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This movie is nothing short of of a masterpiece of dramatic power and psychological insight. If the mark of a great work of art is that it takes a lot out of you while at the same time giving you a lot, then "Face to Face" is a great film by one of the cinema's (and the theatre's) greatest directors.

During the 136-minute film we are confronted with the spectacle of an intelligent woman's soul being laid bare. It is the soul of Jenny Isakson (Liv Ullmann), a Stockholm psychiatrist, as she finds her confidently professional self-assured hold on the world slipping perilously into disarray. Liv Ullmann is of course no stranger to this type of intense Bergman role, from the mute actress of "Persona" to the defeated wife in the 1974 "Scenes form a Marriage" and in films like "Shame," "The Passion of Anna," and "Cries and Whispers." What a marvel!

For virtually the entire length of this harrowing piece, the actress is on screen, and she is such a mistress of her craft, one feels like reaching up to the screen to embrace and perhaps congratulate her. It is that kind of moving performance. The much-praised scene in which she tells Erland Josephson about an attempted rape she experienced has the intensity of an operatic aria as she shifts moods: bemused laughter, pleading sobs, hysterical abandon. It is hard to see the junctures between each emotion. They meld into an overwhelming emotional experience. This and the other collaborative efforts of Bergman and Ullman have very few parallels in the history of cinema. Some of them might be: Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, Josef von Sternberg and Marlene Dietrich, G.W. Pabst and Louise Brooks, Federico Fellini and Giulietta Masina.

I saw this film in its original release in 1976 and to this day it haunts me as if it were a part of my past (though nothing about this film is). Liv Ullman's raw performance remains best performance by an actress in my history of filmgoing.

"Face to Face" exists mostly as a showcase for one of Ingmar Bergman's favorite actresses, Liv Ullmann, and she gives a tour de force performance. She plays Jenny Isaakson, a psychiatrist who can't help herself when her mental illness sends her teetering over the brink into a complete emotional breakdown. The film is unrelenting, comprised of one merciless scene after another in which the camera rests in extreme closeup on Ullmann's face and captures the anguish writ large there. It's a tough watch, but it's also morbidly fascinating. I've always been interested in studies about mental illness, and "Face to Face" is one of the most realistic I've seen in showing how such an illness manifests itself.

Ullmann was nominated for an Oscar for her performance in the year that Faye Dunaway won for "Network." The Academy had a tough decision on its hands that year. And Bergman also received a nomination for Best Director.

Grade: A

In this harrowing film about the mental collapse of a psychiatrist, Bergman shows exactly why he is a master film maker/director. He dissects Jenny's breakdown with such precision, from the meeting with her grandmother to her eventual complete crash into insanity, it is difficult not to be wrenched into the film. The acuteness of Jenny's anxiety and fears grow steadily and continuously as the film moves along and you have no choice to feel it too. The choice of music also exacerbates that feeling of impending disintegration of Jenny's mind. Liv Ullman who plays Jenny does an awesome job in this rather ironic role of the shrink who is slowly but surely losing her own mind. This may be a slow moving film for some, but this is exactly why this movie is done so well. It is a definite watch.

Jenny has a successful career, a psychiatrist with a future that's clear, but her anxiety, takes her sobriety, overwhelmed with her demons and fears; open wounds born from scars as a child, generations define how she's styled, unable to break, from nightmares when awake, perpetually standing on trial; she's decided to fold and resign, stop the clock, disentangle, untwine, enough is enough, the candle must snuff, the coil must become a line.

Seldom will you encounter a performance as powerful as the one presented by Liv Ullmann as Jenny. Conveying the trauma and terror, the chaos and confusion, the despair and anguish of mental illness, alongside the inevitable pathway to escape, this is nothing short of exceptional.