarily assumea real nddeterminable distinction between what is factual or realistic and what issubjectively conceived or fantasy . Bergmans denying or ignoring this is not intellectually difficult, just awkwardly disorienting.)Persona can be usefully imagined as an artistic map or globe of separate blocks.Each seems an in-tact entity or aspect (so much so that critical expositions can justifiablyunravel it); and the bridges between islands are obscure enough to discourage any


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comprehensive cartography . Seen together, thoug h. rhe islands fonn a larger, morecomplete and satisfying artistic chain .It is initial ly tempt ing to see Persona as a distilled comment by Bergman on theprocess of filmmaking and on the medium itself. Susan Sontag. for nne, finds themovie is not just a representation of transactions between the two characters , Almaand Elizabeth, but a med itation on the film which is about them . 1 at first conceived

of describing Persona as a film about the di fficulties of dep icting a fully-dimensionalfigure on film . This prom ised to joi n two of its obvious subjects: itself as a film andits character analysis. ) Bergman anticipated entitl ing it Kinematograph or Film. Theimages from film technology and irs self-reflexivity comfortably place it in the companyof such other modernist films as 81 and Dayfor Nihl (perhaps even with all Wi,ha Movie Camera and Beckett s Film a ll of which allude 1 themselves and portraythe making of a film . Vernon Young, in his general impatience with Persona, deploresas unnecessary this ca lling attention to itself:

the whole range of the new (in 1972) cosmopoli tan film sernanucs: the bcpscotch ala Godard . a disjunctive explosion of thematic images before the introductory titles.frequently interspersed glimpsesof a moviecamera and sounds of the silence ho mtha t announces a lake . a narrator who abruptly introduces the single change of selling,simulations of (rayed fburning celluloid in the projector. and stray fcc -age (romfilms. principally his own .

Persona almost yells out to be noticed ali a film . The very first shot is of the twocarbon arcs of a projec tor s lamp coming together . No doubt this suggests the bringingto light Bergman s fictional cosmos or the dark underbelly of our emotional existences .Possibly , it even carries the hint of a biblical allusion to a god-like cree-o r s bringingof light 1 the darkness that was originally upon the face of the deep: S pecifically,however, this image insists that we are watching a film, that Persona will havesometh ing to do with film as a medium. In quick succession, we see a reel of filmwhining along the sprocket, a spotlight, frames of leader countdown. a came ra lens ,and the carbon arcs again. At the conclusion of Persona. Alma appears upside downthrough a viewfinder. Svcn Nykv ist and Bergman himsel f are on an overhead cameraset-up filming her. The last shots are of the film running off of the sprocket, the arcsseparati ng and running down, and of the dark dominating . The se opening and closingsequences function as a kind of frame for the enclosed fiction . Midway between them,the action is interrupted by what seems to be a picture of the film s burning andbreaking apart . Also . Elizabeth. while playing Electra on stage, is being fi lmed . Sincethe story of Elizabeth and Alma could easily exis t without these meta-filmic inclusions, would in fact probably seem more coherent without them, it is tempting todecide that Bergman s primary interest is in depicti ng o r at least suggesting-a-theprocess of constructing a film . The actual content. the two women and tteir situation ,would accordingly be the prop or vehicle that makes it possible for him to talk aboutfilming a partic ular subject.A very closely related series of shots further refines this approach: the referencesto Bergman himself as a filmmake r. The by-now notorious pre-credit and creditsequence , all of which is initially puzzling and much of which is nas h with almostsubliminal abruptness. includes a number of allusions to prev ious Bergman films.John Simon has catalogued most of these connections ..5The cartoonish sequence ofa frightened man running from a skeleton and a devil comes from the very earlyPrison . The boy who rises as jf from a morgue slab to wipe a glass and pick. up ahook is played by Jbrgen Lindstrom , who played the son, Johan. in The Silence. Thespace-age spider reca lls Karin s image of God in Through Glass Dar y the nailbeing dri ven through a palm is at one with the images of pain and cruci fix ion in TheSeventh Seal and The Virgin Spring (Mereta s mortifying her flesh by dripping hotwax on her wrist). Elizabeth Vogler s name and muteness , as well as he r black stagewig , echo traits of Vogler in The Puce (the more accurate British renderi ng of mi et


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6 Persona

than The Magician N only does Bergman appear with Sve n Nykvist behind thecamera toward the end , but it is his own voice that delivers the only lines of narrationin Persona a the scene shifts from the hospital to the island . (Other, more speculativeparal lels are possible: characteristic themes and anticipations of subsequent films thefascina tion with dreams that haunt an artist s psyche in Hour o the ol and theslaughtered sheep in A Passionv

Not only, then , does Persona seem to be about that mars h-like subject, the natureof art , but the ev idence tempts us to acce pt it as a film about Ingmar Bergman screative history , As Simon suggests. in his reco nditely winy reworking of Ionesco sLesso n, these preliminary shots ontogenetically recapitulate the phylogeny of film.BUI . these shots may also beemblematic of Bergman s previous cinematic output,of the main themes of his oc vre.? Perhaps , to extend this argument, the perspectiveof the boy who surrounds the story proper is that of Bergman himself (as several havesuggested), a persona representing the artist as a sensitive youth. It is, moreover, thearti st at work on one of his favored themes: the uncovering of a human persona.But such an approach , though provisionally usefu l. is ultimately unsatisfying. Mostobv iously . its emphas is sits wrong . t gives too much of the actio n and of the dramasubordinate place . A tactful criticism of Persona one tha t sits righ t, has to acknowledgethat it is not the framin g sequences and the cinematic pyrotechnics Ihal impress usmost, but what occu rs between Alma and Elizabeth . We feel them to be the protago nists-no t film , film history, or Bergman s art .

t seems, therefore , reaso nable to reverse this emphasis and view it as a film thaiexposes the character, nature, and psychology of irs main figures . Bergman, especiallyin this period of his work . is, after all, much more in the tradition of Dostoevskythan of the avant-garde . Simon , in fact, goes so far as to declare: Never befo re infilm has the derailed psyche been examined more penetratingly, never befo re has thedrama been played so consistently beneath the surface, yet witho ut the slightest sacrificein palpable excitement.? Much in Persona supports Simon s co ntention (esc hewingquibbles over his hyperbolic Never ) . The presenting occasion is a psychiatric malaise;the personal transactions are designed to be therape utic . The pa lpable exc itementis that of a psychological drama, and a great dea l of the imagery and dream-l ikequality is appropria te 10 such a drama .

