Bibi Andersson - the subject of the most disturbingly beautiful shot in history of cinema just faded to black.
Ingmar Bergman has always cast his leading ladies for specific emotional qualities they exuded. Ingrid Thulin was distant, manipulative and rather introverted. Liv Ullmann was the cerebral lover who rarely lost an intellectual challenge to either gender. With both actresses, you always knew what lay ahead. Not so with Bibi.
Andersson was the sensual one, the innocent, the playful - therefore unpredictable. Of all the impressive Bergmanesque heroines, it was Andersson who was tasked with the greatest character journey I’ve ever witnessed in cinema (Persona, 1966). Her nurse Alma, relentlessly toyed with and goaded on by a sophisticated patient – actress Vogler (Ullmann), is coaxed into a self revelatory journey. Her plight hits every intimate note in the register at such breakneck pace, that the ensuing emotional vortex also sucks in the provocateur. When the dust settles, the two women emerge as a single disfigured entity. It is by far the most disturbingly breathtaking dissolve shot in history of film. The moment of their spiritual unity is fleeting, and Vogler, the recovered patient, returns to her work. But Alma, the nurse, soldiers on as a fully transformed person.
The emotional heart of Persona belongs to Andersson - listen to her nocturnal confession of a youthful erotic experience and you will be convinced that cinema is capable of reaching levels of intimacy previously reserved for literature. And Bibi, apparently, contributed her own writing to that scene.
One of the loveliest talents to have ever graced the screen.
Bibi Andersson (Berit Elisabeth Andersson), actor, born 11 November 1935; died 14 April 2019
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