When the screenplay of "Scenes from a Marriage" was published in 1973 in Sweden, Ingmar Bergman added the following preface:
To prevent the constrained reader from getting lost in the text I have decided--contrary to my habit--to write a commentary on the six scenes. Those who are offended by such guidance should skip the following lines.
First scene: Johan and Marianne are conventional and set in their ways and believe in material security. They have never found their middle-class way of life oppressive or false. They have conformed to a pattern which they are prepared to pass on. Their former political activity is a confirmation of this rather than a contradiction.
In the first scene they present a pretty picture of an almost ideal marriage, which is confronted moreover with an inferno-like relationship. They are smug in a quiet way, convinced that they have arranged everything for the best. The air is thick with makeshift solutions and well-meant platitudes. Peter and Katarina appear as lunatics to be pitied, while Johan and Marianne have arranged for the best in this best of worlds. All the same, at the end of this scene they receive a slight setback. They are faced with a choice. A sore, apparently trifling, breaks open, heals, and forms a scar, but under the scar an infection has formed. That's my idea anyway. If someone else wishes to think differently, that's fine.
Second scene: Everything is still ideal, almost splendid. Small worries are solved in joking agreement. Their professions and working environments are presented. Marianne is aware of a vague anxiety. She can't define it, still less pin it down, but instinctively she feels that something is wrong between her and Johan. She makes a lame and not very successful effort to repair the dimly sensed rift. Johan has several mysterious telephone calls. One evening when they've been to the theater and seen A Doll's House (what else would they have seen?), there is a sudden feeling of discord between them; they try to make light of it and finally sweep it under the rug.
Third scene: The blow falls. In rather a brutal way Johan announces that he is in love with another woman and is going to leave. He is full of vital eagerness to act and oxidized by the cheerful selfishness of the new infatuation. Marianne is thunderstruck. Utterly defenseless. Totally unprepared. Within a few minutes she changes in front of our eyes into a bleeding and trembling sore. Humiliation and perplexity.
Fourth scene: They meet again after quite a long time. Things have started to go wrong for Johan, though it is not noticeable. On the contrary. As for Marianne, there are signs of recovery, though they are extremely vague and are mixed up with the past: her ties to Johan, the ulcerous loneliness, the longing for everything to be as it was before. Their encounter is painful and clumsy in its mixture of reconciliation and aggressiveness. For brief moments they reach one another through isolation and aloofness. Everything is fragile, infected, ragged. This is a very sad scene.
Fifth scene: Now there is a terrible blowup. Marianne is finding her feet again and Johan is losing his grip on reality. They have the bright idea of starting divorce proceedings together and of engaging the same lawyer. One evening in early summer they meet at Johan's office to sign the divorce papers. Suddenly everything explodes and they give vent to all the aggressions, all the hate, all the mutual boredom and rage that they have been suppressing for years. Bit by bit they are dehumanized and at last they become really nasty and behave like maniacs who have only one thought in their minds: to maul each other physically and mentally. In these efforts they are even a degree worse than Peter and Katarina in the first scene, who have a certain routine in their inferno and are, as it were, more professional in their savagery. Johan and Marianne have not yet learned this extreme restraint. In short, they want to destroy one another, and they very nearly succeed.
Sixth scene: My idea now is that two new people begin to emerge from all this devastation. Maybe that is a little too optimistic but I can't help it, that's how it turned out. Both Johan and Marianne have walked through the vale of tears and made it rich in springs. They are beginning to acquire a new knowledge of themselves, in a manner of speaking. This is not just a matter of resignation, but concerns love too. For the first time, Marianne sits down and listens to her troublesome mother. Johan looks at his own situation with forgiveness and is good to Marianne in a new and adult way. Everything is still in confusion and nothing is any better. All relations are muddled and their lives are incontestably based on a heap of wretched compromises. But somehow they are now citizens of the world of reality in quite a different way from before. At least I think so. There's no solution at hand, anyway, so there's no happy ending. Nice as it would have been to arrive at one. If for no other reason, to annoy all artistically sensitive people, who, disgusted by this quite understandable work, will be aesthetically sick after the very first scene.
What more is there to say? This opus took three months to write, but rather a long part of my life to experience. I'm not sure that it would have turned out better had it been the other way round, though it would have seemed nicer. I have felt a kind of affection for these people while I've been occupied with them. They have grown rather contradictory, sometimes anxiously childish, sometimes pretty grown-up. They talk quite a lot of rubbish, now and then saying something sensible. They are nervous, happy, selfish, stupid, kind, wise, self-sacrificing, affectionate, angry, gentle, sentimental, insufferable, and lovable. All jumbled up. Now let's see what happens.
I.B.
Fårö, May 1972
--Ingmar Bergman, The Marriage Scenarios, trans. Alan Blair (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978), pp. 2-5.