Elizabeth is the declared patie nt. Her assumed muteness and torpor , the hospitalsetting, the psychiatrist s presentation of the case to the psychiatric nurse as wellas her solicitous speec h about the terrible burden of j ust bei ng all imply Ihat theactress is mentally ill She is to be trea ted and the therapy will involve understandingher and remediating her hurt s .

t sounds plausible; the kicker is that no real trea tment (o f Elizabeth) is in evidence,nor does the re seem to bemuch probing or discovering of her . From the time Almaengages the case , there are reasons to suspect this surface arrangement. When sheintrod uces herself, the nurse is a little too friendly, talka tive, and self-revea ling. Shevoluntecrs-and these are her first remarks to Elizabeth-c- am twenty-five and engaged to be married . I graduated from nursing school two years ago , My parent s havea fann . My mother was also a nurse , Elizabeths s ilence is soo n ca lled into questionas a symptom. Alma wonders to the doctor if it isnt a sign of strength, of a conscious,rational decision. Alma even wonders if she will be able to cope with such mentaland emotional strength . When Alma leaves Elizabe th s roo m and we first see thepatient alone, she watches the newscast from Saigon, with the body counts and thebonze inunolat ing himself. Her silent horror seems psychologically appropriate, nota pathological symptom.What does unfold is an almost too clear parody or the class ical psychoanalyticsituatic n-c-but one in which the dec lared patient and the therapist exc hange pos itions .Alma slips into the role of the analy sand sometimes ingenuously garrulous, sometimesmoody and reflective or resentful , occasionall y intensely revealing of hersel f. The


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lighting. the moods, the tone , and the setti ngs change frequentl y and rapidly-butthroughout, it is Alma, the psychiatric nurse and appointed therapi st , who displaysherself. Many of the detail s suggest that Elizabeth is occupying the role of the class icalFreudian ana lys t. She is doggedl y, infuriatingly silent, but, as Alma appreciativelyobserves . a good listener . In the electri c scene where Alma relates (confesses) herorgiastic encoun ter on the beach and subsequent abortion, Elizabeth s ts in the background. behind the light , assuming the position Freud prescribed for un analyst . 'Shediligently resists passing any judgment, all the wh ile seeming attentive, caring. andcomprehending .Alma, acco rdingly, performs the part of the traditional analysand-altemately sturdyand engaging , angry and hurt . A good deal of her increasingly frenetic reactions canbe likened to the stripping away of the patient 's defenses. characteristic of the earlystages of an analysis. The cracking through to Alma. her donnin g and shedding ofglasses and hats , her outbursts and regroupings and the dream-like world she inhabitsall support this construction. Elizabeth s silence, which at first is congenial to Alma.soon becomes irritating and provocative , much like the taciturnity of a classical analyst.Alma becomes bitter, frant ic to ge t a response from her, to make her say something--tomake the doc tor decla re herself. Like a relatively insecure and defenseless patient,Alma feels very vulnerable and betrayed , especia lly when she discoversthat Elizabethhas been chatting about her in the letter to the doctor and ev idently taking her lessthan seriou sly.The most effective dynamics that occur in a successful psychoanalysis are thetransferences the patient expe riences and the projections hedeposits onto the therapi st.Surely, one of the keys to unlocking Alma and much of what she says is to appreciatehow she projects her own feelings . history. and even identity onto Elizabeth. Thismakes sense of the confusion surround ing the hallucinated visit of Mr. Vogler (Almais imagi ning herse lf as Elizabe th). her apparent knowledge of Elizabeth's past and ofher relationship to her son. and more dramatically t he joined image of them nearthe end . with Alma' s hysterical asse rtion, I' m not you. Their persons have mergedin the nurse' s mind and she feels overtaken.

The tonal emphasis of the film. the stressing of personal psychobgies, and thepsychoanalytic metaphor all argue for the view thai Simon ' s comment suggests, thatpeeling the human onion is Bergman 's game here. But this. too. proves to be anultimately insufficient view of the movie . It has the obvious liability of ignoring theframe of Persona its meta-filmicness , and, as Sontag has cautioned , Any accountwhich leaves out or dismisses as incidental how Persona begi ns and ends hasn ' t beentalking about the film that Bergman made .g More important. as the unfolding of aprotagonist-c-or of two of them Pt rsolla is unclear and unresolved . The figures don tgell: we certainly are not leftcomfortable in our understanding of chern . Th e therapeuti ctransactions, both the literal one undertaken and the (reversed) analytic one mimicked,figure unclear ly in the film. The attitude toward them, their place , and even theirefficacy arc vague. Very likely , as Sontag advises. to understand S IIU . the viewermust go beyond the psychologica l point of view. ?

Sontag . in fact. offers a useful next gambit here. It is futile, she finds , and evenwrong-headed to try defi nitively 10 separate fantasy from reality or to reconcile apparently contrad ictory internal relat ionships; T he viewer can only move toward , butnever achieve. certainty about the action. Like so much else in the new narratives(the fictions of Robbe-Grillet. Resnais ' Morienbod. Antonioni s A v e ~ u and Blow-Up Persona systematically thwarts the desire to know . that hallowed pursuit ofplot-followers. Her view. rather, is that. the construction of Persona is best describedin terms of this (modernist] varia tions-o n-a-theme fonn . The theme is that of doubling;the varia tions are those that follow from the leading possibilities of that theme suchas duplication . invers ion, reciprocal exchange . unity and fission , and repetition .Such a revaluation of the film usefully recognizes the importance of formali stic


