From the Life of the Marionettes (German: Aus dem Leben der Marionetten) is a 1980 television film directed by Ingmar Bergman.

The film was produced in West Germany with a German-language screenplay and soundtrack while Bergman was in "tax exile" from his native Sweden.

Set in Munich, the film charts the disintegration of the relationship of Katarina and Peter Egermann, based on the unhappy couple of the same names briefly featured in Bergman's 1973 miniseries Scenes from a Marriage.

Katarina dismissed the warning as preposterous, and given it was a busy season for work, she decided it was impossible for her to leave.

Katarina responded she sometimes had orgasms with Peter, but also that she sometimes faked them and left the bedroom to masturbate, and that on other occasions she only had small convulsions.

Ingmar Bergman wrote From the Life of the Marionettes after being arrested in Stockholm in 1976 and subsequently leaving for West Germany.

[3] Bergman's initial conception for the project was titled Love for No Lovers, but in the rewrite culminating in From the Life of the Marionettes Peter and Katarina were reimagined as a German couple distinct from the Swedish characters in Scenes from a Marriage.

[4] German composer Rolf A. Wilhelm wrote the score,[10] making use of timpani and glass harmonicas.

[11] The premiere took place in July 1980 at a minor festival in Oxford,[12] with Tobis Film as the main distributor.

[12] Janet Maslin credited Bergman for a "forceful" work despite what she found to be "less articulate or analytical" characters, praised Nykvist's shots in dream sequences, and positively reviewed Christine Buchegger and Robert Atzorn's performances.

[16] In his Movie Guide, Leonard Maltin gave the film three and a half stars, describing it as "Powerful, provocative".