An Audience with Liv Ullmann and Persona (1966), BFI Liv Ullmann Season

 

It was because my face could say what he wanted to say. That made me the one he wanted to work with ... because it was my face and I also understood what he was writing…

 

The very last audience question for Liv Ullmann came from a French woman who had written a dissertation on her work with Ingmar Bergman to earn her Baccalaureate, “you made so many films with Ingmar, how did you manage to stay happy?” The answer was simple and got the biggest laugh of a very enjoyable conversation between film writer, Christina Newlands and the revered Norwegian actor and director; I’m a happy person, all my friends could tell you that. Over and again Ullman has stressed that the secret to her “method” was indeed, acting and the art of pretending; using your dreams and emotional back catalogue to drive your characters.

 

She described herself, a Norwegian, directing an Australian actress, Kate Blanchet, in an American play, A Streetcar Named Desire and witnessing her embellish the ending in a way she’d never seen before, as Blanch looks forward to the next stage in her life with strength and not resignation. Before that she’d given numerous examples of the power of her own imagination enabling her to play an experienced woman aged 19 or a middle-aged actor in Persona, an older woman with a younger man in Cries and Whispers (both she and he were 35) and other roles Bergman realised he could fulfil through her even , perhaps, if he couldn’t write the character to fulfilment on his own.

 

Liv in Persona

Very occasionally she went against his instruction such as in Faithless (2000) the film he scripted, allowing the old man in this partly autobiographical story, to forgive his younger self’s cruelty to a lover by having him look directly at younger actor during the harrowing reveal. Bergman refused to forgive himself but Liv Ullman, not for the first time, gave him what he deserved even when he was so specific as to call the main character “Bergman”.

 

One suspects that it was this very ability to give the director what he didn’t always expect or think he wanted that made him describe them as “painfully linked” after directing her for the first time in tonight’s feature Persona. Initially she thought he was proposing and they did have a relationship for five years which led to his fathering of writer Linn Ullmann with Ullmann, but what he meant was that the two of them were intertwined in term of creative imperatives. He’d had this feeling before perhaps, having relationships with actresses Harriet Andersson (1952–1955) and Bibi Andersson (1955–1959) who, in addition to being a close friend of Liv’s by this point, was also her co-star/other-half in Persona…

 

Live Ullman live… and utterly charming, self-depreciating and yet full of honesty and wisdom. The comments she made about the performance of her star in Faithless, Lena Endre, are very similar to those she made about the star of Sofie (1992), Karen-Lise Mynster: “I was thinking to myself, ‘try not to think what you would have done!’ … then suddenly she was doing so much more that I had never even thought of… it was the first time in my life that I was proud to be an actress. Because I saw that it didn’t come from make believe, it came from feeling.”

 

Persona

This was “a once in a lifetime opportunity” said the person introducing from the BFI and she was not wrong. This felt not just like a masterclass in acting and cinema but also in life and how to live it. A standing ovation all round reflected the warmth in the room and there may just have been something in my eye.

 

I think you should play this part until it’s played out, until it’s no longer interesting. Then you can drop it, just like you eventually drop all your other roles.

 

Liv introduced Persona in the evening’s main (screening) event this time in conversation with series programmer Sara Lutton. She had met Bergman who had told her he wanted to cast her in his next film but then Ingmar pulled a sicky which he often did when he’d changed his mind about a project. After some time in hospital, he emerged with the script for Persona which was also to star Liv’s best friend, and former Ingmar lover, Bibi Anderson. The result remains a disturbing classic, as likely to make the top-ranked films of all time Liv quipped, as her “musical” Lost Horizon is a contender for the worst – she is nothing if no humble and funny.

 

Liv and Bibi Anderson. Those high heels?

Persona is still striking with fierce, conflicting and bare-knuckled emoting from Bibi and Liv all masterfully captured by Bergman with the aid of Sven Nykvist’s cinematography and Ulla Ryghe’s pin-point editing – absolutely amongst the MVPs as the personas start to move across the screen between and around the players… There’s also an experimental score from Lars Johan Werle that certainly impressed members of Pink Floyd for far less successful experimentation on Ummagumma. His music creates an atmosphere of disturbance and is used sparingly alongside more deliberate visual avant-gardism which punctuates the film, cut up and montage, flash frames of silent film, erotica, burning nitrate… the fourth wall takes the occasional battering.

 

The story concerns a famous theatre actress Elisabet Vogler (Liv Ullmann) who is suddenly struck mute during a performance of Electra and is in hospital for assessment by a doctor played by Margaretha Krook, who can find nothing wrong with her physically or mentally. From the doctor comes the above quote, as she sees Elisabet as play acting for whatever reason… is the nature of the play significant, does she have deeper issues with parenting and her father? Her husband, when he makes a brief appearance certainly seems much older… but the film is so rich in possible interpretation we’re all like the boy at the avant guard opening, reaching out to a bright and blurred image of Elisabet, or is it someone else?

 

Bibi Anderson

The doctor assigns the friendly nurse Alma (Bibi Andersson) to look after Elisabet as she sends her to her house on the island of Fårö (locations included Bergman's property there at Hammars). Alma gently fills in the gaps in the silence and is ostensibly a more straightforward personality – well she’s still talking and introduces herself in plain terms at their first meeting, 25, engaged, interested in film and theatre but not going to either as much as she’d like… an open book apparently

 

But, amongst the atmosphere of rocky seaside calm, Alma and Silent Lis develop a deeper entanglement with Alma falling into the unfathomability of the actresses’ state of being. They are more than just face to face, and are beginning to connect beyond the surface, intermingling I unspoken ways beyond the mask of flesh and feature…

 

Is it possible to be one and the same person at one time – I mean two people? God, I’m being silly.

 

There’s so much interpretation of the film, as with Antonioni’s L’Avventura, there’s no definitive narrative based on the evidence of the film, the “meaning” as illusive as a lost woman or, indeed, a lost identity. That secrets endure after 57 years says much for the film’s continued popularity, a puzzle still and one that retains significance. Persona has certainly impacted David Lynch, with Mulholland Drive most obviously owing a debt and many more, although I was surprised that Abba were among the influenced with Knowing Me, Knowing You (aha!) profiling Anna and Agnetha just like Bibi and Liv.

 

Liv said that as they worked, Bergman would always sit right next to the camera making him another unspoken partner in the action. The three friends who made this picture operated on a level of open connection few of us experience in our working lives… the results are extraordinary and mark that rare film which means exactly what you want it to if you’re willing to push yourself inside the screen. Go on, take off your mask.

 

 

The Liv Ullmann series runs until the end of April and more details are on the BFI site.

 

 

The tremendous cry of our faith and doubt against the darkness and silence is the most terrifying proof of our abandonment.