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I28IPtrsolla

conce rns and emphasizes what are surely among Persona major element . One can ,as Sontag does, draw parallels between differen t types of doubli ng: thedivided person,the frame (or art versus the story contained or reflected , the interior versus the externalworlds. As an attempt to elucidate the entirety of Persona though, it falls shortbecause it smacks more of the critically cleve r than of the humanistic and comprehensive. Knowing that reflec tions or doublings abound does not go very far towardresolv ing our views of the two women, nor does it even help to place the psychiatricdimension very persuasively .Thi s returns me to my initial urging: that Persona is best seen as a film that beginsby seeming to be tbe psychological tale of a disturbed actress, but lbal ends up beinga philosophically much larger opus ne that skeptically examines the poss ibility ofknowing someone and questions whether it is eve n intellectually tenable to talk ofindividual, distinct identities , Such a reading not only accommodates all of the majorpieces in the film (those mentioned already as well 3S others), but also explains whywe do not leave really knowing Elizabeth-or Alma .The immediate occasion of the film, Elizabeth s presence in the hospital. suggeststhat our job is gradually to come to an understanding of Elizabeth, quite likely as sheand her examiners veer toward that same unders tanding . Her presenting symptomsare clear and presumably pathological : for some months she has refused to talk andhas remained ncar-cata tonic. surely abnormal behavior. Elizabeth would seem a finecandidate for diagnosis and therapy-c-except for the early intimations by the doctorand Alma that perhaps she is not responding irrationally ,Since there is no real point in Elizabeths remain ing in the hospital, the doctorsuggests that she and nurse Alma move to her summer place by the sea . She goes on ,in what stands out in the drama as a set piece of expos ition (Sontag is inclined toimpute a privileged status to the speech ). explaining Elizabe th, her situation, herchoices , and even her prospects to the pat ient:

I under stand you know , The hopeles s dream of being, not seemi ng, hUI being ,At every waking moment alert , The gulf betwee n what you are with others and what) 0 0 are alone . The vertigo and the constan t hunge r 10 be unmasked . To he seenthrough . . . rerhaps even wiped out . Every inflexion and every gesture a lie . .every smile a grimace . Suicide No, 100 vulgar . UI you can refuse 10 move . Refuseto talk so that ) OU don , have 10 lie. You can shut yourself in. Then you don tplay any pans or make any wronggestures. Or so you though t. UI reality isdiabolical .Your hiding place isn t watertight. Life trickles in from the oetside . And you r e forced10 react . No one asks whether usgenuine or nor. whether you re true or false . Suchthings rnarter only in the theatre . and hardly there either . I understand why you don tspeak, why you don t ITNJV . , I understand it and admire you for It When you v eplayed it to the end , you can drop il l you drop your oeber parts.

Elizabeth as a patient just does nt ho ld up. In the course of the doctors speech ,the m l e evanesces and becornes-c-again-c-t he actress . Although ostensibly speakin gas a psychiatrist . the doctor in fact sounds more like an Existentialist philosopher, asociologist. or a social game theorist. Her understand ing is impersonal, of generalconditions and universal reactions . Moreover. Elizabeth is, it seems, being dismissedas rational, that is, as having- for reasons that arc not hizarre-c-deci ded not to speak .You can t really commit someone for struggling not to lie ,The other , only slightly less overt evidence that we are to witness a psyche beingspread out (intelligibly) before us is the psychoanalytic situation Bergman simulates.Of all of the branches and vagaries of psychotherapy. no discipline is as exac tingly.laboriously, indulgently dedicated to the understanding of a particular human psycheas is analysis . anybody is devoted to tracking our inner recesses and success fullydecodi ng them, it is these archeologists of humanity . To the extent that Bergmanconstructs a parallel between what transp ires between patient and analyst and whatgoes on between Alma and Elizabeth . the parallel could not be more fitting , How


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Pers I ll 2Q

right for a story that is going to examine (he derailed psyche with unprecedentedpenetration to employ as one of its major structures an analytic hour.Again fine. except that it is the admitted patient who functions a, the doctor .and evcn gliding over this readjustment-c-Alma' s treatment is far more truncatedand unresolved even than that of Freud 's Dora . She is more fragmented md unknown(by us and by herself) at the end than she wax at the beginning. and n just becauseher superficia l images of herself have been exploded . More important. the focus orthrust shifts just about the time w hen the film seems to bum and melt .Alma is no more a patient to beanalyzed and understood than Elizabeth is-s-becauseBergman's real interest is to suggest/or a while how difficult it is to know someone

n then to imply that the whole venture may be an absurdity. The rest of the majorelements in Persona all function to suggest that we may be deluding ourselves inthinking that knowable individual human identities exist. The boundaries betweenpeople are illusory. as are the boundaries separating reality from fantasy.The suspicion that symptoms do not make an illness nor admission ttl a hospital apatient . the parodic deflat ion of that ultimate mode of psychological exploration. therelationship between the film we are reminded we are watching and the story it unfolds,the enigmatic and shifting relationship between the two women. the elaborate congeriesof doublingx. mirrors. and reflectors. of splits and fragmenting. the occasio nal glimpsesof external political realities (the Warsaw ghetto and Saigon). and the concern withan . [heater , and literature all become more cohere nt and intelligible from this perspective, Each contributes to an essentially philosophical (certai nly beyond psychology )discussion of the nebulousness of the human quagmire. the questionable determinacyof personal boundaries and individual identities.Psychoanalysis, with its vas.t theory. leisurely pace. and safely insulated theater ofoperatio n. is at least a useful image of the most exhaustive of psychotherapies. Butart . too. has its traditional place as a route 10 psychological understanding. (Crasslysimplified: you want to understand people. read edipus Alma early tells Elizabethhow tremendously important the theater is, especially for people with problems.)And among an forms, film is arguably the most wide-ranging and competent reflectorof the human figure. It has the persuasive concreteness and detail of photography.plus the advantage of motion . It has the capability of literally showing us someonefrom every conceivable angle. even of altering the tim forward or backward-e-atwill. Unlike the novelist. the filmmaker can smoothly incorporate a variety of pointof view into his film. alternately switching from one to another. (Here is how ourheroine saw herself a decade ago; here is how she looks to Elizabet or to us-c-now;here is how she will look to omniscience.) What a seemingly remarkable vehicle fordisplaying a characterYet. Bergman still finds it lacking. The introduction effectively announces that afilm is being made and shown. (The center portion will define the psychologicalcontent of that film.) But the going is awkward and jerky. barely cohering. Thecontrolling artist is both aided and stymied by the experience he brings to this endeavor.The pre-credit sequence includes shots from ear lier Bergman films ar d alludes tofamiliar themes and even obsessions (the pains and dislocations of existence): previously met char-deters (the boy) slip into the new work as will o ld names re-echo. Thisis pan of the accumulated baggage the artist must control and give unlet to. besides .of course, mastering the techniques of his medium (a the of Bergman and Nykvistat the camera playfully reminds us). The prospects are dizzyingly difficult . By mid-filmit is as if neither the mind of Alma nor the frames of Bergmans making can containwhat I being acted out . They split. melt. fragment w i t h Alma on screen end Bergmanbehind the screen simultaneously straining to regruup and return things to a focusedview. When . at the end. the reel runs off of the sprocket and the carbon arcs darken.the medium itself seems to be confessing its incapacity. The subject, despite all theurtist can bring to hear (his experiences. his expertise . his concerns). is too difficult


