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Marriage in the Movies: Till Divorce Do Us Part
Examining the history of divorce in film; the movies that shaped the sub-genre and what makes them so great.
Warning: This article contains thematic spoilers for ‘Marriage Story’ and ‘Scenes From a Marriage’.
Few domestic conflicts are as engrossing or devastating to witness as divorce; a heavy subject that interrogates what it means to be a family in the face of disagreement. Many recognise it as a subject as dramatic as it is weighty, and such narrative potential has led to numerous depictions of it on film. We’ve seen no shortage of writers and directors attempting to capture the honesty of such a complex matter, and not without good reason. Divorce directly clashes against our most intimate values about family, and our tendency to critique social norms through fiction takes on its most personal form with how divorce exposes a family’s incompatibility.
It’s not much of a surprise to learn, therefore, that various films about divorce have received critical acclaim as earnest domestic dramas. We’ve seen various perspectives on divorce in many films over the decades, all of which are distinct from each other yet remain equally resonant. Some films set their conflicts almost entirely in the courtroom, outlining the legal ramifications of divorce… others keep their conflicts at home, outlining the personal, social, and marital struggles that ensue in harsh detail.
However, the road to this more nuanced phase of depicting marriage and divorce in film has not been easy. Reaching these complex and dramatic depictions has required a fair amount of social change and innovation within the subgenre. The film industry’s always had a knack for adapting to changes in social attitudes and filmgoing trends, so divorce and domesticity are far from exceptions to these patterns.
Cinema has generally had a contentious relationship with tackling divorce. The first depictions of marital separation in Hollywood coincided with the institution of the Hays Code from 1934 to 1954, which established rigid moral guidelines for self-censorship in the US film industry. These included a strict ban on films that failed to uphold the sanctity of marriage, portraying topics such as infidelity that were usually associated with divorce.
As a result, the majority of films released during the Code’s lifetime — including musical The Gay Divorcee (1934) and The Women (1939) — touched on marital dissolution with a simplistic, comedic, and decisively optimistic perspective. The latter, in particular, depicted a group of Manhattan socialites and their gossip about the troubling divorce of one among their group named Mary (Norma Shearer). As the film progressed, it never criticised the reasons for Mary’s failing marriage, instead reaffirming its necessity despite several of its glaring problems.
The tonal landscape of divorce cinema would eventually find itself changing alongside a post-World War II reckoning over the ethics of traditional domesticity. Divorce would slowly start to be validated as a serious marital issue by a growing number of people, and a rise in divorce rates would ensue as more couples started to seriously consider a separation. Needless to say, it was a massive transition from a time where even mentioning divorce was taboo to an era where divorce would be a real solution to marital conflict.
Naturally, the film industry quickly picked up on these developments, and it successfully managed to adapt in tandem with the cultural re-evaluation. The result was a growing influx of films such as Divorce Italian Style (1961), that no longer hesitated to expose divorce’s contradictions and absurdities, perverting the feel-good comedy of its predecessors into a black and biting satire. The film in question specifically depicted a man’s attempt to dupe his wife into an affair to justify an honour killing, then run off with his 16-year-old cousin. In terms of reflecting these marital conflicts, it quickly became clear that there wasn’t a single line not worth crossing.
It wasn’t until 1973, however, that a massive source of inspiration would eventually come in the form of Ingmar Bergman’s miniseries, Scenes From a Marriage, forever reshaping the definition of modern divorce cinema. In stark contrast to previous films that made a morbid farce out of marital conflict, Scenes From a Marriage was a shock to the system in terms of how seriously and realistically it flayed open divorce’s many grievances.
Bergman had already established himself by the 1970s as one of the forefront directors of his time, with films like The Seventh Seal (1957) and Persona (1966) being released to widespread acclaim. It was with the later years of his career, however, that he started venturing into strictly personal territory for his final few works. As such, one of the main reasons for the miniseries’ landmark status is its superb introspection, which comes about from Bergman directly recalling both his previous divorces and his parents’ separation. Throughout six 50-minute-long episodes, Scenes From a Marriage followed the strife of a Swedish couple — Johan (Erland Josephson) and Marianne (Liv Ullmann)— depicting a diverse and nuanced series of domestic conflicts that slowly erode their marriage. The miniseries depicted the couple’s conflict and romance with a realism rivalling that of cinema verité, enhanced by Josephson and Ullmann’s luminary lead performances.
