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Persona [1966] [DVD]
 
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Persona [1966] [DVD]

DVD ~ Bibi Andersson
4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
RRP: £19.99
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What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?

Persona [1966] [DVD]
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Product details

  • Actors: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand, Jörgen Lindström
  • Directors: Ingmar Bergman
  • Writers: Ingmar Bergman
  • Producers: Ingmar Bergman
  • Format: Black & White, PAL
  • Language Swedish
  • Subtitles: English
  • Region: All Regions
  • Number of discs: 1
  • Classification: 15
  • Studio: Palisades Tartan
  • DVD Release Date: 28 April 2003
  • Run Time: 83 minutes
  • Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • ASIN: B00008OP6Y
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 5,960 in DVD (See Bestsellers in DVD)

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Reviews

Amazon.co.uk Review
Made in 1966, Persona is among Ingmar Bergman's greatest, most vital movies, made during a difficult period in his life (Bergman's life is one short on easy times), having been hospitalised following a viral infection. It was while laid up that he conceived the notion of Persona, in which a famous actress, Elisabet (Liv Ullmann) suddenly lapses into a muteness from which, though mentally and physically healthy, she refuses to emerge. She is attended to by a young, naive nurse, Alma (Bibi Andersson) who develops an obsession, bordering on infatuation with her silent charge. She finds herself jabbering all of her innermost secrets to her and, little by little, through dream sequences, repeated dialogue and trick photography, it's as if the consciousnesses of the two women have actually merged.

With its opening sequence of cryptic projected reel images (allusions to Bergman's previous work), jarringly atonal soundtrack and devices such as the audible chatter of camera crew, Persona contains an unusual share of avant-garde trimmings, which haven't necessarily stood the test of time. However, the relationship between Alma and Elisabet dominates the movie. Some confounded critics wondered if theirs was a lesbian relationship.

Actually, Persona is an occasionally cryptic but overwhelmingly powerful meditation on the parasitic interaction between Art and Life, the way the former feeds off the latter (Alma is distraught to discover a letter at one point which suggests Elisabet has been coolly observing her, as if for material). However, as an early scene featuring TV footage of a Vietnamese Buddhist monk torching himself as a protest against the war, it's also about the helpless incapacity of art to "say" anything in the face of grim reality. A small film budget-wise, but a colossal event in world cinema. --David Stubbs

Special Features
DVD 5
Swedish
Region 0
Dolby Digital Swedish
Dolby Digital
Star And Director Filmographies
Scene Selection
Original US Theatrical Trailer
Philip Strick Film Notes
Promotional Art Gallery
English


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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
5 star:
 (9)
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 (3)
3 star:
 (2)
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Average Customer Review
4.3 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

 
11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Nordic shadow/Nordic light, 18 Jan 2006
By A Customer
Quite simply one of the most remarkable and intense films I have seen, with subject matter that is a milion miles from anything Hollywood can offer.
Nurse and patient, that is basically the premise of the story here but it is far more multi-layered and complex through the lens of Ingmar Bergman.
Eerie and somewhat desolate summer locations are mixed in with stark hospital scenes,camera trickery and dialogue. There are surreal episodes that are all essential to this tale of mental disintegration,possibly schizophrenia.
The leading ladies are typically Nordic,graceful,enchanting and attractive, which works as a camoflage for the unsettling subject matter.
Another masterpiece from scriptwriter/director Bergman.
Note: Package wise another great DVD from Tartan. The quality is good throughout and as usual Bergmans astonishing black and white images are faithfully restored.
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars An Intriguing Portrayal of Identiy Crisis, 30 Jul 2005
By A Customer
Although made in the mid-sixties, this film only dates in some of the somewhat jarring cinematic effects chosen by Bergman. However, this is also a mark of his work. The story is at once both simple and complex. Above all, the acting by Bibi Andersson as the young nurse adjacent to the cool and at times menacing silence of Elisabet played by Liv Ullman provides a powerful pair of performances.

Although this is a film for those interested in the work of Bergman, it also provides an interesting revelation of how an individual responds to a constant silence from their charge. The literature of negotiation tactics points to the power of silence to make an opponent uncomfortable and at the same time to seek confirmation of their position. Persona takes this to the extreme, where the nurse finds herself chattering away incessantly, whilst revealing ever deeper secrets about herself. She is as much revealing these to herself as to her charge Elisabet. Yet if you watch the film ask yourself who is really doing the revealing.

Well worth watching - it is understandable why this film stunned the critics at the time.

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13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful, 28 Nov 2003
By Petrides Antonis (Nicosia, Cyprus) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This film is a cinematic tour de force, dominated by the imposing performances of Liv Ulman and Bibi Anderson, whose physical likeness weighs heavily on the film's signification. The film works on a subliminal level and demands a non-linear method of viewing. More than a story it is a bricolage of images, streams of consciousness and playful tricks of the camera that may sometimes confound, but are eventually illuminatingly rewarding. The story, charged with a latent sexual electricity (which, neverhteless, does not warrant a certificate 18 in no way...), unfolds as much on the visual as on the discursive level. The sequence where the faces of Elisabet and Alma, the Mask and the Soul, merge is one of the most powerful in modern cinema.
The DVD has the common structure of the Bergman collection, but the Film Notes in this case are most illuminating and welcome.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars Experimental concision
This is the most experimental film Bergman made coming as it does at a radical time in the 60s when things were changing. Read more
Published 1 month ago by technoguy

3.0 out of 5 stars irritating impersonation
this is an over-rated psychological drama which i find very irritating in it's pretexts at times ,

ingmar bergman is trying to show the rehabilitation of a disabled... Read more
Published 11 months ago by Dr. U. L. Khawaja

5.0 out of 5 stars Troubling, abstract and essential.
One of Ingmar Bergman's most radical films, 'Persona' can be viewed as a journey in which personality, meaning and individuality blur between fantasy and reality. Read more
Published 16 months ago by Mark Hilton

5.0 out of 5 stars Bergman's Dissonance
Because of its incongruous mixture of images, the opening montage of this film brings to mind the adagio introduction at the beginning of the first movement of Mozart's String... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Alojz Kajinic

5.0 out of 5 stars ANOTHER SURREAL BERGAN EXPERIMENT
Writing from a hospital bed (as he did with Wild Strawberries, two of these being films strung out from anguish), Ingmar Bergman put down almost anything that was in his head to... Read more
Published 21 months ago by stuart

3.0 out of 5 stars images are the most important
I remember to have read in the memoirs of a real English actress she suffered an episode of temporal loss of memory that remitted with a sedative without more complications. Read more
Published on 3 Aug 2006 by Carlos Vazquez Quintana

5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning classic
Widely considered to be one of the best films ever made, Persona follows the developing relationship between two women: Elisabet Vogler, an actress who has chosen to stop speaking... Read more
Published on 17 April 2006 by David Welsh

5.0 out of 5 stars ignore grey plover
The reviewer "greyplover" has written a very funny and direct so-called "review" of Persona. Having just watched it for the fourth time at the cinema and about to watch Woody... Read more
Published on 6 Jun 2004 by degrant

1.0 out of 5 stars ****ingmar
If by some miracle any of us lives to be a million years old, life will still be too short to sit through this tedious arty drivel. Read more
Published on 5 Jan 2004 by Mr. S. Blackburn

4.0 out of 5 stars Dated in some respects, but rescued by its performances
Many of Bergman's stylistic tricks, his alienation effects, and photo-montage techniques, look somewhat self-conscious by now. Read more
Published on 16 May 2003

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