"Scenes from a marriage (1974, Ingmar Bergman) is an adaptation of the TV mini-series from the same director a year earlier. At the moment of writing this review (december 2021) the film is the highest rated Bergman movie on the IMDB database.
The film can be interpreted as a sort of "When Harry met Sally" (1989, Rob Reiner) in reverse. In "When Harry met Sally" a man and a woman take a very long time finding out that they are destined for each other. In "Scenes from a marriage" a man (Johan played by Erland Josephson) and a woman (Marianne played by Liv Ullmann) take a very long time finding out that their breaking up and divorce is not the end of their relationship (and maybe not even the end of their love). When we add "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf" (1966, Mike Nichols) to the equation we can make the following mapping:
"When Harry met Sally" is about the pre marriage phase.
"Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf" is about the marriage phase.
"Scenes from a marriage" is predominantly about the post marriage phase.
From this mapping it can be derived that in essence the naming of "Scenes from a marriage" is less fortunate.
Given the high rating the movie was a bit of a disappointment for me. I have seen better Bergman films, for example "Fanny and Alexander" (1982), also a TV mini series turned into a feature film.
The reason for the disappointment is I think the fact that in the movie the blame for the failure of the marriage is somewhat unilateral put on Johan. It is not a bad guy versus good girl movie, certainly not, but already in the first scene we see a confident Johan boasting at a journalist while Marianne is the modesty itself. Also in later scenes the man (not always Johan) is usually the one acting annoyingly. In the second scene for example Johan and Marianne are dining with a couple that starts quarilling with each other after a couple of drinks. By the way this scene owes a lot to "Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf".
Disappointing for me or not the film has had a lot of influence. Sometimes the influence is on the whole oeuvre of directors such as Woody Allen and Richard Linklater. Sometimes the influence is on specific films about failed marriages such as in "Winter sleep" (2014, Nuri Bilge Ceylan) and "Loveless" (2017, Andrey Zviagintsev).
