Ingmar Bergman is one of the master directors of cinema and theatre. Scenes from a Marriage is a film that reveals many of his ongoing themes in his work, and his techniques used within the frame to reveal the interior life of characters to create essential moments, and which deepen the viewers understanding of the lives they are watching before them.
In this story, Bergman opens with Johan and Marianne being interviewed by a magazine reporter in their home. He uses a static camera in a medium wide of the couple and rarely cuts away from them. It is bold in that we must sit with this couple for an extended period of time, and by doing so we begin to live with them, pick up on their nuances and gestures--all of which reveal an interior life that supplements and many times contradicts the couple's answers to the reporter. We begin to see the intricacies of Johan and Marianne's relationship and the lies they tell themselves to get on, and how proud they are of their ability to have a loveless marriage.
Bergman finished the film with Johan and Marianne in a dual close-up. The director takes us through a journey where we hear nothing of the interior life of the characters at the beginning to being involved completely in the conversation about the life inside of them. Bergman uses the static camera at the beginning and then moves the characters from one room to another as they have dinner with Katarina and Peter and with each move we are taken to the interior of the house. These transitions reveal Bergman's intention to take us further and further into the inner life's of Marianne and Johan, and as he does the shots become more alive in that we get new angles (overhead shot of Marianne pulling up to be picked up by Johan during their affair, and the close-up shot of the woman in Marianne's office asking for a divorce).
A stark edit used by Bergman is after Johan beats Marianne while going through their divorce proceeding he cuts straight to their affair. It shows how the brutality of their marriage has been washed over by a new love affair they have begun. It creates the question within the viewer as to how did they get from there to here? It is a giant leap, and a cut that is worthy of Bergman as he cuts out any of the uninteresting bits and shows us the essential moments that create drama from his creativity as a visual storyteller.
