Scenes from a Marriage
ある結婚の風景
The Moonlight essay
CinemaScenes from a Marriage and the Conversations That Break Before Love DoesRead the essayStoryline
The whole story, ending included.
Six episodes of Swedish television that reportedly raised the country's divorce rate; the template for every marriage drama since.
Marianne, a divorce lawyer, and Johan, a lecturer in psychology, have been married for ten years and have two daughters. A women's magazine interviews them as a model couple. That evening their friends Peter and Katarina come to dinner and tear into each other at the table, and the evening sours. Marianne finds she is pregnant and has an abortion. Their marriage runs on habit: weekly dinners with her parents that she dreads and cannot refuse, poems Johan shows a woman colleague rather than his wife, a sex life that gives neither of them joy and that they discuss calmly.
Then Johan tells Marianne he is in love with a much younger woman, Paula, and is leaving home for months. He tells her how long he has wanted to go. When Marianne rings a friend for help, she discovers that many of their friends knew before she did.
Later Johan visits her. He has taken a post at a university in Cleveland. Marianne, who has been in therapy, tries to tell him what she has learned about herself, and he does not listen. She suggests they finalise the divorce, and hints that she may remarry. When they meet to sign the papers, they fight over their possessions, their daughters and Marianne's new pleasure in sex with her current partner, until the quarrel turns violent. Johan, miserable, signs.
Years pass. Both have remarried, and still they meet in secret, as lovers. Twenty years after their wedding, in a friend's cottage in the country, Marianne tells Johan she had an affair in 1955, soon after they married. In the night she wakes from a nightmare, frightened that she has never loved anyone and never been loved. Johan holds her and tells her that they do love each other, imperfectly, in their own way.
Starring
Liv Ullmannas Marianne
A divorce lawyer, married ten years to Johan, who believes in their marriage until the night he leaves.
Marianne’s story
Marianne tells the magazine her marriage is secure. She gives in to dreaded dinners at her parents', and to the abortion Johan is quick to decide on, and resents it. When he says he is leaving her for Paula, she begs him to stay, offers herself for old times' sake, helps him pack, and learns that everyone knew. When he next visits, she has recovered; she reads him what therapy has taught her and proposes they finalise the divorce. At the signing they make love on his office floor, then fight, and he hits her; had they fought like that while married, she says, they might never have divorced. Years later, both remarried, she meets him in secret, confesses an affair from 1955, and wakes from a nightmare afraid she has never loved or been loved; Johan holds her.
Erland Josephsonas Johan
A lecturer in psychology who leaves Marianne for a much younger woman, and never entirely leaves her.
Johan’s story
Johan begins the story a little smug, a lecturer who hoped to be more, until a colleague he trusts tells him his poems are mediocre. He comes home early from Paris to tell Marianne about Paula and that he has wanted to leave for years, and goes. Next time, life with Paula is wearing him down; he hints at coming back, falls asleep while she reads him her therapy notes, and says he will take a post in Cleveland. Meeting at his office to sign the divorce papers, they make love on the carpet, then he flares up and hits her, and, wretched, he signs. Years later, both remarried, they meet as lovers. In a friend's cottage she wakes from a nightmare, and he holds her and tells her they love each other, imperfectly, in their own way.
Bibi Anderssonas Katarina
A friend of the couple, whose openly miserable marriage to Peter erupts at Marianne and Johan's dinner table.
Why it matters
Scenes from a Marriage watches a marriage from the inside over many years, and finds that it can end without either partner being a villain, and go on after it has ended. Bergman drew on his own life, including his relationship with Liv Ullmann, and gave almost everything to talk: first the careful talk of a couple who believe they understand each other, then the talk that breaks them open. It was made on a small budget for Swedish television in 1973, and polls suggested that most of its viewers were women. Claims spread that Sweden's divorce rate doubled within a year of the broadcast; a critic later argued that the series was as much a symptom of what was happening to modern marriage as a cause. Its theatrical version won the Golden Globe for best foreign-language film, and Richard Linklater called it the standard by which his own Before Midnight should be judged.