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3 Pumlla

and co mplex to besuccessfully put in the ca n. The camer a no more than the analystcan present us with a clear and tidy view of Alma: I ass ume. by th is lime. Alma is(he more likel y patient or subject).

But this. in is I outstridc Illy qu arry . It is largely throu gh his imagery thatBergman first tries to dra w his figures out and then co ncedes the fut ility of the venture.

The title contains, of course. the image that introduces the li lm . Pressured by SvenskFilmindustris disapproval, Bergman reconsidered his o riginal title. ilm and se ttledupon Persona, It has become customary to include. in each new analysis of Persona,a d iscussion of the tit le. The cus tom should he h o n r e d I ~ Persona originally meant(or means) the role. part , or mas k one assumes-usually in a dramatic context: Elizabethwas impersonating Electra whe n she called a hah to her normalcy . It also denotesthe character behind the mask , which immediate ly f l ~ s the issue of whether the rolea character plays is the same as o r antithe tica l to the playe r. Arc we, as an Existentialistline of thought might ask, the roles we perform? Do we become them? To thiv Latinconstruing or the term . obvio usly cognate with our pe rson, Carl Jung add ed a seco ndmeaning . Persona was . fur him, an ou te r mask . worn when among others andreflecting the role soc iety imposed on us. II is kin to the personality we construct. (heface we prepare to meet the faces that we meet. Like any mack. it serves 10 impressand to conceal .Eliza bet h. as an actress, i: of course a co llection of professional personae. Shereadil y assumes and sheds iden ti ties. Her profc ..sion is a metaphor for the ro les eachof Us plays. deceptive ly and defe nsively camouflaging his her rea r self'. Her..ilencc. then , amounts to J refusal to continue the deception: (Alma asks. desperately,if it is so impo rtant not [ lie ). Th is strategy to act wi th integrity. though , is judgedineffe ctual. The doc tor sees her maneuver as just another pan , one that she sho uldplay out like the o r ~ she loses inte rest in it. I f. accordina to Jun g. Acomplete udandonmenr of our persona would . . . lead to a state (If mute unconsciou sness : ' Ic,l\ 1I1g a human bei ng 10 s tand face to face with his nak ed se lf (a nd with theabsolutd : ' 1 l for Bergman such I stripping away amounts to an imposs ible delu sion :there an: on ly personae .

The do ubles and reflectors in Persona arc another way or saying thai we arc. atbase , unint egrared fragments . l have . with ..uspcct glibness . sculed on Alma as theeffective focus of the film . She is the image of the analysand being treated: we learna num ber of details about her past: she evidently cracks up, and-as Sontag righ tfullyargues-many of the surreal goings-on arc bes t seen as occurring in Alma s mind(E lizabeth s nocturnal visit 10 her. the episode with Mr. Vogler) . B UI this was profferedtent ati vely and with reservations .It is more helpful to view Alma and Elizabeth as doubles. :IS co mplementary aspectsof consciousness: the outward mask or facade (persona) and the inner so ul (A lma),the silent. seemingly uncom mun icative figure and the talkati ve guileless one. thehealthy therapi st and the infirm patient (whichever happens to he which). o f inSontag' s tenus-c-hiding (muteness) and showing forth , and or co nscio us existence(realistic. tangible) and subconscious (fantasied I exis tence . Such a view leads In ;10appreciation of Bergman' s imagery. It also reinforces the no tion tha t a person, oneand indivisible. is an illusion.Bergman has at limes traced the origins of Persona to his de tecting a similaritybetween Liv Ullman (in a Norwegian film) and Bibi Anderson . Vernon Young findsthe pattern much more profoundly etched in his art .

From the moment Bergman foot in the theatre. the dopplrgtlnxe,.., the twin. thefraternal emblem . Inc complemen t and the rival. the porsnnar Imash or person..),the mutually hosttle or infatuate genders had con-utu tcd hi.. world [fnun hi..carl)'plays th rough Tilt Srventh Seal and The Ntll..t d Night tn nilSifl lICt'). Hihl and Livis a l 1 ~ t I 1 l Y in u subject ion to the und islcxlgcahlc i l l l i l ~ l . . . or duality.dua litv . dualit v 1.J


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ersonal3

The theme of doubling is more exte nsively de veloped in ersona tt an in any ofBergman' s other film > . He is concerned in it to create the image of a d ivided person .a split identity-s-and then to portray the two halves as ultimately irreconcilable. Thetheme launched before the credits. where the boy traces on the glass the co ntoursof a woman that alternately suggests the two actresses.Within the ta lc itself, Alma gently advances this motif when she wonders whatinterest Elizabe th could possibly have in her. A lillie embarrassed. a little starstruck.she exclaims, 1 ought to be like you: Th is reminds her of having see n the actresson screen and then looking in a mirror to d iscover: Why. we loo k alike Oh. you remuch prett ier but we 1001 : alike . I could change myself into ),ou if I tried hard . I meaninside me . You could arrange yourself into me like this [she snaps): This apparentlyinnocent exchange is rellingty followed by the film s first ambiguous narrat ive seq ur : nce , Alma rests her head on the table (it is a lmos t morning) and we hear a voiceadv ising her go 1 bed-s-pres umably Alma's proj ection , in her mind . of Elizabeth'svo ice .

