The film begins with a picture of a perfect marriage. Johan and Marianne are even being interviewed by a reporter from a magazine who's brought a photographer with her to capture them on film. The irony is that Johan and Marianne are perfect in nearly every area of their marriage, except they are not in love. They were married after divorces from previous spouses which caues them to both be unhappy. Marianne says that they, "weren't in love, but both of us were unhappy."
This opening scene which Bergman shoots in a long take with it playing in a medium wide the entire time reveals all about this couple's marriage through the subtlety of gestures and what is not said. We see the lack of desire for physical intimacy by Marianne when she promptly removes her husbands arm from around her waist after a photograph is taken. And, we hear Johan proclaim how great he is, and how marvelous their marriage is based on, "Security, order, contentment, loyalty." But, they don't have depth, connection, love. Johan even shares his poetry, work that is most intimate to him with a work colleague rather than his wife.
Bergman is revealing that the things we do not do, the issues and challenges we don't work through become the festering reason for resentment, affairs and divorce. What these characters don't say to one another reveals an immaturity by two respected professionals, and Johan's physically assaulting Marianne reveals the horror of a man who is pent up with anger over decades that has never been dealt with. The fact that the couple meets for an affair, even after having been remarried to other people shows their unexplored love for one another that is unresolved, as if their bodies and minds moved through the time of their marriage, but their hearts were left behind as they attempt to speed them up to present day, or antithetically, they've become so accustomed to one another that they simply can't let go.
