SarabandTV Movie, 2003 The aging Marianne visits her divorced husband and gets in the middle of a tearing family drama."This is a testament of love and anguish from the man who used to be called the greatest living filmmaker. Well, dammit, he was. And, as proves, he still is." - Richard Corliss |
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On 25th October 2001 the Swedish press announced a sensation: "Ingmar Bergman is filming again!" According to Sydsvenska Dagbladet the work in question was "a follow-on from the classic television series Scenes From a Marriage. Working title: Anna". There was great secrecy surrounding the project, it was claimed.
On the following day, Expressen followed up the story with an interview with Ann-Kristin Westerberg, head of the international department of Svensk Filmindustri. Bergman had told her that the film was originally intended as "nine dialogues for any chosen medium". This was a working method that Bergman had been using for some considerable time: After the Rehearsal, The Last Gasp and many other of his later films might just have easily remained as works of literature.
Bergman himself was to liken the method to the format of Bach's harpsichord sonatas: "They can be played by string quartets, wind ensembles, on the guitar, organ or piano. I've written in the way I've been accustomed to writing for more than fifty years – it looks like a play, but it could just as easily be a film, television programme or simply something to read."
The Expressen article also denied early reports that the work was to be a "continuation" of Scenes From A Marriage: "even though Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann still have their role names Johan and Marianne, it's not about what happened thirty years on," Bergman informed the world via his provisional mouthpiece, Westerberg.
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