Persona (1966)

Ingmar Bergman made Persona in 1966 at a point in his career when he was already widely considered one of the most significant filmmakers working anywhere in the world. Coming after a long run of internationally acclaimed pictures, it was produced by SF Studios in Sweden and clocks in at a tight 84 minutes, which belies just how much it attempts to do. If you want another measure of Bergman's range from the same period, his Winter Light (1963) is worth a look as another film he directed, and it shares something of the same bleak spiritual preoccupation, though the approach is quite different.

The premise is spare enough to fit on a beer mat. A stage actress, Elisabeth Vogler, falls into a complete and unexplained silence mid-performance and refuses to speak. She is otherwise physically well. A young nurse, Alma, is assigned to care for her, and the two women are sent to a remote seaside house where their relationship begins to shift in ways that are difficult to pin down or categorise. That is about as much as you need to know going in. The film was shot in black and white by cinematographer Sven Nykvist, whose work with Bergman across many years produced some of the most recognisable images in European cinema. The close-up, the face, the long silence: these are the tools Persona uses with a kind of rigour that feels both clinical and intensely personal. The tagline at the time called it Bergman's most personal and original film, which is quite a claim given the competition.

The two leads carry everything. Bibi Andersson, playing Alma, does the great majority of the talking in a film built around the absence of speech, which is a considerable technical and emotional demand. Liv Ullmann, then relatively early in what would become a long and celebrated career, communicates an enormous amount through stillness and expression alone. Margaretha Krook, Gunnar Björnstrand, and Jörgen Lindström round out the principal cast in smaller but functional roles. Sweden's cinema was producing some genuinely unusual work during the 1960s, and if you're interested in what the country's filmmakers were doing in that era, the likes of Daisies (1966) (another film from the same year) and Viy (1967) (from just a year later) give a sense of the broader European art-film landscape Persona was part of, even if those are very different animals in terms of tone and origin.

Persona (1966) is widely regarded as one of Ingmar Bergman’s masterpieces, and for good reason. Visually stark and psychologically intense, it centres on two women: a celebrated stage actress who has inexplicably stopped speaking, and her young nurse, who cares for her in an isolated seaside house. The film is anchored by two astonishing performances (Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson) whose subtle shifts in expression, tone, and presence carry entire scenes without dialogue. Their interplay is mesmerising, and the black-and-white cinematography, with its sharp contrasts and haunting close-ups, remains visually arresting decades later. The story explores identity, silence, and the porous boundaries between self and other, using dream logic and fragmented narrative to blur reality and projection. While thematically rich, the payoff itself is fairly predictable if you’re familiar with Bergman’s preoccupations: emotional withdrawal, existential dread, and the masks people wear to survive. What’s less defensible (and deeply troubling) is a monologue in which one character recounts a sexual encounter involving two underage boys. Delivered matter-of-factly, it’s presented as part of her psychological unraveling, but the scene lacks critical framing or consequence. How would we feel had a male character described a similar encounter with young girls, the reaction (both then and now) would be swift and damning. That scene casts a long shadow over an otherwise brilliant film in my opinion. It felt gross. Persona is brilliantly acted, visually groundbreaking, and intellectually ambitious, but its inclusion of that disturbing scene, without meaningful critique or context, significantly undermines its moral authority. It remains an important work of cinema, but not an unimpeachable one. Artistic genius doesn’t excuse ethical blind spots, especially when they echo real-world harm.

I keep coming back to that tension, because it doesn't resolve neatly, and I don't think it should. A film can be technically brilliant, historically important, and morally compromised all at once, and pretending otherwise would be doing a disservice to anyone coming to it fresh. The performances, the imagery, the formal experimentation: all of it holds up. But so does the discomfort, and it would be dishonest to wave that away in the name of reputation. If you're working through Swedish cinema more broadly, I'd point you toward The Match Factory Girl (1990), another Swedish film I've covered, which is a very different kind of uncomfortable. Persona deserves to be seen. It also deserves to be argued with.

Rating: ★★★  | Year: 1966  | Watched: 2026-05-10

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Related on Movies With Macca

More from Sweden: Only God Forgives (2013) · The Match Factory Girl (1990) · Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013) · Nymphomaniac: Vol. II (2013)
More from the 1960s: Viy (1967) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · Daisies (1966) · Symbiopsychotaxiplasm: Take One (1968)
More drama: Viy (1967) · Wonder (2017) · A Better Tomorrow (1986) · Beautiful Boy (2018)