Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in: You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Dissect the choice of camera angles and the scene's setting and overall purpose. Persona begins with a slow fade-in of a white square on the black screen. The title is the key. Formulate a hypothesis based on a fact you want to prove about the scene you chose. Scenes need to move the story forward and reveal information about the characters. He caresses Alma's face and calls her "Elizabeth." Elizabeth cuts her foot, but this is essentially a victory for the actress, who has forced the nurse to abandon the discipline of her profession and reveal weakness. They are outside. If someone has not seen or read what you are talking about, he will find it difficult to understand your point of view. For a moment the space looks like a movie theatre; the image changes as it lights up and we realise that it is the inside of a projector. Not only are we reminded of the opening sequence, but also our engagement with the story is visually disrupted with this extremely self-reflexive fracture. The imagery of this monologue is so powerful that I have heard people describe the scene as if they actually saw it in the film. What had seemed to be a linear narrative up to this point reverses to become more abstract in terms of space, time and causality; this crack shifts the narrative to a more indecipherable level where we can no longer distinguish between reality and fantasy, fact and fiction or Alma and Elisabet. Rather, it is a statement about the complexity of what can be seen and the way in which, in the end, the deep, unflinching knowledge of anything is destructive. But it suggests buried truths, and we despair of finding them. Any attempt to understand the meaning of this sequence is futile; each image evokes different associations; explanations and interpretations generate new grounds for thinking about it. Focus on the scene you have chosen. Didn’t know Susan Sontag wrote about Persona. Study the way the characters interact and what that says about each character. For a moment the space looks like a movie theatre; the image changes as it lights up and we realise that it is the inside of a projector. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. Similar to the film’s protagonist, Elisabet (Liv Ullmann), Bergman seems to be suffering from and looking for answers to a problem about storytelling, representation and performance. Change ), You are commenting using your Google account. To know (perceive) something intensely is eventually to consume what is known, to use it up, to be forced to move on to other things’.*. She is an actress who one night stopped speaking in the middle of the performance, and has been silent ever since. The screen goes blank. "How this pretentious movie manages to not be pretentious at all is one of the great accomplishments of 'Persona,' " says a moviegoer named John Hardy, posting his comments on the Internet Movie Database. I did not think I understood it. Later he superimposes the two faces, like a morph. One section for character, one for setting and one for cinematography is an example. She wants . One of them, of two faces, one frontal, one in profile, has become one of the most famous images of the cinema. Take notes on the scene. . In both cases, a projector lamp flares to life, and there is a montage from the earliest days of the cinema: jerky silent skeletons, images of coffins, a hand with a nail being driven into it. There is a moment when her resentment flares and she lashes back. Pick a scene many are familiar with or at least a movie most can relate to. Elizabeth says nothing, and Alma talks and talks, confessing her plans and her fears, and eventually, in a great and daring monologue, confessing an erotic episode during which she was, for a time, completely happy. Bergman told me, "The human face is the great subject of the cinema. The two women look at one another like images in a mirror. The two actresses look somewhat similar. They are there, it is theirs, they cannot separate themselves from it. The rest of this opening sequence is a montage of self-contained images: a running film strip, a short scene from what looks like a silent movie, a clip from an animation, a close-up of the eyes of a dying sheep, shots of dead, unconscious or immobile people. The middle "break" ends with the camera moving in toward an eye, and even into the veins in the eyeball, as if to penetrate the mind. *Sontag, Susan (1967) ‘Persona’, Sight and Sound, Autumn, 36:4, 186-191, p. 190. Romantic and familial relationships, such as the one between Lucy Carrigan & Jude, provide a backdrop along with the sweeping soundtrack courtesy of The Beatles. It is exactly about what it seems to be about. Bergman shows us everyday actions and the words of ordinary conversation. Bonded and Unbound: Sean Connery, 1930-2020, Disney+'s The Mandalorian Makes a Valiant Return in Season Two Opener, Amazon's Truth Seekers is Missing Jokes and Scares. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Elizabeth looks at Alma, seeming to know the glass shard was not an accident, and at that moment Bergman allows his film to seem to tear and burn. The rest of this opening sequence is a montage of self-contained images: a… Elizabeth takes Alma's hand and uses it to caress her husband's face. Summarize the scene analysis in a conclusion paragraph. When not traveling she enjoys outdoor activities such as backpacking, snowboarding, ice climbing and scuba diving. The opening sequence suggests that "Persona" is starting at the beginning, with the birth of cinema. Bergman is showing us that he has returned to first principles. to be. Then the film reconstitutes itself. Thanks for the comment. The film does not say, but obviously they are implicated. Start with a broader hypothesis, and break down the smaller parts to prove the more general idea. Elizabeth, the patient, mute and apparently ill, is stronger than Alma, and eventually the nurse feels her soul being overcome by the other woman's strength. And Sven Nykvist's cinematography shows them in haunting images. Bergman’s choice of images evokes notions that are significantly related to cinema: movement, death, stillness, illusion, animation, light and dark. . Change ). Tie together your points with the hypothesis and the theme of the film you have focused on.

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