Scenes from a Marriage (Scener ur ett äktenskap)

 

Ingmar Bergman and Liv Ullmann

Bergman with Ullmann, Josephson, and Sven Nykvist

Bergman with Ullmann and Erland Josephson

 

 

 

 

SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE (Scener ur ett äktenskap) – made for TV       A                  Sweden  (167 mi)  1973  d: Ingmar Bergman      Swedish TV version, 6-part series (281 mi)

There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.  To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the ‘thorn in the flesh’ is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.

—Carl Gustav Jung, Swiss psychoanalyst, from Psychology and Alchemy (Collected Works), 1944

The film that supposedly doubled the divorce rate in Sweden, rising from approximately 16,000 divorces in 1973 to more than 26,000 the year after (Do Swedes still blame Bergman for upping the divorce rate?), with spouses finally able to articulate their grievances towards each other, viewed by 3.5 million, nearly half the Swedish population by the time the last episode was broadcast, as the streets were supposedly empty during the hours it was shown on six consecutive Wednesday evenings in April and May, where it would be hard to think of another movie that has had such a huge impact on people’s lives, listed as the #1 Film of the Year by Roger Ebert, Roger Ebert: 1967-2006.  With an audience that consisted of twice as many women than men, it’s important to realize that political, social, and cultural changes were already happening, so a similar occurrence was happening elsewhere as well, including the United States, largely from the impetus of the 60’s women’s movement and feminist activism, suggesting women were no longer locked into long-term loveless marriages.  Initially broadcast in a nearly 5-hour 6-part television series, this was Bergman’s first major film on television, having directed several theater plays and having earlier premiered THE RITE (1969) for Swedish television, where the broadcast included a brief conversation with the director beforehand, with Bergman urging viewers to turn off the TV and go to the movies instead.  In one of Bergman’s interviews for a Swedish newspaper prior to making the film, he mentioned it would be about “the absolute fact that the bourgeois ideal of security corrupts people’s emotional lives, undermines them, frightens them,” (Scenes from a Marriage - Ingmar Bergman), written after Bergman had separated from Liv Ullmann, having multiple failed marriages behind him, and was embarking on a relationship with his fifth wife, Ingrid Karlebo, organized in a theme and variation structure that throws light on the changing, ambiguous nature of people’s feelings.  Condensed into a theatrical version of just under 3-hours for an international release the following year, losing the end credit sequences read by Bergman himself after each episode while Fårö landscape images are shown, yet in 1977 PBS aired the entire series unedited.  Richer and much deeper than expected, the ultimate character study, it was filmed almost exclusively on Fårö Island where Bergman had lived for about a decade, shot in 16 mm by Sven Nykvist, though transferred to 35mm, painstakingly dissecting the institution of marriage, subverting expectations by delving into the dramatic complexities in an expansive scope that flies into a rage of marital discontent, depicting a decade’s worth of marital turmoil between psychology professor Johan (Erland Josephson) and family divorce lawyer Marianne (Liv Ullmann), turning into what American film scholar Marsha Kinder describes as “emotional dynamite.”  Adopting a new kind of psychological realism, using long takes and minimal editing, the camera holds tight in near claustrophobic close-ups on the two subjects, almost always indoors, making sure they are intensely scrutinized in a way that had never been captured on film, providing a multi-dimensional view of a long-term relationship, confronting a full range of feelings, with some episodes drawing on the director’s own experiences, including his own relationship with Ullmann.  Dispensing with many of the familiar Bergman devices, like overt symbolism, dreams, or fantasy, even expressive color schemes, this is a stripped down attempt at authenticity, using sparsely furnished décors, like living in a bubble, creating a minimalist world with positively no distractions, made for just $200,000, released just a month before Jean Eustache’s The Mother and the Whore (La Maman et la Putain) (1973), both exhibiting a blistering honesty through confessional dialogue, similar to Cassavetes’ Husbands (1970) or Maurice Pialat’s We Won't Grow Old Together (Nous ne vieillirons pas ensemble) (1972).  Told in six chapter headings, the film crew shot one episode per week, with Ullman and Josephson feeling so comfortable in their roles that they never rehearsed, having already worked together in Hour of the Wolf (Vargtimmen) (1968), The Passion of Anna (1969),  Bergman, Two from the 70's: Cries and Whispers (1972), so the captured footage is quite simply amazing in the depth of their performances, with Ullmann, in particular, providing an astounding range of emotions, the likes of which we simply never see anymore, providing one of the greatest performances in the last half century, elevating this to one of Bergman’s greatest works.  One of the biggest criticisms Bergman faced throughout his career is that he rarely strayed from the comfort of bourgeois, middle class characters, a fairly educated elite whose problems are less bound by the economic restrictions hindering the large majority of the world.  Western societies changed rapidly in the 60’s, eradicating some of the moral restrictions of previous generations, as depicted in Ibsen’s monumental play, A Doll’s House, which still resonates today (The creation and impact of A Doll's House - Issuu), advancing the freedoms of women, including increased education and greater job opportunities, while making advancements in sexual equality, racial equality, and gay rights.              

