Scenes of a marriage

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Movie
German title Scenes of a marriage
Original title Scener ur ett äktenskap
Country of production Sweden
original language Swedish
Publishing year 1973
length 169 (TV 295/235) minutes
Age rating FSK 16
Rod
Director Ingmar Bergman
script Ingmar Bergman
production Lars-Owe Carlberg
camera Sven Nykvist
cut Siv Lundgren
occupation
synchronization

German synchronous file # 3290

Scenes from a marriage (Original title: Scener ur ett äktenskap ) is a Swedish film drama directed by Ingmar Bergman from 1973 . The film was shown as a six-part television series and a shorter theatrical version.

Using the example of the couple Johan and Marianne, the film shows the failure of a marriage: Shortly after the two partners were presented in a magazine article as an exemplary married couple, their harmonious facade begins to crumble.

action

The 35-year-old lawyer Marianne and the 42-year-old scientist Johan have been married for ten years and have two children. The two are interviewed as a model couple for a magazine's homestory . Johan dominates the conversation, Marianne appears as the more passive part of the relationship.

Shortly after the article appeared, they invited their befriended couple Katarina and Peter to their home. In the course of the evening there was a bitter argument between their guests. Marianne feels unconcerned about her own marriage. When they are alone again, she tells Johan that the main problem with their friends' marriage is a lack of communication. Johan disagrees.

A client of Marianne, Mrs. Jacobi, wants to divorce her husband after 20 years for no apparent reason. Her husband is a good father and loyal husband, explains the client, and yet it is a “marriage without love”. Marianne becomes thoughtful. Later there is a discussion with Johan because he considers their marriage to be erotic and unattractive and Marianne does not pay him any attention.

After a business trip, Johan surprises her with the announcement that he has fallen in love with the 23-year-old student Paula and wants to go abroad with her, even if he is not sure that their affair will last. He confesses to her that he's been thinking about breaking up for four years. Marianne asks him in vain to cancel the trip and give their marriage another chance.

Back from his stay abroad, Johan visits Marianne. He suffers from Paula's possessive love and hopes for a professorship at the University of Cleveland . The evening together is marked by an undecided need for closeness and distance. Marianne reads to Johan from her private notes, in which she confesses that she has tried all her life to adapt in order to please others. She drops the word divorce for the first time. Later she and Johan sleep together.

Finally, Marianne and Johan agree to sign the divorce papers. They become intimate with each other, then there is an interplay of quarrel and reconciliation again. While Marianne raves about her newfound freedom, Johan confesses that his relationship with Paula and his career plans have failed. Marianne accuses him of not really wanting a divorce, which Johan openly affirms. Mutual humiliations follow, which lead to violent confrontation. Embittered, both sign the divorce papers and part.

Years later they meet again. Both are now married to other partners, but they spend a weekend together in a friend's country house, where they sleep together. Marianne doubts whether she ever loved someone or was loved, but Johan speaks out of her doubts. Their secret gatherings are now becoming a habit for them.

background

Production and film launch

Scenes from a Marriage was created between July 24 and October 3, 1972 on the island of Fårö , Bergman's preferred place of residence. The film, which was shot on 16 mm with limited resources , was first shown on Swedish television in 1973. The running time of the TV version was 295 minutes, Bergman shortened the film to 169 minutes for the theatrical release. The theatrical version started on March 13, 1975 in the FRG and on September 10, 1976 in the GDR . In September 1976, a TV version was shown on ZDF , which was about an hour shorter than the original.

Position in Bergman's work

Two minor characters in the series, Peter and Katarina, made Bergman the main characters in his feature film From the Life of Marionettes (1980).

In 1981 Bergman brought scenes from a marriage to the stage of the Munich Residenztheater . Gaby Dohm and Erich Hallhuber played the main roles .

In 2003 Bergman shot a sequel with the title Sarabande : While looking at souvenir photos, Marianne got the idea to visit Johan - she has not seen him for thirty years. Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson repeated their roles from the television series.

Reviews

“The success of this work, which offers anything but spectacular and culinary cinema and is basically a mere speech film, proves how great, at least among the bourgeois audience, is the interest in seeing individual conflicts presented in a personal, intimate form. For two and a half hours, this audience patiently accepts that the screen almost exclusively shows close-ups […] The dramatic aspect of this film is fully expressed in the dialogues, speaking has the power of physical action and is usually worse, more direct and deeper . "

- The mirror

“Here comes up what the audience has or could have experienced in themselves a million times over and is discussed; Here a director formulates something for them that most occupies, but which, in life, gets lost in incomprehension, impatience and panic. From the series of important works on marriage, from Goethe's ' Elective Affinities ' to Ibsen's ' Nora 'and Strindberg's ' Dance of Death ' to Albee's ' Who is Afraid of Virginia Woolf? 'these' scenes' will be indispensable; they are the contribution of the seventies of this century. […] Bergman's film can best be compared to Jean Eustache's film ' La Maman et la putain ' […] They are two films that continue outside, so to speak. You went to the cinema and played the same piece in the daylight. "

- The time

"The relationship drama by Ingmar Bergman that argues primarily on the dialogue level and at times condenses the everyday problems recorded with analytical acumen into abstract existential model situations."

- Lexicon of international film

“The permanent dialogue between the spouses [...] calls into question, unmistakably, the institution of marriage in its conventional rigidity. At the same time, however, it provides a view of other possibilities that Bergman apparently viewed as more human and honest. "

- Jury of Evangelical Film Work : Film of the Month March 1975

Awards (selection)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Release certificate for scenes from a marriage . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , January 2009 (PDF; test number: 47 227 V / DVD / UMD).
  2. ↑ In Sweden; in the FRG the series ran as a five-part. See Hauke ​​Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , p. 299.
  3. ^ Scenes from a marriage on the website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation , accessed on July 18, 2012.
  4. ^ A b Hauke ​​Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , pp. 216–222 u. 299
  5. ↑ a b Scenes from a Marriage in the Lexicon of International FilmsTemplate: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used .
  6. ↑ Article in Der Spiegel No. 19/1981 of May 4, 1981, accessed on August 6, 2012.
  7. ^ The big speeches - Article in Der Spiegel 49/1974 of December 2, 1974, accessed on July 23, 2012.
  8. ^ Review in Die Zeit of March 14, 1975, accessed on July 23, 2012.

Web links