Ingmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage is a hard-nosed, no-holds-barred look at marital discord brought on by the psychological problems of the two participants. It’s about as emotionally intense a film as you’ll ever encounter.

Historical Background: Ingmar Bergman was at a bit of a low-spot in his career in 1973. The afterglow of his sixties successes with such films as Persona (1966) and The Shame (1968) had been dimmed somewhat by the utter commercial failure of his brilliant but bleak film of 1972, Cries and Whispers. It had done so poorly, in fact, that Bergman was unable to rustle up backing for another feature-length film. He therefore turned to Swedish television and a low-budget endeavor. The resultant six-part 299 minute miniseries (at 50 minutes per episode) was shown as Scenes from a Marriage on television throughout Scandinavia and was later picked up for broadcasts around Europe. The series was so popular in Sweden that the streets nearly emptied for the airing of each installment. After some of the later episodes, the offices of divorce attorneys all over Scandinavia began to fill up!

It seemed impractical to release a film of such length in the American market, so Bergman constructed a trimmed down theatrical version that was 169 minutes – still relatively long, but with more than two hours of the original left on the cutting room floor. Even in the diminished form, the film won the 1974 award for Best Picture from the National Society of Film Critics. With the Criterion Special Edition release, viewers have there choice of versions in a 3-disc package. Discs 1 and 2 each contain three episodes of the original miniseries while disc 3 provides the condensed theatrical film. I watched only the longer miniseries since most reviews tout it as the preferred version. It includes everything that is in the shorter version and more, but where there are differences, my comments pertain to the longer version.

Most of the scenes are two person set pieces, often taking place in just one or a couple of settings. This is by no means an action film. Instead, it is an intensive, up-close voyeuristic examination of a husband and wife and their relationship. Each of the six episodes is somewhat self-contained. Segments two through six all begin with a recap of what has already transpired, so viewers can readily divide their viewing experience, if they choose, between one to six nights. I spread my viewing of the film over three occasions.

SINCE THERE ARE SIGNIFICANT DEVELOPMENTS IN EACH SEGMENT OF THIS FILM, SPOILERS ARE PRETTY MUCH DISTRIBUTED THROUGHOUT THE STORY SECTION AND EVEN IN ANALYSIS. IF YOU THINK YOU MIGHT LIKE TO SEE THE FILM AND WANT TO RETAIN NOVELTY OF EXPERIENCE, SKIP ALL THE WAY DOWN TO PRODUCTION VALUES!

The Story: The first episode, entitled Innocence and Panic, introduces Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullmann) very efficiently by the device of an interview, ostensibly for an article being written on the couple for a woman’s magazine. We learn that Johan is a professor and researcher at a university while Marianne is a successful divorce attorney. They have been married ten years, never quarrel, have a home and cottage, two cars, two daughters, and a generally idyllic existence. Friends frequently comment that they are a match made in heaven. They have Sunday dinners with his parents and then with hers on alternate weeks. Next, Johan and Marianne are entertaining two of their best friends, a couple, Peter (Jan Malmsjö) and Katarina (Bibi Andersson), for dinner and drinks. In contrast to Johan and Marianne, the relationship between Peter and Katarina is badly distressed – on the rocks. Johan and Marianne get stuck sitting through a very ugly marital dispute. They try to help and comfort their friends, but to little avail. Episode one concludes with Johan and Marianne making a difficult decision not to have a third child, which will necessitate an abortion, since Marianne has just discovered that she is pregnant.

The second episode is entitled The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Rug. In it, we encounter the first evidences of problems between Johan and Marianne. Marianne feels overly hemmed in by the routine and social expectations in their lives – in relation to their respective parents especially. She tries in vain to cancel one of the Sunday dinner appointments. We learn that Johan shares his poetry with a female colleague, Eva (Gunnel Lindblom), at work because Marianne has no interest in such things. We learn that Marianne sometimes withholds or shows little interest in sex and that other times one or both are simply too tired for it. When the topic arises, they agree to sweep in under the rug – to not discuss it.

The third episode, called Paula, begins with a dramatic revelation. Johan shows up a day earlier than expected at their summer home where Marianne and the children are staying. He comes with an announcement. He has fallen in love with another woman, Paula, a younger woman, of course, and plans to go away with her on a leave of absence in Paris for at least eight months. Marianne is alternately bewildered, dazed, disbelieving, pained, pitying of Johan’s angst over telling her, and, ultimately, angry, pragmatic, bitter, and pleading. John stays the night and Marianne helps him pack in the morning. After his departure, Marianne, breaking down somewhat, calls one of their friends for consoling but, instead, receives a further bitter pill. Many of their friends have known about Johan’s affair with Paula for months without informing her.

