Persona
Lopert Pictures Corporation | Release Date: March 6, 1967 CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION
86
METASCORE
Universal acclaim based on 18 Critic Reviews
Positive:
16
Mixed:
2
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews

Critic scorePublicationBy date
100
Chicago Sun-TimesRoger Ebert
Persona is a film we return to over the years, for the beauty of its images and because we hope to understand its mysteries. Read full review
100
Chicago TribuneMichael Wilmington
One of the screen's supreme works and perhaps Ingmar Bergman's finest film, "Persona" is also his most radical in form and technique. Read full review
100
The GuardianPeter Bradshaw
Persona is a film to make you shiver with fascination, or incomprehension, or desire. Read full review
100
EmpireDavid Parkinson
Wonderfully complex but warmly human, Bergman's drama is one of his very best. Read full review
100
TV Guide MagazineStaff (Not Credited)
This is Ingmar Bergman's chaste exploration of psychosis. It's not a horror story but a poem, and remarkable for that. This is one of the director's masterworks. Read full review
100
Total FilmJamie Graham
It explores two of the filmmaker’s pet themes – the impossibility of true communication, the futility of art – and is set against the Vietnam War. Extraordinary. Read full review
91
The A.V. ClubMike D'Angelo
Persona doesn’t really benefit from too much thought. It’s a visceral experience that’s best felt, accepted, and left alone to rattle around in your subconscious for years to come. Rest assured that it will. Read full review
90
Time OutStaff (Not Credited)
Not an easy film, but an infinitely rewarding one. Read full review
90
The DissolveScott Tobias
Persona feels like an act of disclosure on Bergman’s part, with him pulling back the curtain to acknowledge the fantasy of filmmaking and global realities that linger in his mind. Read full review
88
Slant MagazineChuck Bowen
Despite its elaborate meta-game-playing, which has had a pronounced and unquantifiable influence on film culture, Persona remains intensely alive and intimate. Read full review
88
ReelViewsJames Berardinelli
Arguably the most rewarding aspect of Persona is its rewatchability. The movie’s themes are so complex and deeply buried that it offers something new each time it is seen. Like a Rorschach test, one’s interpretation says more about the person offering the opinion than the film itself. Read full review
88
The Globe and Mail (Toronto)Geoff Pevere
Persona still conveys a power to lift the scalp and scramble the brain, and the fact that it's out-of-time says less about it being dated than it does about it remaining a radically visionary work. Read full review
80
The New YorkerRichard Brody
Bergman blends a theatrical subjectivity—scenes of the inner life that defy physical reality and depend on special effects, whether in the film lab or on set—with a tactile visual intimacy, with his characters, the objects close at hand, and the superb coastal landscape. Read full review
80
The New York TimesJ. Hoberman
Persona is at once tactile and elusive, splintered and seamless, systematic and free-associative. Essentially a movie of fragments and vignettes, it is held together by the power of the artist’s craft and the centripetal force of his unconscious. Read full review
80
VarietyStaff (Not Credited)
Bergman has come up with probably one of his most masterful films technically and in conception, but also one of his most difficult ones. Read full review
70
TimeStaff (Not Credited)
Persona (the ancient Latin word for mask) is too deliberately difficult to rank with Bergman's best. But in an era when the director who dares to repeat himself is rare indeed—when the cinematic world is full of one-shot wonders, Bergman's consistency is itself refreshing. Read full review
60
The New YorkerPauline Kael
Most movies give so little that it seems almost barbarous to object to Bergman's not giving us more in Persona, but it is just because of the expressiveness and fascination of what we are given that the movie is so frustrating. There is, however, great intensity in many of the images.
50
Chicago ReaderDave Kehr
Ingmar Bergman's best film, I suppose, though it's still fairly tedious and overloaded with avant-garde cliches. Read full review
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