In the next episode. Elizabeth 's surrea l vivit to Alma' s bedroom, the boundariesbetween what IS rea l and wha t envisioned arc indeterminate. Th e lighting has alteredto suggest a much more airy and diaphonous tone: the veil-like mate-iuls and thelogistics of the two doors with their effectively parallel ha lls enhance this ambiguity .We have been shifted to a new dramati c or psychological level-o ne that would bediminished by ca ll ing it a dream or hallu cin ation. though it certainly conveys someof clements . What unfolds is an expressionistic revel ation of Alma ' s psych icsturc after her long night. Obviously. she d like to be visited by Elizabe th and forElizabeth to take some initiat ive to continue the closeness. Since a given is thatElizabeth won 't talk. a somnambulant, silent visitation is fitting. Culmi nating thisencounter . which almost arranged like a sym phony in white and black, is theirembrace ; the boundaries between the two figures become nebul ous. merged. blurred .When Elizabeth stands beside Alma and fingers her hair bad . showing a closenessof person and look, she is only (in Alma ' s mind . still) showing what Alma earl ierhad descr ibed discovering in the mirror- t h eir likeness . We now see that mirror ' sreflection of the ir relationship. in an image that will recur several more times in thefilm when their profiles overlap.

The last such instance . Alma's twice-delivered catec hism/indictme nt of Elizabeth ,imrod u,.-es the most extensive sequence of doubling in all o f ersonaThe episodeis, of course. capped by the two-sided face that Bergman gradually constru cts (whichrecalls the figure the hoy wiped onto the glass in the preface 1 the fi lm), Alma 'sreconstruction of Elizabeth s lack of motherl iness, Elizabeth' s pregnancy , attemptedabo rtio n. and unsuccessful mothering arc only momentaril y puzzlin g. She knowssome of these details bec ause they in fact apply to her and she is prcjectir g them ontoElizabeth. It is Alma. remember, who had the abort ion . In the screenplay. where thespeech is only delivered once, she spea ks in her own person ('T - for Elizabe th.Many of Alma 's charges are particularizations of the kind of doubts and misgivin gscommonly expe rienced by women who are pregnant or contemplating ~ n a n Herclaim that Eliza beth lacked motherliness and became pregnant to prove her femininitywould, for example, be recogni zed by Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex as aconsequence of the myth of the materna instin ct. That she. once pregnant. feared theresponsibility (the being tied down). the pai n. and the pos sibilit y of dyi ng wouldhard ly d istinguish Elizabeth. Alma acc uses her of having only ac ted the part of thehappy expectant mother . and of want ing to abort, which sounds very much like theordinary misgivings: Do I rea lly want this ? I think I d like to ca nce l. Alma chargesElizabeth with having begun to hate the child and of ha ving hoped for a stillbirth-notexactly a sta rt ling fantasy for an anxious prospective mother- sort of a dramatic wayof sayi ng . I'dli ke out. Alm a continues. tapping typical enough parental guilts aboutfeeling indifferent toward one'v ch ild and wanting to he left alone .


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132 \fmll

Des pite the intensity of the harangue und the illu ..ion \)1 personalnc... . though.ne ither wo man is rea lly Ind ividuated . Whal we ;10: let t wi th . rather tha n a re ... elationof Elizabeth or even of Alma. is a d rama with in the: fihu-c-complctc with ih ownmise-en-scene, ligh ting . composit ion. and ~ I l l .. l I.ftel,t oo-ahou t the two halves PIcomp lementary sides of a dubiou 'o l)' joined IlC Onaill) . Alma ..ecm- 10 be the '>JX.tkin)hall. verbuhzing for the ... ilcm Elizabeth Running the Illunolng through 1\\ 1 1..' . fiNfrom the pe rspective or Alma and then 01 Elizabeth . give ... credence 10 the Ide Ihalthese are IWO halves of a 'iin le human cnlil) So doe > the way Bergman darken..reciprocal side of their fuccv prior t juxtapovmg them . II make.. themat ic en e I..ee the IWO lace JOIned twuh the ..hadowy ide '> eliminated}; wc vc seen the indictmentfrom both view ... . BU ju ..t a '> Ihi.. happen '> . Alma feel .. herself engulfed b the trgureof Elizabeth and protectx, Nil. I' m nol you I don t fed .I '> )OU do . I m Alma [Huthalf of her Iacc Ih31 of Hhzabeth .] I m ouly here help . I'm nOI ElizabethVogler : ' The face itself'. in fact. seem ... about to break apart trorn il. own internaltension . It' > an eerie. distu rbing. and flickering construcuon-c-Ihc cpposue olhartuoru-ous . Its effect, like that of the pvychoanalytic metaphor . is I I I suggesl that two halve..lin not make n Y. hole . The two women : ' as Nancy Scholar decides , r an be CL'n asmask and shadow respect vely. at the same umc a .. they play out the drama 01 idcn tifi carion and projection between two ... C I V C ~ BUI, Fusion within [he ..e lf. resolutiono f rbc feeli ngs ofdivision. and unity between the eelvcs , prm c impossible 10su..tain I Ii

In contrast an) sense of intcgruuvn Ih;11 a character ' IUd) would ordinarii)de..clop . is a welter of Image ... of division ami frugmentauon lhe merged shot ofAlma and Elizabeth. with il.. disturbmg -cam . is prefigured h) the photo of her ..onthat Elizabe th almo:..1 cercmoniou..l> tear ... u l\.e. Irorn hlp to tl tl llom- .lIld by thecaesura in the midd le or the movie , \..hich bcgm.. with (he trume of Alma , crackingapart talso vert icully j The famed picture 01 the hoy in the Warsaw gbetto round-upthat haunt s Elizabeth is studied III part ial close-ups . as If ,ail1 lyt better to cumprehendthe magni tude of the horror. IUnfortunately ...cell piecemeal the res ult is rcnuniwcmo f the Kuleshov experimen t with context: the isolated fragments fail to convey thehorrific enuuion or to ne of the entire compovi tion.t

