''Scenes from a Marriage'' ( sv, Scener ur ett äktenskap) is a 1973 Swedish television

miniseries A miniseries or mini-series is a television series that tells a story in a predetermined, limited number of episodes. "Limited series" is another more recent US term which is sometimes used interchangeably. , the popularity of miniseries format h ...

written and directed by

Ingmar Bergman Ernst Ingmar Bergman (14 July 1918 – 30 July 2007) was a Swedish film director, screenwriter, Film producer, producer and playwright. Widely considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time, his films are known ...

. Over the course of six hour-long episodes, it explores the disintegration of the marriage between Marianne (

Liv Ullmann Liv Johanne Ullmann (born 16 December 1938) is a Norwegian actress and film director. Recognised as one of the greatest European actresses of all time, Ullmann is known as the muse and frequent partner of filmmaker Ingmar Bergman. She acted in m ...

), a divorce lawyer, and Johan (

Erland Josephson Erland Josephson (; 15 June 1923 – 25 February 2012) was a Swedish actor and author. He was best known by international audiences for his work in films directed by Ingmar Bergman, Andrei Tarkovsky and Theodoros Angelopoulos. Life and career J ...

), a psychology professor. The series spans a period of 10 years. Bergman's teleplay draws on his own experiences, including his relationship with Ullmann. It was shot on a small budget in

Stockholm Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...

and

Fårö Fårö () or Fåre in Gutnish is a Baltic Sea island just north of the island of Gotland, itself off mainland Sweden's southeastern coast. It is the second-largest island in the province and it is a popular summer resort. It has its own language, ...

in 1972. After initially airing on Swedish TV in six parts, the miniseries was condensed into a theatrical version and received positive reviews in Sweden and internationally. ''Scenes from a Marriage'' was also the subject of controversy for its perceived influence on rising divorce rates in Europe. The film was ineligible for the

Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Academy Award for Best International Feature Film (known as Best Foreign Language Film prior to 2020) is one of the Academy Awards handed out annually by the U.S.-based Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS). It is given to a ...

, but won the

Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film The Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Language Film is a Golden Globe Award presented by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Until 1986, it was known as the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film, meaning that any non-American film coul ...

and several other honours. The miniseries and film version influenced filmmakers such as

Woody Allen Heywood "Woody" Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; November 30, 1935) is an American film director, writer, actor, and comedian whose career spans more than six decades and multiple Academy Award-winning films. He began his career writing ...

and

Richard Linklater Richard Stuart Linklater (; born July 30, 1960) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter. He is known for films that revolve mainly around suburban culture and the effects of the passage of time. His films include the comedies '' ...

. It was followed by a sequel, ''

Saraband ''Saraband'' is a 2003 Swedish drama film directed by Ingmar Bergman, and his final film. It was made for Swedish television, but released theatrically in a longer cut outside Sweden. Its United States theatrical release, with English subtitles, ...

'', in 2003, and stage adaptations. It was also adapted into an HBO miniseries in 2021.

Episodes

The TV miniseries' six episodes ran between 11 April and 16 May 1973. At about 50 minutes per episode, the miniseries totals 282 minutes. Scenes from each episode appear in the film version, which is 168 minutes long. The episode titles appear in the film version as chapter titles.

Cast

Production

Bergman wrote the teleplay for ''Scenes From a Marriage'' over three months. He drew on his personal experiences, including his relationship with Ullmann; his unhappy, eventually dissolved marriages to

Käbi Laretei Käbi Alma Laretei (14 July 1922 – 31 October 2014) was an Estonian-Swedish concert pianist. Her father Heinrich Laretei was a diplomacy, diplomat in the service of the Republic of Estonia as ambassador to Sweden; when the Soviet Union occup ...

and Gun Hagberg; and the marriage of his parents, Karin and

Erik Bergman Erik Valdemar Bergman (24 November 1911, in Nykarleby – 24 April 2006, in Helsinki) was a composer of classical music from Finland. Bergman's style ranged widely, from Romanticism in his early works (many of which he later prohibited from bein ...

. As a boy, he had witnessed his parents violently wrestling, with Karin slapping Erik and Erik pushing her against a wall. Ingmar also found his mother could be manipulative. The budget for ''Scenes From a Marriage'' was approximately a third that of Bergman's previous film, ''

Cries and Whispers ''Cries and Whispers'' ( sv, Viskningar och rop, lit=Whispers and Cries) is a 1972 Swedish period drama film written and directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring Harriet Andersson, Kari Sylwan, Ingrid Thulin and Liv Ullmann. The film, set in ...

''. Half was covered by

Swedish Television Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

and half by foreign companies. It was filmed in

and

between July and October 1972. Cinematographer

Sven Nykvist Sven Vilhem Nykvist (; 3 December 1922 – 20 September 2006) was a Swedes, Swedish cinematographer. He worked on over 120 films, but is known especially for his work with director Ingmar Bergman. He won Academy Awards for his work on two Berg ...

emphasized

close-up A close-up or closeup in filmmaking, television production, still photography, and the comic strip medium is a type of shot that tightly frames a person or object. Close-ups are one of the standard shots used regularly with medium and long s ...

s and employed small indoor film sets. Nykvist later regretted not using more

tracking shot A tracking shot is any shot where the camera follows backward, forward or moves alongside the subject being recorded. In cinematography, the term refers to a shot in which the camera is mounted on a camera dolly that is then placed on rails – ...

s when he learned the miniseries would have a theatrical release. The filming schedule was one week per episode. Ullmann compared performing in ''Scenes From a Marriage'' to appearing in a documentary, saying she "felt very connected to the role." She said she was becoming more involved in the

feminist movement The feminist movement (also known as the women's movement, or feminism) refers to a series of social movements and political campaigns for Radical politics, radical and Liberalism, liberal reforms on women's issues created by the inequality b ...

while making the miniseries. Due to Ullmann and

's comfort with their parts, the crew saved time by not having rehearsals.

