[.ca] Scenes From A Marriage

From Amazon.com:
Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage opens with a couple--Marianne (Liv Ullmann) and Johan (Erland Josephson)--being interviewed for a magazine. Every moment seems to teeter on the brink of some rupture; just as they start to get comfortable, the interviewer has them freeze for a photograph. After making some bland general statements, they both start admitting intimate details, confessing that they were brought together by mutual misery, then cheerfully claiming that theirs is a model marriage. The entirety of Scenes from a Marriage, which chronicles their emotional relationship even after their divorce and marriages to other people, continues to have these contradictory moments of honesty and self-deception, cruelty and kindness, concern and self-obsession--all laid bare by the skillful actors and the subtle, constantly shifting screenplay. Every scene is a small movie unto itself; in fact, Scenes from a Marriage was originally a six-episode TV show, which was carefully edited down into a unified film. This is one of Bergman's most immediate and accessible works, concerned more with the facts of human behavior than symbolism or abstract themes. Bergman understands how to balance what could be horrible pain and despair with the characters' earnest efforts to improve their lives. His imitators reduce everything to sheer suffering and alienation; Bergman sees the best in his characters, even when their actions are terrible. This 1973 film won numerous awards, including several acting honors for Ullmann. --Bret Fetzer

Beautiful Brutality (A TRUE depiction of Marriage):
This film is incredible. It is, however, a brutal one to watch (the intense arguments are too intense to watch at times, there is so much PAIN in this film). Its basic plot, as ridiculous as this sounds, is "husband and wife argue, then make up, then argue, then make up, then argue, then make up, and so on and so forth" or "husband and wife love eachother, then hate eachother, then love eachother, then hate eachother, then love eachother, etc." Yet in this back and forth plot, progress is made all the time. A couple who seemed SO perfect in the film's famous and brilliantly forboding opening interview sequence, begin to realize that they cannot go through life being a perfect married couple and still love eachother in the process. The incredibly well rounded characters we know at the beginning of the film, Johan and Marianne, are NOT the same characters we know at the end. The incredibly cocky and self-assured ("it would be too much to say that im bright, handsome, and sexy") Johan becomes the incredibly weak and humble Johan as the the film progresses, while the woman Marianne, who believed that she was put on this earth to be a good wife and mother, nothing more, becomes the confident Marianne, who realizes it is not at all a sin to have your own personality. In essence, the film chronicles the immense change of two people as they become farther from eachother. Basically, the point of the film, in my view anyway, is to show that Marianne and Johan love eachother SO MUCH that marriage only restricts this love. They get along BEAUTIFULLY (they really do, unlike while they were married, when they just SAID that they get along tremendously) in the last Scene, when they are finally divorced and remarried to different people. Bergman's point surely was to show that marriage can be a bad idea. Two people who love eachother a great deal just do not work well together when married. Love becomes second to the other obligations that come with marriage. Too much time is spent discussing finance, the children, work, and looking like the happy married couple than time spent actually loving one another. Indeed Bergman laugably blamed the film for an increase in divorce rates. It seems wrong, but he may well be right. Marriage is bad for love. There were some things I enjoyed a great deal about the film. Firstly, the dialogue. It was brilliant, as one would expect from Bergman. Witty, clever, and powerful words (the film is based around conversations) prevail. Secondly, much has been said of Sven Nykvist's camera work, and I must agree it is wonderful. His camera captures so much emotion from the actors, he often keeps his camera fixed on Liv Ullman's face as she, for example, hears of her husband's infidelity. reaction is more important in Scenes from a Marriage than action is. Thirdly, the ACTING was nothing short of astonishing. Bergman regular Liv Ullman's performance is the performance of a lifetime. There is a scene where she is in bed with her husband, who had just told her about his desire to leave her for another woman, Paula. As he says "I've always hated you, for several years, I've HATED you", Ullman's reaction is INTENSE. It's as if every word he says is like a knife that sticks in her side. It's a thing that comes on all too suddenly, a man who she thought loved her sits there saying it was a lie all along. She carries the performance beautifully. Erland Josephson is also VERY good in an obviously more difficult role. He plays a man who loses his self confidence, and he plays it well. Lastly, I loved Bergman's use of forshadowing. On your initial viewing, Johan's addmitance about Paula comes off as extremely shocking, however, if you go back, everything really forshadows the end of their marriage. We know something's up from the very beginning. There is this sense of tension and uncomfortableness, its as if, at times, they dont even love one another, they are just playing the parts of the perfect husband and wife. This is my favorite Bergman film of those which I have seen thusfar (others are Persona, Wild Strawberries, The Seventh Seal, Cries and Whispers, Hour of the Wolf, Through a Glass Darkly, Winter Light, and the Silence.) It is a very realistic approach to the concept of marriage, and shows the fact that married life is not all as good as it seems. This film will leave you breathless, if not lifeless. I recommend the SERIES rather than the film, there is even more intensity, and more characters and character developement. Arguments become intense. ONE WORD, and i am not joking, can strike your heart like a sword, just as it does to the characters in the film. It's always that one last thing someone said that they shouldn't have. It is INTENSE. I cannot reccomend this DVD enough! BANG UP JOB CRITERION!!!!!!!!! I love the inclusion of Both the series and the film, particularly the series, and the extras, though small in numbers, are GREAT in quality. The three interviews included arre very informative, and i could ask for nothing more. The insert booklet is very nice and very attractive, as is the entire package. The entire package, down to the menus, was very nicely designed. the menus are animated and fit the mood of the film very well. The image, though it could not be helped (it was shot for television), is kind of bad, So......... FILM: 10 STARS/ 10 STARS DVD: 9 STARS/ 10 STARS One of the greatest films of ALL TIME, certainly one of my favorites, and one of Criterion's best releases hands down. BRILLIANT FILIM!!!!!!