Glass or gfasses is a wonderfully economic metaphor lo r ....cemg , reflect ing. rt.'l.: ordin, : , ;tOd d i 'inlegration . and erson full 01 gla..... The fir l ...s we i.. n111rgu e -l ike I:hambe-r at the beginn ing . TIle hoy \ \ a k e ~ up and w ~ .. his h.tnd o ' e rthe Ird l ueenl gla.'i > bc tv.\.-c:n and camera (u ' and him 10 Iral,.c Ihe image of AlmaElizabe lh lhat Ihe remainder or Ihe film will presumably nc.h out. Pan of Alma s\ cry 'pri( .htl) outfn IS a p.lir o f clear reading gla.... gla . seo' tha t ...he ..cry p l l i n t e dputs on 10 read (Mr. Vog ler s 10 Elizabe th and , later . 1:Ii1.aht:th'> 10 Ihe doctorl .As Alma reads the un 'oea led leller 10 the doc lor , Bergman m k e ~ il clear thai we :'lrcwatching Ihis Ihro ugh the car s windshiel d (the w i p e ~ arc ill wor -) and from assortedper spc' ht.' abruplly Cliis from one angle to annlhef -eac h one showi ng l I l ~looking IhfllUglt her gla ...scs ;11 Ihe paJll:r. The leit er ilsclf is a rencc tion 01 Alma . asa chann ing and pleasant enough companion. fun 10 study. hUI who.. ang uis heJ c:\pcn ences arc hardly 10 be granted profundity or evc:n confidentiality . Alma. shanered .ge ts ou l of Ihe car and walks 10 it (ltlnd. obv iously checking: hCf'e1f in re llc('linn :(a mirror's Image. n:meml'ler, once suggested 10 her thai ..he loo -ed like Elizaoclh) .Opposcl1 , Ihlmgh . (0 Ihe clear g lasses Ihal hould facililale secm are lhe lhlrk nne ..that Alma onn :.. when. afte r read ing Ihe lellef. she is angry . When ElizahC th refu:ooesher plea 10 speak, Al ma da ....hcs (hem 10 rhe grounJ , Very ..hurt l)'. in her n g ~she will pmvide Mr. Vogler With da rk gla.. ~ s g lassC 'i Ihat h:'lvc led many to assumehe is blind . (Bl ind or noL hc faib to di sti ngUish hi > wife from her play c:r-a l lea '>t inAlmas choreography. ) Dar - or clear g lasses see m 10 ma ke lillie difference . l ikewise.the image Ihe boy uncovers :'11 Ihe beginning IS a blind ; the Iilm co ncludes wilh Ihesame inlerposed image. with n l ) eni gmas d arifil. d .Gl ass ab o shatters and m ~ Wh en Alma breaks il glass on the pat io . she


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PaswUll 133

leaves a shard in Elizabeth s pa th-hoping to pie rce through to her. Pricked. Elizabethdoes bleed . and even utte rs an ouch , But Alma s achievement is empty as shewatches it through a glass door that then crac ks (in her mind), heralding the disi ntegration of the film frames and the surrea listic interlude (fragments from di rec tor).

Fina lly , we are rem inded that all of this is being seen and recorded through a glasslens and imprinted upo n the glass-like celluloid stock. But spectacles, glass pane .lens. or film transpa rency-a ll transmit obsc urely and are devalued . Seei ng a person,plain and straig ht. is as unsure a venture as trying symbolically to cut through to himur her. ( It was only five years befo re that Bergman had distributed a film under thetitle Through A Glass DarklyBergman's camera lavishes particular attention upon f es and hands. Both arc shotrepeatedly in close-up. Sometimes they are explicitly linked. as . for example . whenthe boy s hand (races the woman ' s face on the glass . More often they arc seen alone .Separately or together, though. the possibili ty that they ca n hel p to fix en identi ty ispursued. Despite the fact tha t the faces of both act resses are remarkably, almostlcgcndar ily exp ressi ve and tha t we see a great dea l of them . by the time o f the mergedshot they have been hovering in and around each o ther s orbit. blurri ng the bordersthat separate them so effectively tha t a face is no longer a reliable index of eitheridentity . Physiognomies . like psyc hologies, become: confused. Hands , similarly. assume generic rather than individual proportions . They can be macabre (the vampirishshadow of a hand in the morgue). or symbolic of a crucifixion-like agc ty (the mailhammered into the palm). o r aged and withered (also in the morgue sequence), orsearching -reaching (the boy s). charmingly beautiful o r angrily clawing . But, despiteAlma s admonition that it is da ngerous to com pare hand s (or maybe in line with thewarning). they remain independent of personal charac ter. One observer. surveying anumber of later Bergman films. indicates their impo rtance : Hand and face. as animage cluster , symbo lize. when used negatively. the lack of and sea rch for identityand communica tion and, positively , a communion of love , 16 The singular pos itiveinstance in Per sona occurs as they clean mushrooms: the preponderance suggests alack of identity and communica tion . Thinking. incidentally. of the similarity of HibiAnderson and Liv Ullman. Bergman recalled how he thought it would be wonde rfulto write some thing abou t peo ple who lose their ident ities in eac h other. . Sudden lyI got the idea of the ir s itting comparing hands . And that was the first imagc----of thetwo women sitting comparing hands and wearing big hats . 17

In a parallel way. the added-on externals, the clo thing . wor k to subvert the separableness of the protagonists. At one extreme. they appear in the uniforms of theirrespective professions. the social roles they have assumed . Alma begins and ends inher nurse s outfi t. She confides to Elizabeth her admiration of the old m rsev . Whohave always worn uniforms . She 'ices this as devoting yuur whole life to something.which reasonably translates a being able successfully 1 identify with a role andsubmerge yourself in it. Elizabeth is shown both at the vcry beginning and end of thefilm in the costume of Electra. her last thea trical role .At the summer hoc e . each i, wearing civi lian clo thing . Rather than representingindividual . distinct choices. though. their dress is ac hiaroscuro that al ternately con trastsIOJcon nects Alma and Elizabe th . Their d resses and large-brimmed hats t( nd to differon ly in shades-c-of black. grey, and white . The shades become ever closer. unti l therearc times (late at n igh in the kitch en and duri ng Mr . Vog ler s vis it) wile 1 their darkdresses like their faces l lo w indistinguishably into each other. Clothes nr no 0rehelpful Ih O faces in making distinctions . Only to the ex tent thai the)' artificiallyimpose a profcsviona l role urc they functional in determ ining identities . and the idcn lities of nurse and Elec tra arc overtly impersonal.

