Saturday, July 14, 2007

Liv Ullmann Bibi Andersson - Persona (1966 Swedish) clip 1

Let's see if I've got this posting thing down...
This is an iconic shot from Persona, one of my favorite films of all time. I don't know if a movie like this could be made any more; not for lack of money, but for lack of sincerity.

3 comments:

Holly said...

You completely did that right.

I'm not sure I agree with your assessment, though. I think sincerity is available in tremendous volumes; it's just that it's not commercially viable. It makes people uncomfortable.

I know people get lost and (as with, say, ships) damaged in fog, but it hasn't always been clear to me that it is synonymous with disorientation and perhaps danger. Maybe those are just symptoms that you're traveling too fast to appreciate the mystique and envelopment of the fog.

Rufus said...

Maybe sincerity isn't the right word. Perhaps seriousness is lacking. Even when I see films that were shot for $5,000 on digital video, they have a protective layer of irony to them. Persona is really personal and serious in a way that makes it really easy to parody, of course, but it's still a great film. There's also a level of intelligence to the film that I just don't see, even in self-funded personal films.

You're right though that he was definitely lucky financially. It's unthinkable that any group today would fund a filmmaker who consistently loses money until he finally creates films that make money.

You're right of course about the commercial aspect of it. There are no longer 'art houses' that will show films like that to a full crowd of adults. At least, not in the states. I do think that the 'serious adult gap' is not so much of a problem elsewhere.

It's not clear what fog, and even more importantly twilight mean in Bergman. It seems to just be a time in which the normal rules of reality don't apply. But I'm not sure that that's always a negative in his movies. It sure seems to be in Hour of the Wolf.

Rufus said...

Of course, we could be talking about the same thing. My thought was that, if someone made a film like Persona today, it would make audiences uncomfortable, if not angry. So that might be why nobody (except maybe David Lynch) makes movies like that today.