”When I was young, I didn’t watch TV,
I watched Fellini.”
Luca Marinelli, Locarno Meets
Film images: Persona, directed by Ingmar Bergman. Svensk Filmindustri. Photos: Classiq Journal
Persona, 1966
Ingmar Bergman
Intensely provocative and clever, with minimalist composition and well defined close-up shootings (has anyone ever done it better? – much credit due to Sven Nykvist), Ingmar Bergman’s Persona is one of the best psychological thrillers in the history of cinema. In this complex depiction of human identity, frailty, cruelty, social, class and power struggle, Alma (Bibi Andersson) is the nurse who is hired to take care of famous actress Elisabet (Liv Ullmann), after she has a breakdown during a performance and suddenly falls silent. They are secluded at Elisabet’s doctor’s island summer house, one remaining silent and closed, the other one voluble and opening up. The relationship between the two grows more intense, the line between reality and dream becomes blurred, their identities seem to gradually merge, or maybe overlap – “Persona”. Costume plays an interesting role in that. The two characters become strikingly alike on the island. Bibi Andersson’s style especially deserves recognition. Her look, except her pixie cut that contrasts Elisabet’s long hair, starts to borrow so much from the other’s – sun hats, simple head-to-toe black, black swimming suit and wayfarer dark sunglasses. Smart, minimalistic and streamlined, not exactly reflecting her personality. Whether she does it consciously or unconsciously, this resemblance is something Alma does finally become aware of and loudly articulates when she smashes her sunglasses, which are in fact Elisabet’s, on the cliffs. Who unmasks whom?
“We were out on Fårö and had sent that bit in – the bit where the dark side of one face is complemented by the light side of the other – to be printed. When the scene came back from the lab, we put it into the Moviola, and I asked the girls to come and see something amusing – a surprise.
We set the machine running, and Liv said, ‘Oh, look, what a horrible picture of Bibi!’ And Bibi said, ‘No, it’s not me, it’s you!’ Then the picture stopped. Everyone’s face has a better or worse side, and the picture is a combination of Bibi’s and Liv’s less attractive sides. At first they were so scared they didn’t even recognise their own faces. What they should have said was: “What the hell have you done to my face?’ But they didn’t! They didn’t recognize their own faces. I find that rather an odd reaction.” These are Ingmar Bergman’s words quoted in the book Ingmar Bergman Archives, from an interview from 1969 with Torsten Manns.
Bergman also admitted that “Today I feel that in Persona – and later in Cries and Whispers – I had gone as far as I could go. And that in these two instances, when working in total freedom, I touched wordless secrets that only the cinema can discover.” And Sven Nykvist related: “This was all very exciting for me as a photographer. This was yet another film about silence in which the visual effects – faces, emotions, and atmosphere – seemed to take precedence. I also had the opportunity to experiment – at the beginning, for instance – with the film in my camera. It was pure visual poetry.”
The film was shot on Fårö island, Bergman’s second one there. In her book Unquiet, Linn Ullmann, the daughter of Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann, recounts how her father decided to make the island his home and build a house there after he and cinematographer Sven Nykvist stumbled upon this place while location scouting. “If one were being pompous, one might say that I had finally come home, and if one were joking one might talk about love at first sight,” were Bergman’s only words he would always use to explain his decision. “I have lived with this account of home and love all my life. He came to a place and claimed it, called it his own,” Ullmann writes. And she does go on to give us her own story of how and why this whole affair with the island began for Bergman: “The place he fell in love with was a deserted stony beach, some gnarled pine trees. He was overcome by the immediate sense of familiarity, he knew this was his place, it echoed his innermost ideas of form, proportion, color, light and horizon. And then there was something about the sounds. […] I picture my father turning to the cinematographer and saying: Listen to how quiet this place is.”
Seemingly therapeutic at first – what both Elisabet and Alma are hoping for, one as the patient looking for healing, the other one as the nurse who wants her patient to get better – the island turns out to be intense and confined, apt not no mend the human mind but acting to fracture it, just as harshly as the sea has carved its rocks.
Today, the island comes alive in summer. The Bergman Center located on the island hosts international and Swedish guests, offers fantastic views of Fårö, safaris in Bergmanland, theater, music, and of course, film, film, film! Viva culture! This year, the Bergman Week will take place on Fårö from June 23-27. So, cinephiles, leave the big festivals for the critics and go for under the radar film events, such as Bergman Week and Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, June 21-29 (“nine magical days of film”). And save a morning for Il Cinema Ritrovato book fair.
Bonjour Tristesse, 1958
Otto Preminger
Every time that a remake of a classic film pops up, I return to the original with a vengeance. They recently did it with Bonjour Tristesse. But who could beat Jean Seberg’s grace and a glint of boyish malice in Preminger’s film? From the masterful use of colour that affords a striking contrast between the sun-drenched hues of summer in the South of France and the present, a Paris shot in a chilly black and white, to Seberg’s sensuous tomboy image, an image easily associated with Françoise Sagan herself, the symbol of teenage rebellion in postwar France, who had an uncanny ability to articulate youth angst with unique style, these are just a few details that attest to the film’s greatness, as I have written here. A remake is nonsense.