Amazing! One of Bergman's greatest: way ahead of its time!:
This Criterion edition is an absolute must-have for any fan of Ingmar Bergman's work. I have seen the 3-hour film version several times before, and felt it was superb, as most of Bergman's films are, but it faded for me in comparison with my favorites, "Persona", "Cries and Whispers", "The Silence", "Shame" and "Through a Glass Darkly". The 5-hour TV version, however, presented here for the first time in the US, is a revelation to me. It is startlingly contemporary. It is like seeing the film fresh, for the first time. I am struck by the naturalness of the acting of Bjornstrand and Ullman, giving astonishing performances, both in terms of nuance and intensity. At times, one forgets that they are acting, they so inhabit their gruelling roles. Liv Ullman is particularly great here, and photographed with luminous intensity by Nykvist, the master cinematographer. This is a woman who has her world shattered, and who responds to her changed circumstances in realistic stages: denial, anger, grief, rage, and finally acceptance. Also, I am struck by the way this particular film is the unacknowledged "grandfather" of independent contemporary film technique. A recent article in the New York Times on Dogme astonished me by the failure to even acknowledge Bergman's influence. Liv Ullman is spot-on in the interview when she notes that "Scenes from a Marriage" was Dogme filmaking 30 years ahead of Dogme, and that the often hand-held camera here moves with precision, versus the shallow, self-indulgent scattershot mess that is so tedious in the films of the Dogme filmmakers. In the five-hour TV version, one sees the film as it truly is, a groundbreaking, thoroughly engrossing masterpiece. Finally, it reminds us of how little we ask from our own TV movies in the US. This is a riveting, compelling, lacerating work, made with compassion and with a strong humanist understanding. Bergman didn't come to this spareness and austerity out some philisophical point of view, like Dogme has with its "manifesto". Instead, "Scenes from a Marriage" arrives at its technique out of Bergman's desire to get as close as he can with his camera to the faces, emotions, and flawed humanity of his characters. It was a process he began with "Persona" and which opens further in "The Passion", and which here is expanded out and relentlessly focused, like a pure, blue, Scandanavian flame.

One of Bergman's best:
What a treat for the DVD world! This DVD include teh original 5-hour presentaion of Scenes from a Marriage and the original US version AND an interview with Ingmar Bergman! And it is worth every penny. Some might say that the film is too long. However, you must possess patience when watching one of Ingamr Bergman's films for he uses what is commonly unknown in the world of cinema today: pace. He makes time for the develpoment of his characters, he ensures that we see the changes that they go through, but what makes him a master of his craft is his ability to make his films viable and interesting every step of the way. The same is true for Scenes from a Marriage. He shows the disintergration of a marriage and the consequences it has on these two people. His characters are fragile and courageous, reasonable and irrational, but most importantly, they are human. Scenes from a Marraige is a great example of Ingmar Bergman's skill at work.

Marvellous:
I watched Scenes from a marriage twice the very first time i rented it from a local library. And yet so far it is one of the best movies i ever watched in my life. Dear Amazon please please make a DVD edition of this movie. You will thank me at the end from its sales.Trust me

Brutal Honesty. One of Bergman's Best:
A departure from the complexity of Persona and The Passion of Anna, Bergman put together a highly accessible and clear portrait of the lives of a stereotypical "successful" suburban professional couple entering middle age and beyond. Bergman is absolutely perfect in presenting the ebbs and flows of the relationship. The dialogue is amazing, and Ullman and Josephson couldn't have been better. Bibi Andersson's quasi-cameo sets the stage for the entire film, and the brutally acerbic dinner table scene is a classic of cinema. A lot of people have been looking forward to the proposed sequel, but I'm not. Scenes from a Marriage couldn't have been better, and a sequel is likely to detract from one of Bergman's Top 3 movies in a long and illustrious career.