Movie Masterworks

Well, I finally got the chance to see Persona on the silver screen! The Gene Siskel Film Center is showing a 14 program series entitled European Art Cinema. I went along with my father and his friend Paul. They’re administrators at Prairie State College. The show wasn’t a sellout like Tokyo Story was last year, so we got great seats. I suspect the lower attendance was because Persona is far less accessible than Ozu’s film. We had a wonderful cinema experience. Best of all, after watching Persona, we went to a coffee shop and discussed the film for a while. There was a lot to talk about.

My thoughts: Directed by Ingmar Bergman, Persona (1966) is a sight to behold on a big theater screen. Persona starts with a demonstration of how imagery can have a powerful effect on us. Images of an erect penis, Christ’s hand being nailed to a cross, a lamb having is throat sliced open flash across the screen. As we watch the blood pour from the lamb’s neck, we see its eyes dim in death, and we are horrified. We see a boy in a morgue caressing the viewer’s face through a camera lens. Our perspective is from the outside looking in. Perspective shifts, and we notice that the location where we once stood as viewers, is replaced by interchanging images of Elisabet and Alma. We are now in the room with the boy, from the inside looking out.

After the opening credits, we cut to a hospital where we meet Alma, a nurse played by Bibi Andersson. We also meet Elisabet Vogler, an actress played by Liv Ullmann. We learn that Elisabet has stopped speaking, by personal choice not illness, during a theater rendition of Elektra. Why has Elisabet stopped speaking? The doctor describes Elisabet’s state of mind as, “The vertigo and the constant hunger to be exposed, to be seen through, perhaps even wiped out. Every inflection and every gesture a lie, every smile a grimace.” Like Eleanor Rigby, Elisabet keeps her face in a jar by the door. She is a woman in crises. Not speaking is her defense against the nihilism threatening to annihilate her. Alma, assigned to care of her, is intimidated by the display of mental strength such a choice entails.

Soon after the two women are introduced, Elisabet watches news footage of the Vietnam War in which a man is burned alive. Elisabet’s reaction to the burning man on television illustrates the power of imagery upon her. She is as horrified as we were during Persona’s opening series of images. This is why she is also visibly shaken by the photo of the boy being abducted by the Nazis, later in the film. Real world images affect Persona’s characters just as they affect us, the viewers. I think Ingmar Bergman is showing viewers that influence flows in both directions during the creative process, from film maker to viewer and from viewer to film maker. In essence, the film’s identity was influenced by Bergman’s conception of viewer expectations. I am sure he wanted people to appreciate Persona, his artwork. Conversely, film as art shapes the viewer. My world view, part of my identity, has certainly been influenced by the movies I’ve seen. It’s a symbiotic relationship. This is also reflected in the relationship between Alma and Elisabet. One influences the identity of the other. Bergman’s use of imagery to express this idea was radically innovative. He wanted to deconstruct the film medium and show us, his audience, what movie making truly is. Sine scientia ars nihil est, “Art without knowledge is nothing.” Alma, describes herself at one point as “All lies and imitation.” Perhaps, this is what Bergman constantly reminds the viewer of, that Persona is only a film, a deception, the face in a jar kept by the door.

The rest of Persona takes place at the doctor’s seaside home. It’s here that Elisabet and Alma develop a close friendly relationship. So close, that Alma is slowly being dragged into her charge’s existential struggle and losing herself in the process. For Elisabet, being an actress grants her the ability to project her identity, her soul, if you will. Conversely, Elisabet’s audience lives through her vicariously. For instance, we are Liv Ullmann’s, the actress’s audience, and we identify with the persona she projects on the screen. Elisabet’s sheer mental strength, coupled with Alma’s tractability, the intimacy in which the two women live, and the circumstance of one woman having to speak for the other, result in Elisabet imprinting her identity onto Alma. Because Alma is taking on Elisabet’s persona, she too is going through an ontological self examination. However, she is not as strong as Elisabet. The imprinting is symbolized during a beautiful dream sequence, shot in a glowing twilight, in which Elisabet visits a sleeping Alma.

