Bergman's former favorite supporting actress, Bibi Anderson, has early scenes along with Jan Malmsjö, who plays her estranged husband. The unhappy couple sets the tone for the rest of the movie, which consists of intimate yet quarrelsome and unpleasant stacks of sheets of dialogue.
How others will see it. Scenes from a Marriage was a big hit on Swedish television. It also caused a spike in divorces, which demonstrates the dangers of susceptibility to bad influences. Just because Ullmann and Josephson are a lousy couple doesn't mean you are half of one yourself.
The movie version was also lauded, picking up four top awards from something called the National Society of Film Critics. At imdb.com, the user ratings are extremely high, except from those under 18. But the ratings are misleading, in that the crowd that wants to see Thor will avoid the present film like the plague.
Those fascinated by the spousal relationship in cinema should see Alfred Hitchcock's Suspicion instead. It's funny and entertaining, something that can't honestly be said about Scenes from a Marriage.
How I felt about it. Bergman was a prolific director. Imdb.com lists 63 different titles. He could make so many films because they cost little to make. Our present movie, for example, is three hours long and is all dialogue and no action. It uses pre-existing sets. Since Bergman is the sole screenwriter, the only expense for the filmmaker is the actors, whom he uses over and over again, as if they are his select troupe on a permanent weekly salary.
The modus operandi is to take two family members and pit them against each other in marathon conversations full of angst and accusations. If Scenes from a Marriage is even more difficult than usual to get through, it is mostly because it is longer.
It's all artificial, you know. Ullmann plays a marriage counselor, yet by film's end she has three failed marriages. Hint: find an empty room and talk for an hour about your marriage, and you will save the $80 an hour that a counselor might charge you.
Here is a film full of ridiculous moments. Josephson tells his wife he is leaving her in the morning for a much younger woman. They sleep in the same bed that night, and when he leaves, he has to push himself out of her arms.
When the ageless couple are briefly re-united several years later to discuss and sign divorce papers, they begin by having sex on the wooden floor, and shortly later Josephson is slapping and kicking his soon to be ex. Yet they resume their relationship again, despite what he did to her. Josephson is always the jerk, although Ullmann shares one of his faults, that of having to express every thought, no matter how tactless or dubious it might be.
Real couples don't talk this way, or act this way. The difference comes down to expectations. Real people don't expect a marriage to even remotely approach perfection. Film couples are never satisfied for long, because that is boring and uncinematic. The film couple is merely the physical manifestation of the script, which is so much intellectual blather. We already know that men prefer hot young women, and that women use sex to get other things that they value more highly.
There are no hidden gems of relationship insight to be found here. Just yet another tedious and overrated Bergman film, of which there are many. The Seventh Seal is likely the best of the lot, because it has a sense of humor, an essential human quality that increasingly eluded Bergman throughout his lengthy career.