Scenes from a Marriage

Scenes from a Marriage (Swedish:  Scener ur ett äktenskap) is a 1973 Swedish TV series written and directed by  Ingmar Bergman. The story explores the disintegration of a marriage between Marianne, a lawyer, and Johan, a professor (played respectively by  Liv Ullmann and  Erland Josephson) over a long period, using a restricted cast, a  naturalist, hyper- realisticcinematic style, claustrophobic  close-ups, and strings of rapid, articulate  monologues. After major success in Sweden, the series became notorious worldwide when it was condemned for allegedly inspiring a spike in Scandinavian divorce rates, which almost doubled in the year of its release.

Episodes
This plot summary is for the 281-minute,  TV miniseries version of the work (the feature film retains the episode names as chapter titles). Each episode concludes with long, quiet, comforting shots of Fårö landscapes, as a "relief" from the up-close, tense and claustrophobic episodes. Each episode is structured around one critical scene, described below, the rest of each episode dedicated to discussion and aftereffects. Some of the episodes occur months or years apart

Cast

 * Liv Ullmann as Marianne
 * Erland Josephson as Johan
 * Bibi Andersson as Katarina
 * Jan Malmsjö as Peter
 * Gunnel Lindblom as Eva
 * Rossana Mariano as 12-year-old Eva
 * Anita Wall as Fru [Mrs] Palm
 * Barbro Hiort af Ornäs as Fru Jacobi
 * Lena Bergman as Karin, sister of Eva
 * Wenche Foss as Modern
 * Bertil Norström as Arne