Both characters change significantly as their marriage evolves, with Johan’s boastful air of supreme confidence changing to doubt and insecurity, while Marianne blossoms in her role, initially viewed as little more than what others expect her to be, a dutiful wife and mother of two daughters, the keeper of the household even as she maintains her job, yet continually sacrificing for her husband’s career advancement.  Her growing self-awareness mirrors the spreading social consciousness of the 1970’s, with Bergman using a realist and naturalist style, appearing almost as a documentary, perhaps the closest he’s ever come to theater, putting the focus on dialogue, uniquely blending theater into cinema, where it’s hard to overestimate the dramatic power of its reach, as the film is a model of a balanced structure, with few, if any, extraneous details, as each scene organically unravels into the next, arguably the best edited film in Bergman’s career.  There are breaks in time between each chapter, a key factor, where the viewer is left to reconstruct what was missed, achieving an astonishing level of intensity, directly confronting each other with no distractions, no musical intrusions, with secondary characters and subplots largely ignored, as practically every scene is about the two of them, alone together, where three of the episodes (3, 4, and 5) contain no other actors, and one of them (5) is in real-time.  It opens in an interview format, expressed by a 16-minute static shot, as they are photographed and interviewed by close friends Katarina (Bibi Andersson) and Peter (Jan Malmsjö) for a woman’s magazine as the perfect couple, living together for ten years in a comfortable home with two young daughters, shown only once for a family photo and then never seen again, both close to their respective families, each enjoying their own career, yet when they host their friends for dinner afterwards, it erupts into a fireworks of marital animosity.  Both invited guests are atrociously brutal, each making incendiary comments countered by a more hateful response, making it difficult right from the outset, with Peter sarcastically emphasizing his patriarchal contempt, “August Strindberg once said, ‘Could there be anything more terrifying than a husband and wife who hate each other?’  What do you say?  Child abuse could possibly be worse.  But then again, Katarina and I are children.  Deep down, Katarina is a little girl who cries because no one comforts her when she falls.  And in the opposite corner, I’m a little boy who cries because Katarina can’t love me.  Even though I’m bad and mean to her.”  The degree of acrimony on display is frightening, an ugly display of savage cruelty that serves as a stark contrast to their supposed harmonious bliss, and a foreshadowing of things to come, as they only remain married for the first hour, with the rest exploring the recriminating fallout of their once happy union, tracking their relationship through matrimony, infidelity, divorce, and subsequent partnerships, at times digging the shrapnel out of their wounds from all the combustible damage inflicted.  The secret to their idyllic happiness appears to be naïveté, as they tend to avoid problems by simply pretending they don’t exist, “the art of sweeping under the rug,” which may work initially, when they’re so much more forgiving, but over time this grates on one’s nerves.  Johan is startled to discover he writes mediocre poetry, while Marianne can’t stand up to her mother, yet she’s able to amusingly tell her husband, “You have moments of greatness interspersed with sheer mediocrity.”  We begin to see telltale signs, as both are bound to their mothers, forever trying to please them, and live the kind of life they are “supposed to live.”  Among the more noteworthy scenes is Marianne interviewing a graying, middle-aged woman in her office who calmly tells her she wants a divorce after 20 years of living with a husband she never loved, feeling no connection to their children, but she waited until they were grown, always putting her own needs aside, now ready to start a new life of her own, something she has always looked forward to.  The stark honesty of this woman is remarkable, speaking with a chilling detachment of how her senses are slowly dulling in proportion to the emotional suffocation she feels her relationship is imposing upon her, a precursor of what’s to come, ominous in the power of its foreshadowing implications, like a doomed witches prophecy in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, taking Marianne completely by surprise, perhaps a little bit horrified, yet the enduring aspect is that she is still searching for love.    

The real shock comes when out of the blue Johan announces he’s leaving Marianne for another woman, suffocated by the restrictive nature of their life together, leaving for Paris in the morning without even explaining his absence to his daughters, where he will be gone for 6 months to a year, which is the first sign their supposed idyllic marriage is rupturing, yet his contemptible behavior is so typical of middle-aged men, finding a lover twenty years younger who reaffirms his masculinity.  It’s a devastating shock to Marianne, who is thoroughly humiliated, her life sabotaged by the one she trusts most, struggling to maintain her stability, “You’re presenting me with a fait accompli.  You’re putting me in a ridiculous and intolerable situation,” yet the hyperrealist approach only accentuates the brutality of the act, especially when she continues to express extreme compassion for him, clearly setting aside the fact he’s cheating on her. Shattered by the deceit and callousness of his action, even more so when she learns all their friends are privy to Johan’s affair yet no one has warned her, leaving her utterly broken, having reached the ultimate bottom, too emotionally spent to even cry, realizing she is truly all alone without a safety net for the first time in her life.  The abrupt ending of this sequence leaves viewers equally overcome by the blistering intensity, having become emotionally invested in these characters, where you wonder where this is going, and if things will get too searingly heated, as this is not an easy watch, especially in one sitting, emotionally draining, plunging us into the depths of the unknown, yet Bergman carefully balances the tumultuous emotional odyssey, making it eminently watchable television, where the end of each episode makes you want to come back for more, something missing from his other television dramas.  While Marianne is initially shaken, she gradually asserts her independence and finds a new strength, beautifully expressed in an extraordinary monologue where she reads an extract from her diary, accompanied by a superbly constructed montage of personal childhood photos of Ullmann from a baby to a young adolescent, a wonderfully lyrical expression of self-reflection.

