SCENES FROM A MARRIAGE

Sweden, 1973, 168 minutes, Colour.
Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Bibi Anderssen.
Directed by Ingmar Bergman.

Scenes from a Marriage is based on a six part television series made by Ingmar Bergman for Swedish television. The screenplay of this material is available in printed form. This version runs almost three hours and is a satisfying film version. Ingmar Bergman's world is often remote, strange, allegorical. Here it is very real: city, streets, cars, phones - and very real people. This very serious film shows a housewife undergo the bewilderment of a marriage challenged by an unimaginative husband who is not at all as she imagines him to be. Supporting characters generally highlight (most tellingly) the major theme of marriage.

The sadness of modern relationships, lacking a code for establishing an everlasting and unique bond that a man and woman desire, is all too evident. Bergman's perceptive dialogue, at times achingly real, and the expert performances of Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson ensure the highest quality drama. Preceding this film was Bergman's Cries and Whispers. He followed it with The Magic Flute and with the excellent Face to Face, eliciting an even greater performance from Liv Ullmann.

1. The significance of the title: the scenes: (i) innocence and panic; (ii) sweeping thins under the carpet; (-ill) Paula; (iv) vale of tears; (v) the illiterates; (vi) in a dark house in the middle of the night? The significance of these titles and the clues they gave to the nature of the scenes? The inter-play of all six amongst themselves and their build-up?

2. Comment on the structure of the film: the fact that there were six television episodes, they have been compressed, the use of television techniques and close-ups, the use of six parts, the creation of the time span and its success? Audience response to this? Audience involvement? How successful was the film in involving the audience?

3. With whom did the audience identify? Johann or Marianne? Why? Which of the two characters was more sympathetic? Or interesting? Could the audience shift identification? Why?

4. How was this film a portrayal of the typical man and woman of the twentieth century? The insight into a twentieth century man, twentieth century woman? Their capacity for relationship, quality of relationship? Their adequacies and inadequacies? The reality of love, its inadequacy, the discovery of love? Social pressures and circumstances and lack of character vitiating relationship and love? The quality of marriage on these bases? The importance of family, children receding when there are difficulties between husband and wife? Man and woman's capacity for love and hate?

5. What were the standards on which this couple lived? How adequate were they? What were their most important values? What sustained them in their struggles..- their love and their hate? Did they have any transcendent values, or were they very fixed in what they understood? Did they want transcendent values? How much pain was there in their living out of their values? The irony of the resolution in its seeking for permanent and unique love and yet their social inability to achieve this? What comment was being made on the morality of love and marriage? Its status in modern society? Truth and appearances? Hypocrisy and reality?

6. The importance of modern Sweden for the impact of the film? This as an ordinary world, houses and streets, cars and telephones, city and country houses, dinners and visits etc.? The quality of city life portrayed? Its ordinariness and its influence on people?

7. How successful was the film in beginning with the interview? The nature of the questions about marriage, audience curiosity identifying with the questions, the types of reply, Johann's verbosity, Marianne’s hesitation? The nuance of the personalities as portrayed in the interviews? Their love and lack of love, touch and lack of touch etc.? Selfishness and self-centredness?

8. The importance of the discussion about the magazine article: the laughing at the beginning of the meal to the harrowing interaction? Peter and his wife as typical visitors? The quality of their marriage mirroring Marianne and Johann? The lack of success and their fighting, the bitterness and the tears, truth in drunkenness. the insights in this interaction? The contrast of Johann and Marianne talking during the washing-up assessing the other marriage and not their own?

9. By this stage of the film how important was the theme of appearance and reality? Truth and formalities? Forms and conventions?

10. How did the film build on this with the portrayal of domestic detail for example, the details of getting up in the morning, the influence of the in-laws, the phone calls and the hesitations, the daughter's going off to school? How important was this for giving a rounded picture of the marriage?

11. How did the film give a picture of Johann and his work? Was this convincing? The emotional complication of his interaction with the woman assistant? The discussion of his poems? The romanticism in his poetry and the woman's comments?

12. How did this contrast with Marianne and her work? The significance of the woman married for twenty years asking for a divorce? The insight into marriage and divorce during these sequences? The insight into Marianne?

13. Comment on the reality of divorce as portrayed in the film? The woman, Peter and his wife, Johann and Marianne? Why divorce? The repercussions of divorce?

14. The question of fidelity and its importance in life? The background of Marianne and Johann's relationship? Her early divorce? Their living together and marrying? Marianne's assumption that all was going well? Johann's deception? The shock of the announcement of the break-up? Johann's self-centredness? The details of their interaction and the emotional response of the audience? Marianne not knowing, the horror of her world breaking up, her phone call to Frederick and his knowing all the time?

15. The actual walking out sequence? The night before and Marianne's trying to hold Johann? The dramatic impact of the walk-out for them both and their future?

16. How important was it that we did not see Paula? Her hold over Paula? The fact that she was younger, her moral attitudes, Johann’s romanticising of her, contrasting her with Marianne? How real was his love for her? Infatuation and dissatisfaction with his wife?

17. Was the film right to omit the six months immediately following the walk-out? Taking up the marriage six months later? What had happened to them both? The interaction of two people who were now distant? Marianne's wanting to hold Johann? Johann's self-centredness and off-handedness? The discussion about the divorce, the night together?

18. How important for revealing Marianne was her diary? The meal and the build-up to this? Johann's offered interest? Marianne's believing him? The fact that he slept? The importance of Marianne and the images? What insight into her personality did they give, visualizing her childhood, adolescence, the technique used to convey the passing of time and the development of character? The contrast with Johann who slept, had no images and no visual memories?

19. The divorce sequence: the love, bitterness, testing each other, Marianne testing Johann and the bitterness, being lovers, the discussion about their lives, the role of Paula? The intensity of hurt and pain, Johann's physical violence and purging himself of the hatred of Marianne? What was achieved by the violence of this sequence?

20. How did Marianne change into the new woman? Her capacity to think for herself and feel for herself, not pressurized by her husband or parents? The contrast of the new Marianne with the Marianne of the marriage?

21. What future did they have? The future in terms of the framework of false marriages on the part of each? How did this affect their lives?

22. Were they any better because of their experience? Do people improve through experience? The fact that they were not making a success of their marriages?

23. What was your response to their facing each other after years and spending the time together? Their infidelity to their partners (although why did they marry them?) The yearning for reconciliation, for unique love, or permanent love?

24. Marianne's worry whether she had ever loved or not? The quality of Johann’s reply? Was this enough for the ending of the film?

25. What picture of the ideal marriage finally emerged? The eternal and unique as the ideal? Pessimism as regards its fulfilment in real life?

26. How excellent was this film? In its treatment, themes, the reflection of the age, the quality of the dialogue, the adequacies and inadequacies of modern people? A humanist masterpiece about modern relationships?