Free Awake in the Dark: The Best of Roger Ebert by Roger Ebert

working one day, surrendered her ability to talk, and the young nurse who admired her, who wanted to understand her, but was treated badly by her ... there's something there, but I can't explain it."

    Persona contains one of Bergman's most famous shots, the faces of Liv Ullmann and Bibi Andersson photographed in such a way that the features of the two women seem to blend. They seem about to become one another, which, in a way, is what happens in the film. They seem capable of exchanging or sharing personalities. I asked Bergman about this shot, and also about his frequent use of two-shots to show characters who are in the same frame but not looking at each other or communicating.
    "The two-shot, and the closeup, too, are marvelous, because ... well, you don't have them in the theater. They give you the eyes, the skin, the mouth, and that's fascinating. And when you cut it, rehearse it, edit it, two people talking, now in closeup, now brought together into the twoshot, you can work out a wonderful rhythm, a sort of breathing, and it's beautiful.
    "And the most beautiful of all is that you're close to the human face, which is the most fascinating subject possible for the camera. On TV a few days ago, I saw a little of Antonioni's new picture, The Passenger. And, you know, I am an admirer of Antonioni, I've learned so much from him, but I was struck by the moment they cut from his film to a closeup of Anto- nioni himself, for the interview.
    "And as he was sitting there, here was his face, so normal, so beautiful and so human-and I didn't hear a word of what he was saying, because I was looking so closely at his face, at his eyes." Bergman held out his hands as if to compose the memory for the camera. "The ten minutes he was on the screen were more fascinating than any of his, or my, work. It told you a novel about his whole life. With my actors, with their faces ... that is what we can sometimes do."
    Now it was time to go back onto the soundstage and finish the day's shooting. People were waiting for him in the hallway: a secretary said he had been chosen to receive the Donatello Award of the Italian Republic; could he come to Florence if a private jet were sent? Bibi Andersson had stopped by for a visit, she was accompanying the Swedish prime minister, Olaf Palme, on a state visit to South America, and then she'd go to Warsaw in Bergman's production of Twelfth Night.

    Bergman was quiet, friendly, dictating a reply to Rome and another one to his producer, Dino De Laurentiis, explaining why he could not oblige Dino's old friend, the countess in charge of the Donatello Award. He kissed Bibi and said he would come to see her in Warsaw if he could. And then he went back behind the big soundproof doors and the red light blinked on. Some tourists being taken through Film House had not recognized the ordinary-looking man of fifty-seven, with his thinning brown hair, his frayed bluejacket, his carpet slippers.
    The rhythm of the seasons has been set for seven or eight years now, ever since Bergman moved to Faro, which close inspection of the map reveals as a tiny unnamed blue dot north of the island of Gotland, in the Baltic Sea. It is the last speck of Sweden, a wild bird preserve inhabited by nine hundred shepherds and fishermen, and foreigners are not allowed there because of a nineteenth-century military agreement with Russia. Bergman found his island by accident, as a ferry stop north of Gotland, while looking for a place to shoot Through the Glass Darkly.
    He built a house there, sturdy and spacious, and after waiting for three years for the permit, he built an editing facility and the simple studio in which he did the interiors for A Passion of Anna and parts of Shame. He would return to Faro in a month or so, and spend the autumn editing Face to Face. This winter, he will direct something for the Royal Dramatic Theater-he thinks perhaps something by Shaw this year. When the production has opened, he'll return to Faro, finish