We don’t know for sure if Elisabet’s visit to Alma was a dream or reality. When asked, Elisabet denies she visited Alma during the night. I’ll take her word for it because there are are other dream sequences later in the film. The two actresses each play half of one complete persona. Alma does all the verbal communication for this persona while Elisabet speaks only through facial expression and body language. Eventually, we realize the women have also exchanged roles. Alma, once the care giver, becomes emotionally needful while Elisabet, once the patient, becomes clinically observant. This exchange of role is symbolized by the juxtaposition of the actress’s heads and then the exchange of their positions on the screen, left to right and right to left.

I think the malleability of Alma’s psyche is alluded to in a confession about a sexual experience she had on a beach from which she got pregnant and consequently, had an abortion. I won’t relate the full account here as Alma does a much better job in the movie. Suffice to say, Alma shares a lover in the presence of another woman on the beach, as she does later in a dream with Mr. Vogler. Meaning, Alma is interchangeable with these women, even during intercourse! The audience is drawn into the scene though verbal intimacy. When Alma confesses to Elisabet her experience, we are in the room with them, privy to an erotic secret being unveiled. The beach story becomes much more vivid because we must imagine the event; it’s not visualized for us on film.

The story takes a violent turn after Alma discovers, in a letter from Elisabet to her doctor, that Elisabet is “studying her.” After confessing so much to Elisabet, Alma feels betrayed and becomes violent. Alma purposefully leaves a shard of broken glass where Elisabet will step bare footed. After Elisabet steps on the glass, she gives Alma a look as if to say, “I know you did this deliberately.” This is the first conflict in Persona between the two women. Right after this, the film appears to break and burn, as if a connection is severed, not only between Alma and Elisabet, but between viewer and film. This is Bergman’s deconstruction of film as art. He is telling us this is simply a film, “All lies and imitation” As with Elisabet’s accusing look to Alma, he is telling us deliberately.

When the film resumes, Alma confronts Elisabet about the letter and they get into a fight. Alma apologizes. Later that night, Alma dreams she is waking up from a nightmare but she is still dreaming. She dreams Mr. Vogler mistaking her for Elisabet. She tries to play the role of Elisabet but cannot continue the deception. “It’s all lies and imitation,” she screams.

The dream continues in another scene where Elisabet is concealing a photo of her son. Alma notices it and says, “We have to talk about it.” We notice that the women are dressed like twins, both wearing black. Filmed with two cameras, this scene is so interesting because it’s repeated twice from different perspectives. First, we see the scene delivered through Alma’s vantage point, looking at Elisabet’s face. When Elisabet refuses to speak, Alma speaks for her. She accuses Elisabet of being repulsed by motherhood, of thinking of her baby boy as disgusting, and that she wished him stillborn. The baby was removed and raised by relatives. Elisabet returned to her work as an actress however, the boy developed a deep love for his mother which she never returned. By Elisabet’s body language, we know Alma’s accusations are accurate. The same scene is shown again so that we see it from Elisabet’s perspective, looking at Alma’s face. From this viewpoint, we learn from reading Alma’s facial expressions that she is not only speaking about Elisabet’s coldness and indifference, but about her own feelings toward her aborted son. With this realization, Alma starts to choke on her words, to desperately deny she is Elisabet and assert her identity. It’s too late. To wit, the famous shot of half of Alma’s face and half of Elizabeth’s face combined to make a single face.