The fourth episode was the one I found most emotionally difficult to watch. Entitled The Vale of Tears, it begins with Johan returning to their former home after almost a year for a visit. We discover from their conversation that Johan, by his own choice, has pretty much lost all contact with his children, even forgetting their birthdays. We learn that Paula is very jealous of his attentions and fears that Johan will go back to Marianne. Johan’s visit is without Paula’s knowledge and certainly without her blessing. Marianne greets him warmly, like a welcome long lost friend. Johan’s main interest is to have sex with Marianne, who is all the more appealing for their absence from one another. When she, instead, wants to read him one of her diary entries which she believes to be something of a revelation, he falls asleep. Marianne has acquired a new lover of her own, who calls out of jealousy. Marianne also shares with Johan a letter sent to her by Paula. Both finally realize that they have other pulls on their affections and are no longer truly free to relate to one another.

The fifth episode is called The Illiterates, which refers to a comment made by Johan that both of them are emotional illiterates, despite being both intelligent and well-educated. In that, he is on the mark. The tables have now turned somewhat. Johan has experienced professional setbacks and is pretty much as unhappy with Paula as he had been with Marianne. Johan is badly depressed, feeling that his prestige is waning and that he has already peaked professionally, at age 45, and will be simply marking time for the next twenty years. An opportunity for a chairmanship fell through. Marianne, on the other hand, has made progress on her issues, is finding herself, is at peace with herself, has a romantic relationship in progress, and is about to travel abroad. She has brought divorce papers, per their previous agreement, for him to sign. The now more liberated Marianne leads him into sex on the carpet of his office. Their respective feelings oscillate between love, anger, pity, denunciations, and, ultimately, violence as they sift through the wreckage of what was their marriage.

The final episode, In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World, sees Marianne engaging in meaningful conversation with her mother, asking intimate questions about her relationship with the now-deceased father. We also observe Marianne standing up to subtle pressures from her mother and being her own person. Later, Marianne rendezvous with – surprise, surprise – Johan, for a secret tryst at the old summer home. Both are cheating on their respective new spouses. They find reconciliation, of a type, in their relationship, agreeing that they do love one another in so far as each, as a flawed individual, is capable.

Analysis: I think that I have a somewhat different take on this film than do most other reviewers – not so much in relation to how good a film it is but in what it does and does not accomplish. Reviewers consistently describe this film as an intimate examination of the nature of relationships or marriage relationships. Some restrict the scope of the claim a bit more, suggesting that it is a study of a particular marriage relationship. I think, in the end, that what is revealed is the psychological struggles of two individuals. This is more about the psychological shortcomings of each participant than communication failings of the relationship. Each of the two participants in the relationship had significant emotional baggage, unresolved issues from their respective up-bringings, poor self awareness, and a lack of real wisdom about life. Whether Bergman intended it that way, I can’t say, but each of these two individuals (most obviously Johan) would have failed in marriage with nearly any partner.

Johan's fundamental struggle is with depression. As an uncommonly intelligent man, he has wrapped his depression up in layers of rationalization, talking obliquely about the hopelessness of life and the emptiness of relationships, but any clinician would recognize it as depression. Johan has convinced himself that his deep cynicism reflects his insight into the bleak realities of existence and that those who are more optimistic are simply blind to the truths that his intelligence will not permit him to deny. In my experience, intelligence, unfortunately, is no guarantee of wisdom. While it may be true that morons are seldom wise, it is also true that only a small fraction of geniuses and near-geniuses exhibit real wisdom. All too often, intelligence of whatever degree is so much at the bidding of a person’s emotional needs, that it has precious little time left over for pursuit of actual wisdom. Most smart people simply weave more intricate webs of self-deception than their less intelligent friends. Johan is pretty much chasing his tail. He thinks to solve problems that lie within himself by changing partners. He believes his insights into existence dictate his negative feelings when, in reality, his negative feelings have dictated his distorted notions of reality. Unfortunately for Johan, chronic depression is one of the toughest mental problems to effectively overcome because, by its very nature, it saps the mental energy that would be required for the effort. (That point does not apply particularly well, however, to acute bouts of depression, for which spontaneous remission is very high). Johan probably needs to be on Prozac or, considering his fondness for sex, Wellbutrin.

