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He began to write the script for Scenes from a Marriage and did
not pause for almost three months. I wrote it, he said later, in
order to tidy up a huge wardrobe of experiences of different kinds.
A kind of spring cleaning of the wardrobe. My own and others
experiences have been added to it. He planned the film in six
scenes, each to run just over 48 minutes and thus, with the
credits, to constitute a 50-minute TV episode. He started with the
third scene; then he wrote the fourth; followed by the second.
When Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann came to the island
that summer, Bergman rehearsed with them for ten days. Then, in
a concentrated shooting schedule of forty-five days, the scenes
were shot one after the other, each taking about a week to
complete. Certain exteriors were shot in Djursholm, the
Stockholm district frequented by the characters in the film.
Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap) is
interesting above all else for its characters. Liv Ullmann s
Marianne is a woman free of Bergman s habitual personality traits.
She lives and works in the Stockholm of the seventies and suffers
no religious or moral inhibitions. Erland Josephson s Johan, her
husband, is equally modern as selfish and as vulnerable as the
Bergman males of previous dynasties, but brisk and assured in
daily life. These were personalities with whom Bergman felt that
a TV audience could empathise. They drive a Volvo, eat in city
restaurants and flee like every Swede to the clutter and tranquillity
of their summer cottage whenever the opportunity arises.
Throughout the six episodes, Johan and Marianne are either
leaving or rejoining each other. The time scale covers some years,
but by the closing scene these lovers are more tightly bound in
divorce than they were at the outset by marriage.
When two friends come to dinner, Johan and Marianne are
shocked by the way that their guests tear into each other. What is
more horrible than a man and woman who hate each other? says
Peter, the husband, quoting Strindberg. The scene leaves a bitter
taste, like the marital quarrels in Thirst or Prison. Johan and
Marianne wash the dishes and decide they are altogether more
sensible a couple than their guests.
As scene follows scene, the two main characters change
subtly. From the moment that Johan and Marianne opt for a
termination of an unexpected pregnancy, their relationship is under
siege. Marianne, although the more passive of the partners,
appears the more bored with the marriage. She dislikes the ritual
of each well-programmed day, the visits to relations, the fear of an
unfilled square in the pattern of life. Johan remains at ease: I
think life has the value you give it, neither more nor less. I refuse
to live under the eyes of eternity . It could be Bergman speaking.
In the third scene, Johan abruptly informs his wife that he is
involved with another woman, Paula, and will be going abroad
with her for a long time. It s one of the cruellest scenes in all
Bergman s work. The camera concentrates with unrelenting
attention on Marianne s face as she learns the facts. When Johan
leaves the next morning, and the cottage is silent, Marianne phones
a friend only to learn that Johan s affair was common knowledge.
She collapses from grief.
The second half of Scenes from a Marriage takes place long
after this rupture., Johan and Marianne have learned to accept life
without each other s constant companionship. Bergman ignores
the impact of the separation on the two children; although featured
in the screenplay, they never appear in either the TV series or the
movie. In a documentary on the break-up of a marriage, this
would amount to a major omission. But Bergman has chosen
instead to conduct an unremitting scrutiny of the principal
relationship, between the man and the women.
Each recognises the weakness and helplessness of the other.
Life itself and society s education are now to blame. We must
have gone wrong somewhere, and there was no one to tell us what
we did, says Marianne. To which Johan replies, We re
emotional illiterates [& ] We re abysmally ignorant, about both
ourselves and others. After a squabble in Johan s office that turns
into a nasty brawl, Marianne admonishes Johan: We should have
started fighting long ago. It would have been much better.
When they meet again scene six, some years have passed
since their divorce. Bergman suggests that they are reconciled,
and spend weekends together, and even enjoy sex, in fact, without
being jealous of third parties. After a secret rendezvous in a
friend s cottage, Marianne wakes from a dream and confesses to
Johan: It grieves me that I ve never loved anyone and that no
one s ever loved me. Both have married other people now, but
this relationship, born in misunderstanding and forged in anguish,
means more to Johan and Marianne than anything else in the
world.
Bergman compressed Scenes from a Marriage to just under
three hours for theatrical release. However, the TV version landed
like a firecracker in Scandinavian society. The six episodes were
screened between April 11 and May 16, 1973. In Denmark, police
deserted point duty and left traffic congestion to fend for itself
while they sat at home watching the latest confrontation between
Johan and Marianne. The divorce rate jumped ( That s got to be
good! laughed Bergman).
Economically and aesthetically, Scenes was a triumph. In the
United States, it joined Cries and Whispers as Bergman s most
fashionable film in years. In New York, Stephen Sondheim
embarked on a Broadway musical version of Smiles of a Summer
Night, entitled A Little Night Music.
Bergman continued to work like a demon. During the
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