Scenes from a MarriageTV-series/Feature Film, 1973/1974 About the breakdown of a marriage that sent Sweden's divorce rate soaring."It took two and a half months to write these scenes; it took a whole adult life to live." - Ingmar Bergman |
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On 27 March 1972 Ingmar Bergman wrote in his workbook:
"Here's something we can do for the fun of it. It mustn't cost too much, nor involve any financial risks. We'll have lots of material to work with, as much as possible, I hope there will be an enormous amount. There'll be plenty of exciting dialogue to get stuck into. Nothing at all out of the ordinary. I rather fancy a series of scenes from a marriage."
On 4 May 1972 the Swedish broadsheet daily Dagens Nyheter announced that, for the first time in his career, Ingmar Bergman was to write and direct a television series. "Thematically", Bergman explained, "the series will be a follow-on from or an adaptation of the two middle class tragicomedies I have made for the cinema and television, The Touch and The Lie. Like those, "Scenes from a Marriage" (the working title of the proposed series), would deal with: "the absolute fact that the bourgeois ideal of security corrupts people's emotional lives, undermines them, frightens them". Why television?, Bergman was asked: "When you live on Fårö you become an avid television viewer. Television is quite simply the most amazing thing. It opens up the whole world. I watch the weather forecast every evening, the news, too. And I really enjoy the music and dance programmes - not to mention the ice hockey! When the world championships were on a few weeks ago, I certainly didn't get much writing done on 'Scenes from a Marriage'."
The transition to television was to be almost absolute. Virtually all of Bergman's films since Scenes from a Marriage have been made for television, whether series (Face to Face, Fanny and Alexander) or one-offs (The Magic Flute, Saraband). Admittedly, and for various reasons, they have all gone on cinema release, but they were intended for television. As Sven Nykvist has noted: "What Bergman has made for television are not simply films on television, they are television films." Bergman himself described Scenes from a Marriage as "an aesthetically superior everyday product for TV".
By 27 May 1972, Bergman had finished the screenplay. The original took the same six-part format as the finished series: "Innocence and Panic", "The Art of Sweeping Things Under the Carpet", "Paula", "The Valley of Tears", "The Illiterates" and "In the Middle of the Night in a Dark House Somewhere in the World".
"Johan and Marianne became very real – very quarrelsome even. They had a good deal on their minds, and this form (straightforward dialogue without cinematographic complications) gave them natural occasions to speak out. I also discovered something else: that I was somewhat at odds with Johan and Marianne on many points. Yet despite this I realised that they should be allowed to speak out, just so long as I had the chance, at the end of the sixth episode, to say something that was very important to me personally.
Before I had time to reflect, there were six distinct dialogues about love, marriage and all manner of things besides. Johan and Marianne, or Marianne and Johan, had allowed themselves to be brave, cowardly, happy, sad, angry, loving, confused, uncertain, satisfied, cunning, unpleasant, childish, mean, unfathomable, magnificent, petty, physically affectionate, heartless, stupid, wretched, helpless: in a nutshell – typical human beings."
The budget was tight, to say the least. Bergman's own company Cinematograph was now the sole producer, and since his previous film Cries and Whispers had not yet been sold abroad, cash flow in the organisation was poor. A cheaply-produced television series that could be sold at a good price was deemed to be the solution. Whereas the previous film had cost SEK 1.8 million, the entire TV series was budgeted at a relatively modest SEK 1.2 million, of which Sveriges Television would come up with half. Given the likely interest from overseas, the series was expected, at least, to break even. As with Cries and Whispers Bergman offered his actors the chance to invest their fees back into the film. Erland Josephson and Sven Nykvist took him up on the offer, while Liv Ullmann declined yet another gamble. (She should not have been so cautious, as we shall see!)
Despite, or because of, the lack of external funding, Cinematograph itself invested heavily. Bergman had long been toying with the idea that his company should be self-sufficient on the technical front. Accordingly, they set to work on the construction of a film studio on the estate in the 17th century village of Dämba on Fårö that Bergman had recently acquired and moved to. The studio was a mere 6 x 12 metres and housed in an old barn together alongside a props store. The office was in the old brewery, the coach house became the cinema, and the woodshed was transformed into an editing room.
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