Marianne has her own set of problems, though she is less troubled than Johan. She was brought up in such a way as to suppress her own identity – to seek to be pleasing to others. Her self-concept was wrapped up, first, in her parents, and, then, in her relationship to Johan. When that relationship collapsed, her soul was stripped bare. She had to discover, or, more precisely, invent for herself an inner person. In the long run, she will have benefited by the breakup of her first marriage by becoming a stronger person and avoiding the fate of her own mother, whose identity died with the death of her husband. Unfortunately, the self that Marianne has developed by the end of the film is still not an especially admirable identity. She is cheating on her new husband and lying regularly to him, as she admits to Johan. She has learned much more about herself and her needs but not much about honesty in relationships.

I don’t buy that the tendency of Marianne and Johan not to talk about their sexual problems openly was the core of their marital difficulty. Nearly every couple goes through phases (sometimes long periods) in their marriage where one has more interest in sex than the other. Sometimes those roles flip-flop. Talking about it does not necessarily lead to solutions. If every marriage broke up under the weight of those differences in sex interest, none would survive. The real problem for this couple is that, at one level, neither one is much more than a troubled, self-absorbed child.

And talking about sweeping an issue under the rug, I found the almost total absence of the children in this film an unforgivable omission. I don’t mean so much their physical absence, as their emotional absence. We watch Johan and Marianne struggle with their own respective personal issues and their relationship, but at no time is any thought given to the welfare of their children, except that Marianne briefly complains about Johan forgetting their birthdays. One of the things I found so distressing about Episode four was Marianne’s apparent willingness to consider sleeping with (having sex with) a man who had totally abandoned his paternal responsibilities to their children. Later, as the film ends, we are invited to view the pleasant mutual understanding finally achieved between Johan and Marianne as divorced parents enjoying a surreptitious tryst (after their children are fully grown) as some kind of triumph, when, in fact, the children have grown up fatherless and with only a working professional mother. What is the cost to their psyches and how will that impact their capacity for successful marriages or lives? Johan and Marianne appear to be two very self-centered, parentally-insensitive individuals each so wrapped up in dealing with his or her own respective angst and libido as to have little left for their children. Scenes from a Marriage would have been a good deal more germane as Scenes from a Family since marriages shouldn’t exist separate from a family context when children are involved. That’s not to say that divorces are never appropriate when there are children, but only that infidelities and divorce discussions that take place with no consideration of the children are immoral by any reasonable standard.

Production Values: However one reacts to the subject matter of this film, there is no doubt that Bergman has fashioned one of the most intensely and painfully intimate looks at two people and their marriage ever put on film. Through all 299 minutes, this is compelling, urgent, and authentic material.

Bergman worked with his regular cinematographer, Sven Nykvist, to produce the look for which they are noted. Lots of close-ups skillfully intercut with midrange shots, a variety of camera angles, and careful attention to lighting. The sets are few in number and very sparse and minimalistic, whether by design or budget-necessity.

The performances by Ullman and Josephson are virtually beyond adequate praise. It would be hard to overstate the difficulty of these roles, not only because of the high intensity factor and continuous close-up shots, but because both characters undergo so many changes in emotions and even personality over the course of the film. I can’t imagine these roles performed any better by other actors. Bibi Andersson and Jan Malmsjö were also extraordinary in their one scene in the first segment.

Bottom-Line: If you’re into psychodrama, get yourself the Criterion DVD on this intense film. If you’re married and your marriage is shaky and you’d rather hold it together, I’d recommend staying away from this film. It’s the type of fare that could stir up recriminations and divergent viewpoints in even a fairly stable marriage. This is one film where the emotional impact is really much stronger than any “entertainment” value.

Criterion was given access to the original negatives for the television version, resulting in pristine digital transfer. The aspect ratio is 1.33:1. The feature version is not quite as perfect. The extras on the Criterion DVD set are extensive and fascinating. There is a 15-minute interview with Bergman first broadcast on Swedish television in 1986. Then, there are separate interviews with the two stars, Ullmann and Josephsen, totaling 24 minutes. It is an impressive package. Scenes from a Marriage is in Swedish with English subtitles. The running times are 299 and 169 minutes for the two alternative versions.


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You might want to check out these other excellent films from Sweden:

The Best Intentions
Cries and Whispers
The Magician
Miss Julie
Persona
The Seventh Seal
The Shame
Smiles of a Summer Night
Through a Glass Darkly
Torment
The Virgin Spring
Wild Strawberries

Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Better than Watching TV
Suitability For Children: Not suitable for Children of any age