Elliot's Watching week of 7-18-21: Bergman on TV

 Elliot’s Watching - Week of 7-18-21

Ingmar Bergman’s 6-part TV series, Scenes from a Marriage (1973), was a precursor to the many great series that everyone in the world watches today - a true innovation and a daring experiment in its time (Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz may be the only equivalent - though that was based on a famous novel, whereas Bergman’s was his original script - in essence, a 5-hour drama. SfaM focuses closely and intensely on one couple, Johan and Marriane, played brilliantly, through some extremely difficult and challenging scenes, by Liv Ullman and the less-well-known Erland Josephson. We follow these two - with only a few isolated scenes involving others - over the course of about ten years and through all the tempests for marriage, affairs, break-ups, divorce, reconciliation. The film is in its way typically Swedish: A lot of repression and social nicety, with problems “swept under the rug” (the title of one of the episodes), and then with sudden sometimes violent explosions of feelings and pent-up rage or tearful remorse. The cinematography (Sven Nyquist of course) is exquisite, almost all at full or close focus - very few exteriors, tracking, or panning shots. It’s a troubling and demanding 5 hours but a landmark for both cinema (one of Bergman’s early forays into color and into a study of contemporary life - though often criticized for its focus on only one social class, the comfortable Swedish professionals) and, years later, television.