Ingmar Bergman’s Persona
(Sweden, 1966, 83 mins)
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About Film
Persona is visually stunning, intellectually challenging and emotionally wrenching. A famous actress loses her speech halfway through a performance and is placed in the care of a nurse in a remote seaside cottage. As the women grow closer and more intimate, the mounts a fascination examination of female identity, played mostly on the faces of these two actresses. It was the winners of 1967 National Society of Film Critics awards for Best Film, Best Director and Best Actress. It is considered one of the major works of the 20th century by essayists and critics such as Susan Sontag, who referred to it as Bergman's masterpiece. Other critics have described it as "one of this century’s great works of art". In the 2012 British Film Institute list of The Top 50 Greatest Films of All Time, Persona is ranked 17.