Release

''Scenes From a Marriage'' was broadcast as a miniseries in Sweden by

SVT2 SVT2 (SVT Två; commonly referred to as Tvåan), is one of the two main television channels broadcast by Sveriges Television in Sweden. Launched in 1969 by Sveriges Radio, the channel was until the 1990s the most watched in Sweden for many yea ...

beginning on 11 April 1973. Polls indicated most of the viewers were women. A 169-minute theatrical version was screened in Sweden on 28 October 1974. In the United States, a 167-minute version of the miniseries was released in cinemas, with the

16 mm film 16 mm film is a historically popular and economical gauge of film. 16 mm refers to the width of the film (about inch); other common film gauges include 8 and 35 mm. It is generally used for non-theatrical (e.g., industrial, educ ...

modified to 35 mm. It opened in New York City on 21 September 1974. The full miniseries was later aired in the U.S. by

PBS The Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) is an American public broadcasting, public broadcaster and Non-commercial activity, non-commercial, Terrestrial television, free-to-air television network based in Arlington, Virginia. PBS is a publicly fu ...

in March and April 1977, and numerous times in 1979.

The Criterion Collection The Criterion Collection, Inc. (or simply Criterion) is an American home-video distribution company that focuses on licensing, restoring and distributing "important classic and contemporary films." Criterion serves film and media scholars, cinep ...

released the miniseries and theatrical version on a three-disc

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for Digital Video Disc or Digital Versatile Disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any kind ...

in Region 1 in 2004, complete with interviews and an essay by

Phillip Lopate Phillip Lopate (born 1943) is an American film critic, essayist, fiction writer, poet, and teacher. He is the younger brother of radio host Leonard Lopate. Early life Phillip Lopate was born in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated with a BA degr ...

Reception

Critical reception

In Sweden, ''Scenes from a Marriage'' received positive reviews for its dialogue and realism, with Mauritz Edstrom calling it "one of Bergman's finest human portrayals". Åke Janzon said that while the miniseries was not a masterpiece, it demonstrated psychological tension. Swedish director Maj Wechselmann criticized it on

feminist Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male po ...

grounds, saying it failed to criticize marriage roles. Bergman replied that the miniseries was meant to depict "Marianne's liberation" and female "suppressed aggressions". One controversy revolved around allegations that ''Scenes From a Marriage'' led to higher divorce rates in Sweden and around Europe by teaching couples to communicate their conflicts. Swedish divorce rates allegedly doubled one year after the miniseries was broadcast in 1973. In 2013 Rachel Halliburton disputed these allegations in '' Time Out'' magazine, remarking that

sexual Sex is the biological distinction of an organism between male and female. Sex or SEX may also refer to: Biology and behaviour *Animal sexual behaviour **Copulation (zoology) **Human sexual activity **Non-penetrative sex, or sexual outercourse ** ...

and

women's liberation The women's liberation movement (WLM) was a political alignment of women and feminist intellectualism that emerged in the late 1960s and continued into the 1980s primarily in the industrialized nations of the Western world, which effected great ...

were gaining prominence at the time and that the miniseries "as such was as much a symptom of what was happening to modern marriage as a cause". In the United States,

Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...

gave the theatrical version a full four stars, praising it as "one of the truest, most luminous love stories ever made"; he named it "the best film of 1973".

Vincent Canby Vincent Canby (July 27, 1924 – October 15, 2000) was an American film and theatre critic who served as the chief film critic for ''The New York Times'' from 1969 until the early 1990s, then its chief theatre critic from 1994 until his death in ...

, chief critic for ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', called the theatrical version "a movie of such extraordinary intimacy that it has the effect of breaking into mysterious components many things we ordinarily accept without thought, familiar and banal objects, faces, attitudes, and emotions, especially love. ..Ullmann again establishes herself as one of the most fascinating actresses of our time." Canby also wrote that "Josephson gives an equally complex performance" but found the character less admirable. Don Druker of ''

Chicago Reader The ''Chicago Reader'', or ''Reader'' (stylized as ЯEADER), is an American alternative weekly newspaper in Chicago, Illinois, noted for its literary style of journalism and coverage of the arts, particularly film and theater. It was founded by a ...

'' criticized the editing for the theatre, saying that the film "shows its reassembled status rather badly," and that "moments of searing insight" were provided mainly by Ullmann. The film was included in "''The New York Times'' Guide to the Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made" in 2002. In 2004, essayist

wrote that ''Scenes from a Marriage'' showed Bergman moving on from exploration of the silence of God to the subject of men, women, love and intimacy. Lopate found the film version "more harrowing and theatrical," while the miniseries "has the tendency to intersect with and form a more quotidian relationship to viewers’ lives; its characters become members of the family, and their resilience over time, regardless of the incessant crises thrown them by the script, induces a more good-humored, forgiving atmosphere." In 2007, Kristi McKim of ''

Senses of Cinema ''Senses of Cinema'' is a quarterly online film magazine founded in 1999 by filmmaker Bill Mousoulis. Based in Melbourne, Australia, ''Senses of Cinema'' publishes work by film critics from all over the world, including critical essays, career ...

'' wrote that the film "stunningly exemplified" the "tension" in "the emotional causes and effects of feeling incompatible desires within the modern world." The film has a 94% approval rating on

Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...

, based on 15 reviews. The film was included on

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...

Episodes

Cast

Production

Release

Reception

Critical reception

Accolades

Legacy

References

Bibliography

External links