After the dual monologue scene, Alma’s dream continues. Elisabet is still dressed in black but now Alma is dressed in her nurse’s uniform. Alma again confronts Elisabet but again Elisabet’s personality is too strong. Alma pounds the table in frustration and again her sentences become incomprehensible. She cuts her arm open with her fingernail until blood flows and presents it to Elisabet. Elisabet drinks her blood, metaphorically sucking the soul out of Alma. In the last scene of Alma’s dream, Elisabet is back in the hospital, Alma’s domain. Alma asks Elisabet to speak, to say “Nothing.” This time it’s Elisabet who acquiesces and she repeats, “Nothing.” Alma wakes up. We see Elisabet pack a suitcase and Alma also prepares to return to the hospital. Alma boards a bus and as the camera tracks to follow, it focuses on a patch of earth which is, I think, the symbolic burial site for the women’s sons. Indeed, the boy in the morgue caressing the faces of Alma and Elisabet is the last shot of Persona before the film projector light goes out.

I wanted to experience Persona on the big screen and I’m glad I got the chance. Sven Nykvist’s gorgeous cinematography was on full display, with close-ups of Alma and Elisabet communicating volumes, non-verbally, about their state of mind. The close ups in the Alma’s second dream allowed me to see the reaction of each woman. It reminded me of the image of the boy in the morgue, perhaps Elisabet’s son or Alma’s, caressing the women’s faces when the film began. Close-ups made viewing an intimate experience and I haven’t seen any movie with better. They gave me a first person perspective, the same perspective the actresses have of each other. Bergman once said, “The human face is the great subject of the cinema. Everything is there.” Aside from great imagery, both verbal and visual, it’s the nuanced performances of Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullmann that really make this movie unforgettable.

“Thus Barry fell into the very worst of courses and company. And was soon very far advanced in the science of every kind of misconduct.”

Synopsis: How does an Irish lad without prospects become part of 18th-century English nobility? For Barry Lyndon (Ryan O’Neal) the answer is: any way he can! His climb to wealth and privilege is the enthralling focus of this sumptuous Stanely Kubrick version of William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel.

For this ravishing, slyly satiric winner of 4 Academy Awards®, Kubrick found inspiration in the works of the era’s painters. Costumes and sets were crafted in the era’s designs and pioneering lenses were developed to shoot interiors and exteriors in natural light. The result? ‘Barry Lyndon’ endures as a cutting-edge movie that brings a historical period to vivid screen life like no other film before or since.

Critique: Barry Lyndon is a masterpiece of a director whose films are all extraordinary; it marks a new conception of the art of film. Although based on a novel, it is entirely cinematic, offering an endlessly suggestive vision of reality which is irreducible to verbal formulations. Each shot and cut tells us more than any verbal formulations (including this one) can convey. Like its hero, it seems at first uncomplicated; but it maintains a dream-like coherence and ambiguity throughout, succeeding as a story, spectacle, historical reconstruction, psychological allegory and vision of Western man. And it is about the act of viewing. It betters our ability to watch, and betters us. In an age less interested in ugliness, seen by the viewers Kubrick has helped to create, its greatness will be recognized and its reputation righted.

-Excerpt from Barry Lyndon Reconsidered by Mark Crispin Miller
© 1976 The Georgia Review Volume XXX, Number 4. All Rights Reserved

My thoughts: Barry Lyndon is the most beautiful film I’ve ever seen. It’s as if each frame of film can serve as the composition for an impressionist’s oil painting. But this is art come to life! The costumes, lighting and cinematography are so exquisite, it’s like peering through a window directly into the mid 1700’s.

“Ben: You can never, never ask me to stop drinking. Do you understand?”
“Sera: I do. I really do.”

Synopsis: Best Actor Oscar® winner Nicolas Cage and Best Actress Nominee Elisabeth Shue set the screen ablaze in this profoundly moving love story. Nominated for two additional Academy Awards® - Best Director and Best Screenplay - this emotionally charged powerhouse of a film graced over 100 “10 Best Lists,” including Roger Ebert’s number one Movie of the Year. Ben Sanderson (Cage) is a career alcoholic who has hit rock bottom. Trashing all personal and professional ties to his L.A. existence, he sets off for the lights of Vegas on a mission: to drink himself to death. There he meets Sera (Shue), a beautiful, seen-it-all hooker. From the moment Ben and Sera connect, they form a unique bond based upon unconditional acceptance and mutual respect that will change each of them forever. In the words of David Thompson of ‘Los Angeles Magazine’, ‘Leaving Las Vegas’ is “a masterpiece”.

