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Scenes from a Marriage Review: Cut by writer/director Ingmar Bergman to feature length from the original six-part TV miniseries, Scenes From a Marriage still spans six defining incidents from a marriage as it unravels and reaches a new plateau. Starring Bergman alter ego Erland Josephson as philandering husband Johan, Bergman muse Liv Ullmann as maddeningly passive wife Marianne, and featuring Bibi Andersson in a blistering appearance as a friend with her own marital woes, Scenes From a Marriage is an acting tour de force for Bergman's stock company. Bergman offers no easy answers for Marianne's on-going attachment to chronic jerk Johan, illuminating the complex and contradictory nature of connubial bonds (not to mention his own conflicted feelings about women). Shot on 16 mm in a stripped-down style featuring copious close-ups, few exteriors, no music, and no flights of fantasy or memory, the austere visuals perfectly match the story's intimacy and raw emotions. Hailed as another masterpiece from the auteur, Scenes From a Marriage won several prizes from the National Society of Film Critics, including Best Film, as well as Best Actress and Screenplay from the New York Film Critics' Circle. Though some objected to Johan's comfortable fate, the Bergman-scripted and Ullmann-directed film Faithless (2001) serves as a de facto painful epilogue. Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide

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