The Cinematheque

“One of the great valedictory works.”

Richard Brody, The New Yorker

Bergman’s farewell film—the only movie he made as an octogenarian—reveals no diminishment of his formidable powers. A searing work in the director’s minimalist, chamber-drama mode, Saraband has Liv Ullmann and Erland Josephson reprising their roles from 1974’s Scenes from a Marriage, Bergman’s shattering analysis of a failed relationship. It is now three decades on, and Marianne and Johan, long divorced, have had no contact in years. When Marianne impulsively decides to visit her ex-husband at his summer house, she is drawn into a fierce family crisis engulfing Johan, his son Henrik (Börje Ahlstedt), and Henrik’s daughter Karin (Julia Dufvenius). Saraband unfolds in ten discrete episodes, each an emotionally lacerating duet between two of the characters. It was shot and (at Bergman’s insistence) released on HD digital video, a then-rare format that limited its theatrical circulation.