Critique: Imbued with all the emotional acuity of a beautifully composed suicide note, “Leaving Las Vegas” is a difficult movie to watch. It hurts and it numbs and it courts heartbreak. There’s nothing conventionally entertaining in this small character study, nothing that redeems the ruined love of its two archetypal characters — the drunk and the whore. Any break in the bleakness is undermined by the inevitability of dissipation and doom; the abject yet certain knowledge that no one can save he who will not be saved.

Nicolas Cage plays the terminal alcoholic Ben Sanderson as a man who has come to the end of the world yet insists on dangling his feet in the abyss. By turns comic and boorish, shattered and sweet, Cage swims through the movie with a liberating disengagement. As the other half of the subterranean couple, the girl-next-doorish Elisabeth Shue works against type. Shue manages a daring, surprisingly tough performance that nearly equals Cage’s — albeit in a much less flashy role. She comes across as cool and dangerous.

Mike Figgis, the English director who also wrote the script and score for the movie, gives us a lurid, jittery, hand-held look at this dolorous couple and the color-soaked city that contains them. “Leaving Las Vegas” is a brilliantly realized tone poem. It is a cauterizing movie — it burns like bourbon splashed on an exposed heart.

-by Philip Martin

My thoughts: What makes Leaving Las Vegas so powerful is the connection between outcasts Ben and Sera. All they have is each other. It’s a movie about love and despair in their tragic relationship. I became involved. As Leaving Las Vegas came to it’s inevitable conclusion, I realized this movie was an experience that would stay with me for a long long time.

“We live in the trenches out there. We fight. We try not to be killed, but sometimes we are. That’s all.”

Synopsis: Unlike most “message” films which date themselves almost immediately, Lewis Milestone’s low-key unpolished and deeply-felt screen adaptation of the Erich Maria Remarque anti-war novel has lost little of its original impact. Years after its release it was still being banned in countries mobilizing for war. The plot follows a group of young German recruits in World War I through their passage from idealism to disillusionment. As the central character Paul Baumer (Lew Ayers) declares, “We live in the trenches and we fight. We try not to be killed - that’s all.” ‘All Quiet’ is an anthology of now famous scenes: Ayres trapped in a shell crater with a man he has killed; the first meeting of the recruits and the veterans; infantrymen being mowed down to machine-gun visual rhythms; a moonlight swim with French farm girls; Ayre’s pacifist speech to his astonished schoolmates; and the final shot of the soldier’s hand reaching for a fatal butterfly.

Critique: All Quiet on the Western Front is the most famous anti-war film ever made. Adapted from Erich Maria Remarque’s novel, it focuses on a group of German teenagers who excitedly sign up to fight for their country in World War One after hearing their teacher speak enthusiastically for the cause. The boys’ enthusiasm however soon vanishes when they come face to face with the reality of warfare. Bombings, gas attacks and hand-to-hand combat destroy any romantic views that might linger in their minds. On the Western front, death is almost obligatory.

An acknowledged masterwork, this film has over the years retained almost all of its potency. It works particularly well on the human level, transcending cultures and generations with its all-powerful pacifist message. Lewis Milestone’s direction is very effective and the photography is simply unforgettable. The battle scenes are gruesomely realistic; nothing is glossed over.

A profoundly moving picture, All Quiet is required viewing for every single human being, especially those who still cling to the belief: “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (It is sweet and meet to die for one’s country. Sweet! and decorous!)

Edinburgh University Film Society
Review by Stephen Townsend
Taken from EUFS Programme 1992-93

My thoughts: I watched this movie again soon after my brother went to fight in Iraq. It prompted me to ask myself, “Should I really support a war that could kill my brother, and will kill many others, for the sake of imperialism? The message of this movie is still as relevant today as it was in 1930. Sadly, it just proves we haven’t learned anything since.