# Scenes from a Marriage (1973)

> A Swedish marriage unravels after an affair, and across years of separation and new partnerships a husband and wife remain bound to each other.

Canonical page: https://ember.film/tv/57597

## Facts

- Seasons: 1
- Episodes: 6
- Episode runtime: 297 min
- Status: Ended
- Genres: drama
- Created by: Ingmar Bergman
- Network: SVT1
- Cast: Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Bibi Andersson, Jan Malmsjö, Anita Wall, Rossana Mariano, Lena Bergman, Gunnel Lindblom
- TMDB rating: 8.5/10
- IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0070644/

## Ember's analysis

- Pacing: measured
- Intensity: strong
- Complexity: layered
- Violence: none
- Tone: melancholic, intimate, sardonic, raw, unflinching

## What critics say

Critics broadly acclaim the film-like intimacy and unflinching honesty of the performances and writing in this portrait of a marriage coming apart.

## Synopsis

Scenes from a Marriage (1973) is a Swedish national-television chamber drama miniseries created by Ingmar Bergman for SVT1. Liv Ullmann plays Marianne and Erland Josephson plays Johan, a seemingly settled couple whose marriage begins to fracture when he confesses an affair. The engine of the series is conversation: each of its six long episodes is built from raw, unhurried confrontations over kitchen tables, bedrooms and restaurants, where honesty, self-deception and wounded pride keep colliding. Over several years the pair separate, divorce and form new relationships, yet they keep meeting and remain emotionally bound, which gives the story its shape as a single continuing arc rather than a case-of-the-week format. The series is a limited miniseries, and its tone is melancholic, sardonic and intensely intimate, with close framing that holds on faces in distress. Set in 1970s Sweden among the urban professional middle class, it carries the austere, psychologically probing tradition of Bergman's cinema. Fans of Marriage Story, Divorce and Fanny and Alexander will find resonance in its unsparing study of love, selfishness and the difficulty of letting go.

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