Persona is a brooding study of personal disintegration, as Elizabeth, an actress recovering from a severe emotional breakdown, is cared for by Alma, her apparently well-balanced and extrovert nurse. Slowly the barriers that separate and define the two women crumble, and their relationship turns into a bewildering reversal and substitution of their respective identities.
Shame pitches Jan and Eva, husband and wife and both professional musicians, into a world torn apart by civil war. Completely brutalised by the progressive breakdown of all civilised standards of behaviour, Jan and Eva's fate reflects how superficial culture, good order and morality are when set against the unconcern of an arbitrary and amoral universe.
Ingmar Bergman is still the doyen of cinema. He is known for masterpieces of controlled human emotion, exploring every facet of the personality in relentless detail. He wrote: "I had the possibility of corresponding with the world around me in a language that is literally spoken from soul to soul."
These two screenplays, liberally illustrated with production stills featuring actors, including his favourite actress, ex wife, Liv Ullman, are classics of the screen. They will be sought after by film students, and lovers of his films, New interest in Bergman is being generated by the recent release of Faithless, Liv Ullman's 2001 masterpiece, with a screenplay by Bergman.
Born in Sweden in 1918, Ingmar Bergman is still contributing to his canon of work.
I note, I observe, I have my eyes with me, everything is unreal, fantastic, frightening or ridiculous."--Ingmar Bergman
