The Birth of Bergman's Persona
Ingmar Bergman's 1966 film Persona is undoubtedly a revolutionary experiment with the boundaries of cinema as an art and a film that continues, even so far into the future, to dazzle and inspire audiences everywhere. Its opening title sequence is one of, if not my favorite of all time, and I'd like to discuss that a bit here, looking at it in three distinct parts.
From its very first shot, the title sequence serves as both the literal and figurative birth of Persona. A flash, the sound of a reel turning, a strip of film being pulled through, a countdown from 9: Life. This is not only the beginning of Bergman's film, but in a sense representative of the birth of cinema in its entirety. Bergman next moves on to film's earliest stages, first with the upside down strip of film depicting a cartoon of women cleaning her face in water, and then what looks like a sort of very early silent comedy or horror film, much like Chaplin's earliest two-reels.
The middle part of this sequence has always perplexed me a bit more, but I feel that it can serve as a representation of life on this planet, shown through cinema. A spider, representing bugs and other organisms from the earliest days of life. The killing of a goat or sheep is next, mankind’s earliest days hunting and killing for food. Next is the shot of a nail being hammered through a hand, evocative of the story of Jesus Christ being nailed to the cross. This, I feel, may represent either the struggles that mankind faced as a whole or more directly, the rise of religious ideology and again the torture of Jesus Christ. Bergman was, after all raised in a very religious setting and although he moved away from those beliefs earlier in life, often reflected on them in his work, and could easily have included something like that in a sequence so visually abstract as this. Following this are two shots which I believe are connected: wilderness, and civilization. I feel these represent the often lengthy and perilous travels mankind had to overcome to establish the cities, towns, etc. which we now call home. The final few shots which I consider to be a part of this section are of the elderly lying in beds, presumably deceased. Death, the universal end of all who inhabit this planet.
The final part of Persona's title sequence begins with the boy under the sheet waking up, stirring, and eventually putting on his glasses and grabbing a book. After this, he walks toward a sort of glass wall displaying images much like a television screen. and presses his hand to the images of Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullman's (stars of the film) faces. I believe that this third part is a sort of mixture of the prior two, representing the human relationship with art, cinema, and most directly, the relationship of the viewer to Persona.
I own none of the rights to any part of this video and am using it only for educational purposes.
