“EARTHLY AND IMPERFECT LOVE”

By Raymond Benson

Ingmar Bergman’s celebrated six-part mini-series, Scenes from a Marriage, premiered on Swedish television in 1973. For markets outside of his native country, Bergman cut the 297-minute TV version down to 169-minutes (not quite three hours) for a theatrical release in 1974—which is the version I first saw.

Having recently discovered Bergman in the early 1970s while attending college, I welcomed Scenes with enthusiasm and awe, as did most critics. The film received numerous accolades, although the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences deemed the picture ineligible for Oscars since it had previously been a television mini-series. The acclaim for the film, director/writer Bergman, and the movie’s two brilliant actors, Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson, was through the roof.

In a nutshell, it’s the intimate, often painful, sometimes joyful story of the twenty-year relationship of a married-then-divorced couple. The tale begins in 1965. Upper-middle-class Marianne and Johan have been married for ten years. They have two tween daughters (who are seen only very briefly in the first few seconds of the picture) and are seemingly happy. However, when Johan has an affair with “Paula” (who never appears), the inevitable separation ensues, followed by a divorce. But as ten more years elapse, Marianne and Johan continue to occasionally see each other—even when they’re dating or married to others—in an ongoing, never-ending tryst.

In fact, in 2003, Bergman made a sequel to Scenes from a Marriage. Saraband was a Swedish TV-movie that was also released theatrically worldwide, and it featured the now elderly Marianne and Johan, again played by Ullmann and Josephson. (Oddly, their daughters’ names in Scenes are Karin and Eva, whereas in Saraband their names are Martha and Sara! Go figure.) Saraband was Bergman’s final film.

What made Scenes so remarkable back in 1973/1974 was its frankness, realism, and the camera’s near-claustrophobic closeness to the actors—especially their faces and what they revealed through subtle expressions or glances. Bergman, perhaps more than any other filmmaker, used the landscape of the face to reveal the genuine subtext of a character’s thoughts. The intimacy achieved in the work was revelatory, and the film is said to have gone on to influence other filmmakers (most notably Woody Allen).

I had revisited Scenes from a Marriage a few times since its first release, but now having the chance to dive into The Criterion Collection’s new Blu-ray edition, I approached the picture with a fresh eye and mind, especially informed by the experience of age and a long marriage of my own.

I came away this time a bit puzzled. Who are these people, that they can be so matter-of-fact about adultery and mistresses and lovers? It’s as if it’s taken for granted that all married people will have affairs at some point. Back in the early 70s, I suppose we all thought that this was being “civilized” or “behaving like adults.” Or perhaps it was a Swedish or European thing!

It is more likely, however, that Scenes from a Marriage was written and directed to be a somewhat autobiographical treatise. Ingmar Bergman was married no less than five times, had numerous love affairs (and mistresses while married), including a five-year romance with Liv Ullmann (he was the father of her only child). Maybe in his world, or in the contemporary universe of artists and the literati in which Marianne and Johan reside, this kind of attitude existed.