فصل الأدب ، المتكررات والرموز والاستعارات والتلميحات ٤-a .. كتاب فهم السينما

In a powerful scene filmed on a very long shoot, Berkman gives us a large cast of Elizabeth as she lies on a hospital bed, slowly and very slowly, her face gradually sinking into complete darkness. (15) (P) Another scene in the hospital tends to confirm this interpretation, not for Elizabeth being the character of a desperate artist. The actress watches TV and sees a war news bulletin about Vietnam (15) (P). The screen suddenly fills with a shot of a Buddhist monk burning himself in protest. Elizabeth writhes in terror and withdraws to the corner of the room on the edge of Berkman's frame (15) (p). In a series of shots that cut closer and closer to Elizabeth's face, where the symbolic effects of the spatial juxtapositions are wonderfully exploited, we see all the torment and despair that ignited her silent revolution (15) - s, r), but no matter how she withdraws, the horror of reality remains present even in the screen of a device used for television.

Once the scene shifts to the refuge on the island, Elizabeth's condition appears to be improving, although Berkman cuts frequently to the still, barren rocks that stand that even as a permanent reminder of the intrinsic sterility of such an isolated existence (15c) when the two women converge, Berkman depicts them in complementary clothes and uses parallel positions, obscuring their movement so that their bodies seem blended (15v) This repetition of the couple »continues and turns into a dream scene (perhaps Alma's dream) where she enters Elizabeth's nurse's room through one of the doors (15) W) and she exits through another door parallel to it (15 S). Most of this beautiful scene was filmed at slow speed through a transparent lens, and it is the first dramatic display of the mixing of the two personalities. Their physical similarity is not Ordinary (15 y).

Even Berkman inserts the reality of the audience into the film so that the audience is not delighted with watching this strange show. The director begins with one scene of a cat showing us a rocky coast. Suddenly Elizabeth appears from under the frame with a machine in her hand Photograph and take our picture” (15) (Z). Persona is as much a portrait of ourselves as it is a study in the film's neurotic characters.

About halfway through the film, Alma learns of Elizabeth's infidelity. After reading the letter, the nurse stands on the edge of a pond thinking about a snapshot that confirms the theme of duality by showing her full image reflected in the water. (15a) Boiling with anger, Alma leaves a broken piece of glass in the driveway where she hopes Elizabeth will step on it. When Elizabeth does so, Berkman cuts to Alma looking at the scene from behind a window and curtain (15)b) (b). Suddenly, the vocal tract vibrates with a cracking sound, and we notice a crack in the film image (15 gg). Half of the image falls from the frame, literally dividing Alma's face into two halves (15 DD). The “crack,” of course, is a metaphor for Ma’s emotional breakdown. Then a burning hole penetrates the face of the mama and devours the image (15 AH) Through the burning hole, strange images appear of Satan in the era of silent cinema (15) and of a skeleton (15) gg) which are Berkman's means of reminding us of the primitiveness and inadequacy of his medium of expression in communicating severe pain . After the quarrel between the two women, Alma withdraws to the rocks, where she remains for hours (15 AH) lying silently in a stupor (15 MM).

In the bedroom, Elisabeth stumbles upon a picture of a Nazi torture camp with its victims (15YJ) and is smacked again with real-world horror, especially at the sight of a young child among the prisoners (15) kk. The child probably reminds her of her child, whom we have already seen in a picture. The fact that Elizabeth is thrust back into reality by multiple documentary images reflects Berkman's own unease in his attempt to embody sincere, uncompromising emotions in "imaginary" form. After that we are never sure whether we are watching a series of events that actually happen or we are watching fantasies. Perhaps it was mostly fantasies.

In one particular dream-like scene, the cottage is visited by Elizabeth's husband who appears to be blind), Mr. Volker speaks to Alma as if his wife was resisting Alma at first (15 ll) but, prompted by the enigmatic Elizabeth, she pretends to be his wife so that she goes so far as to sleep with him (15 lm) the silent Elizabeth all the while seems to remember her marital affair with tender and futile sorrow, her face half-dark or symbolically cut off (15) nn.

In another scene, Alma watches Elizabeth covering her son's torn picture with her hands, and she feels guilty. The nurse pushes the mother to talk about her son, but Elizabeth refuses (15)ss. While telling Elizabeth's horror story of being pregnant with a child she does not want. The camera moves from a double over-the-shoulder shot to a large shot of Elizabeth listening and half of her face is immersed in symbolic darkness (15 p. Q) Re-telling the story in two opposite shots suggesting that she will give birth With the blending of the two personalities, Lama denies this interpenetration of the two personalities (15 p.p.), but suddenly, using special photographic effects, Berkman blends the faces of the two women into one face (15 p.c.).

At the end of the film, we see Elizabeth packing her clothes in her, after we see Alma doing the same work. She looks in the mirror and again sees the image of the mixed characters, and she has a dream in repeated exposure (15 pl). u) Then it cuts to a large shot of Elizabeth's immobile features as Electra, another apparent repetition of immobility (15 s v). This is intercut with a shot of Berkmann and his great cameraman Sven Nykvist behind the camera as she descends slowly on a crane (15 s s) if juxtaposing these three shots Again suggesting parallelism, which indicates that Alma and Elizabeth are two sides of Berkman's personality

same.

The film concludes with a replay of some of the opening shots. We see the boy trying to reach a blurred image of the blended face of Bibi Anderson and Liv Ullmann (15) squeezing the vocal tract as if he is losing control when we see an image of a film strip flexing restlessly out of the cogwheel (15 y) finally the projector lamp (15) goes out Z Z) and we see nothing but darkness.