Famous couples from literature – from Romeo and Juliet to Bridget Jones and Mark Darcy – have enacted storylines built around rituals of courtship and the obstacles they face on the way to marrying. While the ‘marriage plot’ has never gone out of fashion – kept alive, in good part, by Hollywood’s penchant for the rom-com – changing times have led to the emergence of the ‘divorce plot’. Nora and Torvald from Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House – which enraged audiences when it premièred in 1879 because of its harsh critique of the ‘holy covenant’ of marriage – might be seen as the ur-couple of this growing genre.

Igmar Bergman’s Scenes from a Marriage – conceived as a television miniseries (1973), then released as a film in 1974, two hours shorter than the 282-minute miniseries – pays homage to Nora and Torvald with his own divorcing couple, Marianne and Johan, who go to see A Doll’s House on the evening their marriage disintegrates into a harrowing game of deceit and violence.