Persona (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Description

By the midsixties, Ingmar Bergman had already conjured many of the cinema’s most unforgettable images. But with the radical Persona, he attained new levels of visual poetry. In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann plays a stage actor who has inexplicably gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson is the garrulous young nurse caring for her in a remote island cottage. While isolated together there, the women undergo a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference. Performed with astonishing nuance and shot in stark contrast and soft light by Sven Nykvist, the influential Persona is a penetrating, dreamlike work of profound psychological depth. BLU-RAY SPECIAL FEATURES New, 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack New visual essay on the film’s prologue by Ingmar Bergman scholar Peter Cowie New interviews with actor Liv Ullmann and filmmaker Paul Schrader Excerpted archival interviews with Bergman, Ullmann, and actor Bibi Andersson On-set footage, with audio commentary by Bergman historian Birgitta Steene Liv & Ingmar, a 2012 feature documentary directed by Dheeraj Akolkar Trailer New English subtitle translation PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by film scholar Thomas Elsaesser, an excerpt from the 1970 book Bergman on Bergman, and an excerpted 1977 interview with Andersson