Persona = Diabolic women = Masks [DVD]

An actress’s nervous breakdown occasions her deliberate withdrawal into speechlessness. As a consequence she appears to break down her nurse’s confident personality. However, “Persona” cannot be summarised in terms of conventional plot. It is a virtual monologue in which language is presented as fraudulent. In Susan Sontag’s words, it is “a powerful instance of the motif of exchange. The actress creates a void by her silence. The nurse, by speaking, falls into it.” It is possible to interpret the first half of the film as naturalistic drama but following the disruption of the ‘terrifying caesura’ in the middle (which, like the opening, operates on the principle of intensity, not Brechtian detachment), the level of reality of each event is ambiguous, unresolved. Cast includes: Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullmann, Gunnar Bjornstrand. Photography by Sven Nykvist. In Swedish with English subtitles.