Speech and language func tion muc h the same way for Bergman . Like the clotheswhich hould distinguish people. high lighting the ir singularity . our words should serve1 reflect and reveal us-c-to tell us: to another. to a p ychcanalyst (with whom


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~ H m a

vpecch ami vilence are uniquel y and importantly juxtap osed) . and even to ourselves .words , like hat-, and g l a ~ ~ c s can be put on and removed 31will . or . more III the pointin Bergman, cosmos. silence can be slipped into much like a co-tumc. Language . fXC4., h. and vilcncc become even more important metaphors in f a w lI/tl than theywere in the earlier The Fa and Tilt Silencr

Humans are human (individually and meaningfully so) largd ) beca use they uselangua ge 10 communica te . Th is key to cxprcvsion and identity was rejected by Elizabetheven before the ..tory began. Alma. who starts very normally telling Elizabeth allabout hen-elf. ends up reduced to vocalizing incoherent hits of nonsense . We arew itncss ing: ' John Simon rim . after the qoc-tioning of the value of words. thl' verybreakdown of speech . Silence at one end. gibberish at the other , . Even the radio .he co ntinues . a prime medium of vcrh ul communica tion. here seems III go berserkand In bemoan the I:Jd of communica non .v'

Alma . who carries the burden of verbal expression. rail, ultimately to use language10 etch herself. Increasingly pressured by the emotional need to C' jXN: and ex plainherself. rather than politely to fill ~ a and he rcavsuring, she becomes progressivelymore incoherent. The bils ( I f gibberish to whic h he dcwcndv near the end arc . ofcourse . choice: Many words and then nausea. Hut I ought 10 : ' .. desperateperhap..... It , ca lled , . , no-no . no . we . , . I: ' Ihe incredible pain Muchlike the jarringly proje cted pictorial image at the begtnnlng and in the middle-c-Iorlike :lny other collage modernist imagesl. they offer an effect or impression . in thiscase the psychic furni shings of an anxious ego. one that doubt s the communicativecapacity or word s.Elizabeth. of course. has rejected the inherited eloquence of our cultural tradition.because-e-lf we can trust the doctor 's analy vis-c-languagc il fraudulent. hypocritical .LTueJ. and inadequate. To speak is inexorably to lie. When Alma ' s great efforts fina llycoerce speec h from Elizabeth. her pyrrhic achi evement i, litera lly Nothing : ' Theuctrcs-, ha: nothing to say. word s com say nothinu . nothing is worth saying. and . sinceshe is only echoing (he nurse. the sugges tion is that both women arc a lo ne here .Language has failed as a communicator , It has parti cularly failed :1 1 a mean s of definingand express ing the self. The hom that sits. like a punctuation mark. 011 the soundtrackis with equal propriety heard ,I a foghorn or a, a studio silence horn .The overwhelming bulk of Persona conce ntrates on the intrap sychic , Irugg lc ofAlma -Elizabeth for per sona l c larification. But Bergman doc s not ignore the ext ernalworld and its con tribution . We each obviously inherit an outs ide realit y that helpsmold us and that impin ges upon our images of ourselves. and we need 10 integrateIhi, realit y into our psychic beings . That world is conveyed through the art ifices ofmyth. legend . and poetry and. comparatively bluntl y. throu gh history-including co ntemporary events The ident ities we construct, then. arc in part forged OUI of an andcir cumstances . In / a sOI J . the outer world . like the inner one , proves invufficicnt 10confer personal identity .The politi cal world th;1I Elizabeth inherit , and occ upies i o twice interjected into thisotherwise private drama , She carries with ber the famed pic ture of the Jewish boy inthe Warsaw ghetto. and horrified . she watches an American news report from Vietnam:a body count dcli\'ert:d a, a Buddhisl monk immnlales himsel f in protest. These arenot. I Iu gge : 1. mere hislriunic i m p o ~ i l i o n a ... many h'l...t) revie \ \en. have < o rnplained ,Vcr} effi cient ly. Bl rgman has inn rporateo two indicting llcca,iuns uf our grossinhumanil)'. fh: has also. Ihrough Ihem . hnw hewi ,m il no longer a prdct icOJIftlulc In ide nt it}'. II was hy Iheir ex ploit: . Ihal ...uc:h figure, a, Odys l cus and KingArthur could reliably a,scrt their heroic natures. which were fundamental parts ofthL i r iden lilic . Such is no longer possihle . Not nnly i, l i l a ~ IC \'erely ,carred bythe thcy arc abo crises Ihat preclude heroic actiun and therefore hemicidentity . To pn)le l individually either Ihe ihsauh ujXmthe ghetto or the pacificationcampaign would have been a futile ge: ture (1 01 1411 in one ca..I.: ,


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.\ 1111/1 IJ)

Bergman's literary references infer the same conclusion . At the end of The SilenceJohan carries onto the train with him A Hera ofOur Time The begi nning and end ofPersona find the same young acto r, Jorgen Lindstrom. again read ing Lermontov'vnovel. Thi s 1840 Russian fiction. so consciously influ enced hy the F ren ch and byByron (thro ugh French transl ations) provid es an ironic comment on Hergruun'vdrama .Implic it in Lermon tov s story. its sources (the world -weary figure of Byr on }. hititle . and even in his narra tive stru cture: (with its mult iple narrators .md disruptedchronology ) is the question of whether and how heroic action is possible . To the ex tentthat Pechorin, thehero, is cast larger Ihan Iife- and certainly larger than the inadequateworld he was doomed to traverse-s-the issue seems to bejoined sincerely and srraightforwardly. Romance and broad strokes. a maundering self-concern. and a devil-may-careposture are apparently end orsed . To the extent, however, that Pechorin in fac t doe snothing estimable and just fades away at the end . presumably to Persi a tar, inconclusiveend, at tha t) . the hero and his ostensible search are ironically presented .