It Happened One Night, 1934
Frank Capra
Screwball comedy – a term that, in the golden Hollywood of the 1930s, came to describe a lively battle between classes and sexes, quirky and mad plot twists, rapid-fire dialogue, superb comic timing. Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night has always been a favourite. A great comedy as well as great social commentary. Humour was infectious, and so was life. Between Claudette Colbert’s Ellie Andrews (the runaway daughter of a millionaire who wants to get to New York to reunite with the man she had eloped with) and Clark Gable’s Peter Warne (a newspaper man who helps her out with an agenda of his own) there is an openness to make jokes and take jokes, to speak your mind, to be vulnerable, to be star-crossed. They are both a joy on screen. And I don’t care how many times it has been written about and how many times it has been, always poorly, reciprocated (or even talked about, again poorly) on screen, the scene where Peter fails to get passing cars to stop to give him and Ellie a lift, and Ellie steps into the road, lifts her skirt and flashes her leg, will forever remain memorable and unmatched. As Claudette Colbert said, “I think there was more sex in those old films than in all that thrashing around today.”
The Mackintosh Man, 1973
John Huston
A photo taken by Terry O’Neill on the set of The Mackintosh Man, from the bookPaul Newman: Blue-Eyed Cool reminded me that I hadn’t watched the film. O’Neill’s images from the set communicate a sense of pensiveness in the character that Newman portrays. An espionage film, shot on location, in London, Ireland and Malta, and at Pinewood Studios, London, was the fourth film starring Paul Newman that the photographer shot,”bringing a newspaper’s aesthetic of immediacy to so many of his images”. Usually using a Leica M4, a nearly silent camera, when taking photographs on the movie sets, he remained unobtrusive and gained the star actors’ trust. And that’s where the magic happened, attesting that a film star’s image is a combination of “both themselves and the characters they portray”. Paul Newman was one such true movie star. And yet, what I appreciate about The Mackintosh Man, unlike many spy movies, is its realistic attitude and the sense of atmosphere and location. Unfortunately, Maurice Jarre’s music, totally distracting and pulling the film in an entirely wrong direction, almost ruined it for me.
Reading
In A Training School for Elephants, Sophy Roberts’ second book, the author combines history with travel and reportage in telling the story of a forgotten 19th-century colonial expedition to Africa, commissioned by King Leopold II of Belgium, who wanted to establish a training school for taming wild African elephants. It’s a little wonder that this kind of contemporary journey, a thoughtful quest in the spirit of discovery and the search for truth, can still exist. It reaffirms great travel, original writing. “I needed time to get used to the rustle of small animals moving through the trees. When the train sounded its horn, the hollow noise seemed to hang in the air, making me think of the giant fog which used to speak. Here was a city growing and a forest retreating; and a man called Nassoro who believed all the knowledge we’d ever need to save our species was right here, girdling the city he also feared would soon swallow the forest up.”
When reading How Directors Dress, I learned about Hagop Kourounian, who writes about this very subject on a regular basis. This interview with Justine Triet is from when Anatomy of a Fall made its debut at the Cannes Film Festival in 2023, but it’s such a great, insightful look into the director’s personal style (we’re talking River Phoenix and Nirvana inspiration and I was overjoyed) that it’s never too late to read it.
Listening
The soundtrack: To Catch a Thief
The album: Pearl Jam MTV Unplugged
On a side note: Listening bars are back. What a marvelous idea!
Making
The collages of Greek artist Danai Tsouloufa. She often works with photographic material, yet the collages train the eye and imagination in a complete different way, I would even say in a much more complex way than photography does. Forms of nature, a dress, a part of a building, a pencil line, and the feeling that it is made by hand, they all contribute to a very satisfying visual image.
Exploring
Outliers means “a thing that is very different from others”, just like the places Júlia Juste, the founder of Outliers likes to find. The community – photographers, designers, creatives talking about their most inspiring travels – is my favourite part. It’s not about the most talked-out spot on a map, but about the experience.
On an end note
Last Sunday, the first day of this year’s Roland Garros, Rafa Nadal finally got the send-off that he deserved (after the awkward and disappointing farewell ceremony in Malága, in his home country, last year) and every tennis fan gave a sigh of relief. We were all expecting it and there is not much one can add to or comment on that. Or maybe just this: In the age of instant gratification, if we aren’t capable of acknowledging excellency, which only comes after years and years and years of hard work, then there is something seriously wrong with us as human beings. Yesterday, Richard Gasquet too said goodbye to tennis as a professional player and Mats Wilander beautifully acknowledged his legacy, his accomplishments, his unique style of playing (that genius of a one-handed backhand), and, most importantly, the fact that, despite his never winning a Grand Slam, he always put up a great match, giving it his all. “Free tennis,” Mats described it. For the love of the game.
The regulars: The interviews, newsletters and podcasts I turn to every week and/or every month because they are that good. Ruthie’s Table 4 with Ruth Rogers. Fashion Neurosis, with Bella Freud. Craig Mod’s newsletters: Roden and Ridgeline. Soundtracking, with Edith Bowman. Alicia Kennedy’s newsletter. Racquet’s Rennae Stubbs tennis podcast. Gone to Timbuktu with Sophy Roberts. Sirene Journal, Racquet, and Waves & Woods in print.
”In this era of oversharing, I think that in five years
the greatest asset that a young person will have
is the lack of any social media.”
Graydon Carter, Fashion Neurosis with Bella Freud