Suddenly I turned and looked at an old school picture from back when I was 10. I seemed to detect something that had eluded me up to then. To my surprise I must admit that I don’t know who I am. I haven’t the vaguest idea. I’ve always done as I was told. As far as I can remember I’ve been obedient, well-adjusted, almost meek. I did assert myself once or twice as a girl, but Mother punished any lapses from convention with exemplary severity. My entire upbringing and that of my sisters, was aimed at making us agreeable. I was ugly and awkward, a fact I was constantly reminded of. I later realized that if I kept my thoughts to myself, and was ingratiating and predictable, my behavior yielded rewards. The most momentous deception began at puberty. All my thoughts, feelings and actions revolved around sex.  But this I never told my parents. Or anyone at all, for that matter. Being deceitful and secretive became second nature to me. My father wanted me to follow in his footsteps and become a lawyer. I dropped hints that I wanted to be an actress. You know what? I think I’m breaking free at last. But they laughed at me. Since then I go on pretending. Faking my relationships with others, with men. Always putting on an act in a desperate attempt to please. I’ve never considered what I want, but only, ‘What does he want me to want?’ It’s not unselfishness, as I used to believe. It’s sheer cowardice. Even worse, it stems from my being ignorant of who I am.

Johan, on the other hand, grows smaller in stature, literally thriving in male privilege as he cavorts throughout Europe for a year while Marianne handles all the child care, continues to work, and organize the family activities, yet Johan eventually sours on his distant affair, growing sick of that life, with his career going downhill, feeling defeated and lost, yearning for the security of their marriage, something Marianne can no longer provide, “I’ve taken your feelings into account far too often.  Being considerate killed our love,” preferring to build something new, believing they will both be better for it.  Johan wants to flee back to a past he has already soundly rejected while Marianne prefers to leave it behind, instead asking him to sign divorce papers, where he retaliates with brute force, openly assaulting her in a violent rage, a disturbing scene not often shown in Bergman films, but it shows the petty and demeaning nature of men who are used to a dominant patriarchal role, enraged that Marianne would refuse to reassume the submissive role she once played during their marriage.  An important change has occurred while attempting to grasp the meaning of love and marriage, as a power shift towards individualization is happening through changing views on sexuality, as women’s roles are changing, no longer defined by domestic subservience, where sex was strictly for reproductive purposes, instead it’s linked to autonomy and individual gratification, as sexual liberation leads to the emancipation of women.  Particularly in Nordic countries, women had more social rights, especially compared to the rest of Europe, as women were considered independent citizens, a generational shift from being viewed exclusively in relation to their husbands and their positions as mothers.  The implication drawn is that a lasting relationship can only exist between equals, while creating that equality is much more complicated than simply earning money from prestigious jobs.  By the last chapter, their initial identities have been reversed, as Johan does not know who he is anymore while Marianne is happy with herself, yet their final conciliatory dialogue is quite extraordinary, a remarkable calm considering the turbulent waters they have traversed, suggesting the film is really about a growing self-awareness while hopefully learning something about themselves.  The sexual liberation she boasts stands for her liberation in a wider sense, an evolution tying into the societal process of women’s emancipation at the time, as both characters redefine their sense of identity and the extent to which they can feel successful in any kind of love, both happily remarrying partners who are never seen, though their behavior may surprise viewers as they reignite former passions in some of the familiar places seen earlier, now given an entirely new vantage point, like young lovers seeking a romantic weekend getaway.  Bergman initiates this sequence with a high crane shot overlooking a busy urban metropolis, presumably Stockholm, the only shot like that anywhere in the film, exuding a rare freedom of open space, like opening a new door in their lives. 

Postscript

Likely seen by more viewers than any other Bergman film, it has influenced and inspired countless people, not just in terms of changing their lives, exploring how long-term relationships can endure disastrous setbacks and still survive, but also in an artistic sense, unique among Bergman’s works as the only film to have been adapted for the stage, while certain characters reappear in later works.  Peter and Katarina, for instance, are the protagonists in FROM THE LIFE OF THE MARIONETTES (1980), while Johan and Marianne reappear in Bergman’s final film SARABAND (2003), promoted as a sequel to this film, yet despite the names, with the same actors playing the parts 30-years later, they share little else in common.