Andreas Winkelmann withdraws from the world to live in solitude-Bergman's Simon of Fårö Island. As he rifles through a purse left by Anna Fromm (Liv Ullmann), he finds a letter with a phrase that warns of "physical and psychical acts of violence." His seduction (or redemption) by the world moves dramatically to confirm that phrase. Into the grays, browns, and greens of Bergman's newly mastered color palette burst the reds that threaten to become the sign of any human relationship-the deeper, the more violence necessary to break through to the other person. With Persona, The Passion of Anna marks the high point of Bergman's achievement in the sixties. Liberated from any direct confrontation with theology, Bergman here translates his concerns into new terms. "Why don't you do something you believe in?" Anna asks the architect, and Bergman's Brechtian cinematic practices are this film's answer."-William Nestrick ("William Nestrick Selects: Cinema of the Unseen," PFA, 1985)