Ingmar Ernst Bergman
Scene da un matrimonio

Incommunicability in the Modern Couple.

Scenes from a Marriage is yet another Ingmar Bergman film about the problem of incommunicability between people and the drama of the impossibility of correct management of interpersonal and interfamily relationships. In Scenes from a Marriage, Ingmar Bergman plunges his scalpel deeply, crudely, violently, deliberately, and absolutely mercilessly, without anesthesia, into the raw flesh of the quintessential family institution: marriage. The work is a complex and striking fresco of the matrimonial institute, a powerful picture, painted with evident, almost complacent pessimism, partly due, as is often the case in Ingmar Bergman's films, to autobiographical reasons. In this specific case, it certainly contributes to the recent end of his relationship with Liv Ulmann. “Ingmar left me with an eleven-page letter.” Ingmar Bergman is not interested in depicting the separation of the two spouses, but rather the analytical study of the phenomenology of the failure of the matrimonial event and its consequences on individuals. The two protagonists, Marianne and Johan, in the interview that opens the film, present themselves as two happy, satisfied, contented spouses, almost complacent (to be honest, more him than her) with the perfection of their relationship and the camera lens, which seems to caress them by immortalizing them in moments of true rapture, of marital ecstasy. But that inexpressive perfection, which will prove to be fake, seems too fragile from the start to withstand the fury of quarrels and discussions. Ingmar Bergman had already hinted at the couple's inability to live in sincerity and withstand life's storms in his previous "Cries and Whispers." Between the two spouses (played by the same actors who were lovers there), indeed, suspicions and distrust, remorse and torments, failures and disappointments make their way, capable of toppling their ideal of shared life. When Johan confesses to his wife that he has cheated on her, her psychological balance wavers. Marianne recalls the prophetic account of Mrs. Jacobi, her client, who had told her how a marriage empty of love can be not only ruinous but self-destructive. This is also the cause of Johan's explosive violence towards Marianne when signing the divorce papers and of Marianne's hysterical erotic impulse that drives her to ask her husband for always one last kiss, one last night, one last embrace, one last pleasure. The couple, having regained their nervous balance and a minimum of civility, manages to reunite only thanks to dialogue, tolerance, understanding, and the tenderness of memories. Through selfishness, marriage dies; from the ashes of marriage, through mutual solidarity, the ability to listen, loyalty, and the capacity to understand, a new awareness is reborn. The film narrates the radical transformation of the feeling that led the couple to live together, love, into pure hatred. And it proves that obligations and conventions can be enemies of marital relationships. The film conveys a universal message of respect among people. It borrows the evangelical message: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” which Bergman puts in Marianne's mouth at the beginning of the film. For Bergman, “God is Love, and Love is God. Love is proof of God's existence. Love is the only reality of this pitiable earthly world of ours.”