3 - Bergman's Persona

Summary

One impulse is to take Bergman's masterpiece for granted. Since 1960 at least, with the breakthrough into new narrative forms propagated with most notoriety (if not greatest distinction) by Last Year in Marienbad, film audiences have continued to be educated by the elliptical and complex. As Resnais' imagination was subsequently to surpass itself in Muriel, a succession of ever more difficult and accomplished films have turned up in recent years. But such good fortune releases nobody who cares about films from acclaiming work as original and triumphant as Persona. It is depressing that this film has received only a fraction of the attention it deserves since it opened in New York, London, and Paris.

To be sure, some of the paltriness of the critics' reaction may be more a response to the signature that Persona carries than to the film itself. That signature has come to mean a prodigal, tirelessly productive career; a rather facile, often merely beautiful, by now (it seemed) almost oversize body of work; a lavishly inventive, sensual, yet melodramatic talent, employed with what appeared to be a certain complacency, and prone to embarrassing displays of intellectual bad taste. From the Fellini of the North, exacting filmgoers could hardly be blamed for not expecting, ever, a truly great film. But Persona happily forces one to put aside such dismissive preconceptions about its author.

The rest of the neglect of Persona may be set down to emotional squeamishness; the film, like much of Bergman's recent work, bears an almost defiling charge of personal agony.