By the mid-’60s, the groundbreaking Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman had already conjured many of the cinema’s most unforgettable images. But with Persona, he attained new levels of visual poetry. In the first of a series of legendary performances for Bergman, Liv Ullmann (Scenes from a Marriage) plays a stage actor who has gone mute; an equally mesmerizing Bibi Andersson (The Seventh Seal) is her nurse. The women perform a mysterious spiritual and emotional transference that became one of cinema’s most influential creations. Shot in stark contrast and soft light by frequent Bergman collaborator Sven Nykvist, Persona is a profound, dreamlike work.

Read more about Bergman’s work in a blog post from JBFC Senior Programmer Andrew Jupin.