Weekend Rental: Scenes From a Marriage/Saraband

Nearly a million Swedes watched the premiere of Ingmar Bergman's made-for-television movie Saraband. Not bad for a country that counts about as many bodies as the 5 boroughs of New York city.

In honor of the passing of Ingmar Bergman,  we’d like to propose as this week's weekend rental lengthy the lengthy, double-bill of two of his films that followed the same characters almost 30 years apart. 

Scenes From a Marriage was originally created as a six-part series for television, but it became one of his better film projects in the late stages of his life. Johan and Marianne played by Erland Josephson and Liv Ullmann who were married back then would then find themselves a whole lot older and divorced in what did become a television series in native Sweden and on compact but powerful film stateside in Saraband.  

Put together – this six hour opus is well worth a Sunday afternoon – perhaps more so during an Autumn timeframe.