Elizabeth is also strongly connec ted with a heroic role . She renounced speech andaction while being filmed play ing the part of Electra. Twice we sec sho r of her incostume. The choice of this rebellious Greek seems particularly fitting The horrorsof her life made Electra awarel Of murders and adulteries , She is . aconsequence.distinguished by her unwillingness to get along. How can she (Electra berates hercompliant sister Chryso themix) not act. that is, reac t. in such a world. Ethica l principlemust prevail ove r conv enience. self-in terest, and secu rity. and over being con ventionally accepting and acce ptable . She finds no alterna tive for one who ees the: cvilgrowi ng, as she does, no choice bUI to stand apa rt in the hope of exucung n j ustreve nge . As the possibi lity of her being able to act successfully diminishes. Electraenvisions withdrawing from the world . ersona a Robert Boyer hus indicated.

ha.. a great dC;111non with Hrctru The actrc ..... in I' r .\f 11l ha dclrbcrately alienatedherself from the 01;1..... of he r fellow human ht ing . Like Elec tra. the ,ll'trc s isbe c t by thme who would have her adj u..l And like Electra. ..he in iMs on herillnc ....... on her sorrow. her difference. her wound. a.. it wcrc .

A IIn o of Unr Times. Electro . uul Persona all question the possi bil ity of heroicact ion. Ou r time arc heirs to the lazi blitz and the Warsaw ghetto und they havecarried tha t heritage into Vie tnam. Elizabeth has , by her re fusal to spea k or act. deniedthe Ieuvibility of a heroic or even of : adequate individ ual response. The sacr ificeo f the bonze may be heroic. hut it is of another wor ld anti dubiously er-ective .Tradi tionally . figures such Oedipus and Odysseus di scovered that a substantia lpart of their identities (and of thei r ab ility to demonstrate tho se identities was the irheroism. In the world of Elizabeth and Alma. because heroic action j not possible,the pe rson as hero is not posviblc either. That Elizabeth ex isted. in fact thri ved. byportraying heroines i ironic. making it all the more pressing for her IIIdetermi ne thevalidity and pertinence - if any --of those roles. Her reac tio n to playing Electra . theho} ' reading I f Lermontov. and the evening new are at one .... ith the main ofPersona .

Bergman has , then. packaged for us in Prrsona a taunt ingly rich confla rion ofimages . modes . perspec tives. and even themes. The wra pping a sparklingmodernist work . a it teases out of us thoughts of se lf-reflex ivity. The subject seemmodern in a very dif ferent sense. in the en e of the fiction vince George Eliot thatmoved the ccuon in ide and devoted itself to the psyc hological dnncnsions ofcharacte r. The images are startli ng but for the most part trad itionally used-cexccpt .of course, for those that break the surface of the narrative . hopscotchingfy referringto the medium itself und even 1 the auteur Al the center of cs thcic package .though. a sublimely traditiona l con undrum: what. if anything, del ineate the individua l person? Even Bergman s skeptica l I hes itate to ay pc simisticl depi ction isvtccped in precedent . It reca ll . for example. the conclusion Hume argued two centuriesea rlie r in AI f ntlil iry Con t rning f l lIm Udn .\ftll/t/i g : to that the e lf


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Alan P. BarrIndiana University. Northwest

136/Persona

meant something identifiable, logical . and consistent was intellectually insupportablefolly .

NOTESI David L. vierting Bergman' s Persona: The Metaphysics of Meta-Cinema. Diacritics,

IV (19741. 4851.2 John Simon, tngmar Bergman Oir(',15 (N .Y.. 1972). p. 215 .J Susan Sonrag , Bergman s Persona in Styles of Radical Will (N .Y., 1970J, p. 136.4 Vernon Young. Cinema Bon'ulis: tngmar agmanIIlId the SWf diJh Ethus IN. Y,. 19721,

p.228 .Lloyd Michaels. in an article Ihal uninrcrestingly uemizcs the ways in which Persona points 10itself as a film. more simply decides: On at least one point. however. there seem .. 10be generalagreement : me self-reflexivity of the film . Surely , we are safe in saying that whatever else ilmay be, Persona is a film about film: in The Imaginary Signifier in Bergman's Persona;Film Criticism. II (I97H). 72 .

Simon, pp. Vo-39.Simon. pp. 230-) I.

7 John Simon. Persona: An Invitation 10Excellence , in Film: J 9 6 7 ~ Richard Schickeland John Simon, cd-. (N. Y., 1968). p. 19-'.

Sontag, p. US .9 Sontag, p. 130.

10 Sontag. p. 129.II12

Sontag. pp. 135-36Paisley Livingston. Ingmar Bl'rgman and the Rituals af n(Ithaca, I ~ X 2 . p. 192.

Young , Pl' . 225-26.

13 Carl Jung , quoted l1y Maria Bcrgom-Larsson. Ingmar Bugman and S II{:it't) (London.197.). p. 87 .

1415 N:I1lC Scholar, Anai ' Nin s House uf incest and Ingmar Bergman 's Persona: Two

Variations on a Theme: Li ntJ lu ndFilm Quarlt'rly, VII 09791, 50.16 Fritz R. Sauuncm-Frankencgg. Learning 'A Few Words in the Foreign Language' :

Ingmar Bergman's Secre t Message ' in the Imagery of Hand and Face. Scandinavian Studies,49 (1977), JOI.

17 Bergman un Bergman : lntrrviews London. 1970). p. 196 .18 Simon. tngmar Bu/:man Uirects , p. 296 .

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Barr - Unraveling of Character in Bergman's Persona - Lit Film Quarterly

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