Over the course of six hour-long episodes, it explores the disintegration of the marriage between Marianne (Liv Ullmann), a divorce lawyer, and Johan (Erland Josephson), a reader in psychology.

After initially airing on Swedish TV in six parts, the miniseries was condensed into a theatrical version and received positive reviews in Sweden and internationally.

[14] The Criterion Collection released the miniseries and theatrical version on a three-disc DVD in Region 1 in 2004, complete with interviews and an essay by Phillip Lopate.

[15] In Sweden, Scenes from a Marriage received positive reviews for its dialogue and realism, with Mauritz Edstrom calling it "one of Bergman's finest human portrayals".

[16] One controversy revolved around allegations that Scenes From a Marriage led to higher divorce rates in Sweden and around Europe by teaching couples to communicate their conflicts.

[21] In the United States, Roger Ebert gave the theatrical version a full four stars, calling it "one of the truest, most luminous love stories ever made"[22] and "the best film of 1974".

[23] Vincent Canby, chief critic for The New York Times, called the theatrical version "a movie of such extraordinary intimacy that it has the effect of breaking into mysterious components many things we ordinarily accept without thought, familiar and banal objects, faces, attitudes, and emotions, especially love.

[4] Don Druker of Chicago Reader criticized the editing for the cinema, saying that the film "shows its reassembled status rather badly" and that "moments of searing insight" were provided mainly by Ullmann.

[25] In 2004, essayist Phillip Lopate wrote that Scenes from a Marriage showed Bergman moving on from exploration of God's silence to the subject of men, women, love and intimacy.

Lopate found the film version "more harrowing and theatrical," while the miniseries "has the tendency to intersect with and form a more quotidian relationship to viewers’ lives; its characters become members of the family, and their resilience over time, regardless of the incessant crises thrown them by the script, induces a more good-humored, forgiving atmosphere.

"[26] In 2007, Kristi McKim of Senses of Cinema wrote that the film "stunningly exemplified" the "tension" in "the emotional causes and effects of feeling incompatible desires within the modern world.

[31] The film's ineligibility prompted 24 filmmakers, including Frank Capra and Federico Fellini, to write an open letter demanding the rules for eligibility be revised.

[40] In 2008, a theatrical adaption by Joanna Murray-Smith was performed at the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry, directed by Trevor Nunn and starring Imogen Stubbs and Iain Glen.

In an April 2011 New York Times Opinionator article titled "Too Much Relationship Vérité", Virginia Heffernan compares An American Family to Scenes from a Marriage: It's now the future.

And the 12-hour PBS time capsule, which will make a rare reappearance next week at the Paley Center in Manhattan and on some public-TV affiliates beginning Saturday, looks more like performance art than social science.