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Back in December, after my first viewing of Persona, I stated that the film was "not as great as other reviewers had made out"… How wrong I was. I watched Persona again last night and found it, second time around, to be challenging, interesting and enjoyable, emotions and feelings that went straight over my head on first viewing. This is the closest thing to "real" cinema that I have seen, because it doesn't offer the viewer any easy answers, Bergman lets the story unfold, and as he goes deeper into the psyche of the character he expects us to pay very close attention to what he is doing.

The film is pretentious, unashamedly, but the way Bergman takes the style from the narrative means that the pretension isn't a bad thing, because the images of Persona are some of the most memorable and haunting that any director has dared to show. From the opening images of the young boy framed in front of a full-screen rear projection of his mother, to the famous image of the two women's faces merged as one, the images help the audience decode some of the more complicated elements of the plot.

Now I must mention the acting (something I glossed over in my first review), because there are better performances in this film than any other I can think of at this moment. Firstly Liv Ullmann, who is simply amazing as the broken-down actress Elisabeth Vogler, she manages to seem both trustworthy, but at the same time controlling without speaking a single line of dialog, and she's helped out enormously by Bibi Andersson. The way that Bergman uses these very different (but in some way similar) actresses, is to contradict their actions at every turn, to continually play with their status within the film, Ullmann comes off as the masculine character, despite the fact that her profession would call for her to be feminine. Similarly, Andersson's nurse Alma often comes off as being far too weak for her vocation, but is this a general character flaw, or just a continuation of the role reversal the two women are undergoing.

There is still a great deal of Persona that I don't understand, and maybe I never will but this only makes me want to watch the film again and again, as it's the perfect film to just loose yourself in. There is so much that I have picked up on since my first viewing that I could write about this film for even longer, but this is not my personal forum form any kind of film critique. All I can say is Persona is a film that must be watched multiple times, every viewing only strengthens my affection for it and my growing admiration for Bergman that hit full swing after I saw The Seventh Seal. In December I gave this film a rating of 8/10, now I feel compelled to, not only change that score to a 10, but also to see the film again. A true masterpiece

With Blue Velvet, David Lynch made a film that was so pure to his original vision that it would become the archetype of his work for the next fifteen years. Here, Lynch cast his ever probing, surrealist gaze upon small town middle America, and for the first time in a US film, showed the audience the darker side to what was often depicted as nothing more than the birth place of apple pie. We are drawn into the story almost immediately, with what would seem like a simple depiction of small town life, but the use of slow-motion hints that there is something not quite right with what we are looking at. So by the time Lynch has pushed his camera through the soft green grass of a regular front lawn, only to show us the slithering insects that hide in the darkness, we know that we are about to enter a very dark world.

Blue Velvet is a world filled with not only darkness, but also ambiguity. The characters of this world are constantly hiding behind some kind of façade, be it the wardrobe doors that practicing teenage voyeur Jeffrey peers from behind as he watches Dorothy and Frank interact, or something as simple as the make-up worn by Ben. Everything suggests to us that these characters inhabit a world at night, a world away from the life they live in the day. As the film moves closer and closer to the climax Jeffrey begins to feel more of a connection with Frank, having to go to some very dark places within his psyche. However Lynch's message, that underneath the normal persona of a regular human being is a repressed pervert laying in wait, or whatever point he is making doesn't really translate well. Not least to today's audience.

Blue Velvet is very much a film of its time, that time being the mid-eighties, with aids paranoia everywhere, it's easy to see this metaphor for the dangers of sex and love within the films turgid dreamscapes. But beneath this message hides a strong detective story, a modern day neo-noir that delivers interesting twists and a controversial pay-off with it's almost fairytale climax. This is the film David Lynch got right, proceeding to make great films that where all personal, but completely different in terms of style and substance from one another. Blue Velvet is a great film, with some fine (albeit bizarre) performances, still challenging to this day, If only Lynch hadn't gone on to spend the rest of his career re-making it.

A wonderful comedy-drama starring the immensely talented James Stuart as kind hearted Elwood P. Dowd, a man who has refused to be ruled by life. The brilliance of this film is the subtlety of the story and the layers of the character. Under the polite veneer of fifties Hollywood conventions, Harvey has a decidedly dark undercurrent, one that deals with alcoholism, loneliness and rejection. Not that this should deter you from enjoying the many comic scenarios that Harvey throws at the viewer during the course of the film, as this is definitely a comedy gem. But the truth and beauty behind what Elwood is saying only make the entire package all the more exquisite, like putting chocolate on a donut.

The most beautiful scene I've seen in any film is the scene in which Elwood explains how Harvey has enriched his life, though the people who are listening to the story doubt Harvey's existence, thus doubting Elwood's sanity, the words of his speech, coupled with the delivery of Stuart's performance are so touching and true that even the most jaded audience will be won over into believing Harvey to be real. The enjoyment that Elwood now gets from life, the wonderful times he has, wherever he is, whoever he's with, is the kind of enjoyment everyone strives to achiever from life. This is bygone film-making at it's best; Stuart is such a joy to watch that you'll remember this film for a long time after viewing. With fine support from all the actors, this is one film that truly deserves its classic status.