9-Persona .Director:Ingmar Bergman. Cast: Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullmann.


Art is a private thing, the artist makes it for himself; a comprehensible work is the product of a journalist. We need works that are strong, straight, precise, and forever beyond understanding.

- Kenneth Tynan-
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"The human face. No one draws so close to it as Bergman does. In his recent films there is nothing more than mouths talking, ears listening, eyes expressing curiosity, hunger, panic."

- Francois Truffaut-
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“The cinema is not a craft. It is an art . . . One is always alone on the set as before a blank page. And for Bergman, to be alone means to ask questions. And to make films means to answer them. Nothing could be more classically romantic.”

-Jean-Luc Godard-
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"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."
-Ingmar Bergman-

Liv Ullmann & Gene Kelly-not singing or dancing...yet.

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"I'm enormously fascinated by her. I find her an immensely suggestive actress. She has a long stage career behind her. I've worked with her in the theatre. I see various roles mirrored in her face. It's a face which can lend itself to an immense number of different roles."

-Ingmar Bergman-on Liv Ullmann (1968)

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"(Bergman) sits very close to the camera. You feel him very much and if he is not close to the camera, you tend to act towards him. He always is very, very close to the camera and he is terribly inspiring. I don't know what he is doing, but it is something that makes you want to give everything you have. You feel that there is somebody who is really there."

-Liv Ullmann-

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"Bibi Andersson is a close friend of mine—a lovely and extremely talented actress. She is totally oriented toward reality, always needing motives for what she does....An actress can do something unsuited to her and make it believable, but Bibi Andersson is so integrated a person that, for her, it is impossible to play something she doesn't believe in."

-Ingmar Bergman-

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"It was the knowledge of a person that inspired him [Bergman] to write in a certain direction. Even if it was unconscious, I'm sure it was playing a big part. If he was at work on something and knew that one of his actress friends had a similar problem or attitude, he would use her. When I was reading a script, I tried to figure out what side of me he was trying to use now, or what he had seen, or what it was that he did not want. You can sometimes be very frustrated if you feel the part does not do you justice. When I read Persona I wasn't flattered. I didn't understand why I had to play this sort of insecure, weak personality when I was struggling so hard to be sure of myself and to cover up my insecurities. I realized that he was totally aware of my personality. I was better off just trying to deliver that. It's a good way to know oneself. Sometimes I think artists instinctively are very good psychiatrists. I also think all parts have to be based on oneself, otherwise they will never come across."

-Bibi Andersson-

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"I'm proud of the films(Wild Strawberries and The Seventh Seal), but not with regard to myself. 'Persona', on the other hand, I'm still proud of. Each time I see it, I know I accomplished what I set out to do as an actress, that I created a person."

-Bibi Andersson-