The Magic Lantern of Ingmar Bergman: Persona
April 30, 2025
Presented by The Swedish Club and Greg Olson Productions
The Magic Lantern of Ingmar Bergman
This pinnacle of mind-bending cinema has spawned decades of speculation and thousands of written words. A famous actress (the resplendent Liv Ullman) goes silent, and she’s tended by a nurse (Bibi Andersson) on a lonely island. The nurse spews tales of emotional and sexual revelation. Ullman listens, says nothing. Is she feeding on Andersson’s life force? Are they actually each other? Is there someone else on the island?
SIFF year-round passes and vouchers are not valid for this screening.
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Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Sometimes we think to ourselves, I’m not myself today, not up to presenting the socially accepted image I’m known for. It feels like there are many selves inside us, different ways to be with, and for, various people, situations and times. But what are the deepest churning drives and impulses hidden beneath our surface faces? In this phenomenal landmark film, Bergman goes there. Famous actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullman) falls silent in the midst of a performance, then she stops speaking in her daily life with her husband (Gunnar Bjornstrand). Perhaps being out in nature, away from her usual routines, will help. Elisabet is put under the care of psychiatric nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson), and the two move to an isolated island. Elisabet remains silent, which provokes the repressed Alma to spew out her own troubled emotions, including a stunning sexual episode on a beach. Alma begins to think Elisabet is spying on her, sucking up her life like a vampire. Bergman, while touching on themes of marriage and motherhood, generates a force of animus and attraction between the women, a communion and merging of their personas. Bergman frames their story with the technology, the idea, of making films: he ultimately created Elisabet and Alma’s personas. Bergman’s films imply God’s silence in our world, but who or what created the whole show? More words have been written about Persona than any film in history, a film Bergman thinks should be “felt, not understood.” Persona has been called one of the greatest artworks of the 20th century. National Society of Film Critics Best Film, Screenplay, Actress (Bibi Andersson), Cinematography (Sven Nykvist).
—Greg Olson
- Director: Ingmar Bergman
- Principal Cast: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullman, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Jorgen Lindstrom
- Year: 1965
- Running Time: 83 min.
- Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman
- Cinematographers: Sven Nykvist
- Editors: Ulla Ryghe
- Music: Lars Hohan Werle
- International Sales: Svensk Filmindustri