For Bergman, the human face is a register, a kind of antenna that signals and communicates the life of the consciousness. That "life" is a constant existenial search for self, for wholeness and integrity amidst ever present elements of fragmentation and isolation. Throughout the films, characters seek an identity through the "other" in such intimate relationships as patient and nurse, sister and sister, husband and wife. Ego often finds its alter ego in this other. At the core of this convoluted psychology is the key concept of "passion" with both its erotic and religious connotations. For Bergman, the struggle between the flesh and the spirit, between the hidden and known aspects of the psyche, between the self and other, forms the essential crisis, hence passion, of being itself. This baroque psychology, with all its elaborate overlays of nuance and ambivalence, finds its perfect cinematic expression in the facial...