Persona (movie)
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Persona is a movie by Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, released in 1966, and featuring Bibi Andersson and Liv Ullmann.
David Lynch's film Mulholland Dr. (2001) shares strong similarities with Bergman's "Persona", and this has lead many film scholars to speculate that "Mulholland Dr." may have been either wholly or partially inspired by this classic Bergman film.
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Plot
The movie takes place mostly at a seaside summer residence, where actress Elisabeth Vogler has been sent to recuperate by her psychiatrist after remaining silent for a long time. Her nurse Alma is sent to accompany her.
The main plot is about the two personalities exchanging places, switching from one body to the other, so at the end, the nurse is Elisabeth Vogler and Elisabeth Vogler is the nurse. On a second level, the movie discusses what makes a person a person and if all our roles as humans are just as exchangeable. It also paints a harsh picture of human relationships and the little betrayals in life that people inflict on their loved ones.
Brechtian Alienation Technique
Persona is one of the first films to make use of the Brechtian alienation technique (verfremdungseffekt); destroying the fantasy-world of your movie. Some notable uses of the technique in Persona are at the beginning and end, where you see a reel of film being loaded; in the middle, when Vogler steps on glass and the film appears to burn; and later on, when the camera turns around to display the entire crew.
Censorship
Two scenes are frequently cut from versions of the film; a brief shot at the beginning depicting an erect penis (removed in the American DVDs, but not the Accent release), and a piece of Alma's monologue where she says her lover "made her come with his hand" and implies they were children or teenagers.