Bergman’s thematic thesis for Scenes — and perhaps for his outlook on divorce as a whole — mostly remains heavily implied throughout the series, lurking behind every hurtful remark and every pained glance that the couple exchange. It’s not until the very end that Johan bluntly ruminates on the aftermath of the divorce, claiming that:
We’re emotional illiterates. We’ve been taught about anatomy and farming methods in Africa. We’ve learned mathematical formulas by heart. But we haven’t been taught a thing about our souls. We’re tremendously ignorant about what makes people tick.
For Bergman, this conclusion initially seems like well-trodden territory. His filmography frequently features the theme of miscommunication, often exacerbated by an outside force, such as civil war or terminal illness. Scenes From a Marriage, however, displays this miscommunication solely as the result of a couple’s inability to understand each other. It’s a stark reminder that every marital disagreement — custody battles, parental conflicts, extramarital affairs — can ultimately be traced back in some way to this failure of “emotional illiteracy”, no matter how specific or complex the problem is. Despite this, it’s just as much a reminder that while the issue remains both obvious yet obscure, it’s one that any marital relationship at risk of divorce is capable of overcoming, even after everything falls apart.
With such a nuanced message on the root of divorce and marital strife, Scenes From a Marriage would serve as a significant influence on the tone and style of divorce film from its release. From the late-1970s onwards, audiences watched eagerly as films began using divorce as a primary trope on screen in a more serious way. It wasn’t difficult to find films portraying this theme of emotional illiteracy with accessible amounts of gravitas, levity, and catharsis; it also wouldn’t be long until they garnered significant mainstream success.
A towering example of this is Kramer vs. Kramer (1979), a film that exposed in full view the procedural and nigh heartless nature of divorce in court. The film follows Ted Kramer (Dustin Hoffman), a workaholic reluctantly thrust into becoming the sole caretaker for his son Billy (Justin Henry), after his wife Joanna (Meryl Streep) leaves the house unannounced. 15 months after her departure, Ted and Billy have bonded after overcoming several emotional obstacles, but Joanna soon returns to claim custody of Billy. A court battle promptly ensues, and character assassinations, hypocrisies, and testimonies all start to emerge with unforgiving force.
In one of the first signs of just how much mainstream potential divorce films truly had, Kramer vs. Kramer went on to sweep the 52nd Academy Awards, winning ‘Best Picture’ alongside four other main prizes. Critics across the board also praised the film’s emotional impact especially in comparison to similar domestic dramas, citing its sympathetic refusal to take sides as one of its greatest qualities. In Roger Ebert’s words, “another movie might have hedged its bets, but ‘Kramer vs. Kramer’ exists very close to that edge where real people are making real decisions[…] we can’t assign moral labels to them.”
While Kramer’s emotional core may have specifically surrounded the main characters’ divorce, it also brought to the forefront several important social problems of the time that contributed to this marital conflict. Audiences had a glimpse into how workers’ rights, parents’ rights, and gender roles were able to influence the decisions behind divorce, something would influence a variety of divorce dramedies to come in later decades.
Smash-hit Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) displayed divorce’s effects on parent-child relationships through the story of a housekeeper-disguised voice actor (Robin Williams), providing alternative commentary to Kramer’s usage of parents’ rights. Likewise, Krzysztof Kieślowski’s Three Colours: White (1994) portrayed many of these same problems through the story of a man seeking revenge on his ex-wife after a humiliating separation that strips him of his entire livelihood.
Ultimately, though, it’s impossible to fully describe just how truly widespread the usage of divorce in film became around this time. Even if it wasn’t the primary focus or conflict of certain films’ narratives, it became a major trope of interest for a litany of drama-heavy movies and TV shows, regardless of tone or narrative intent. Many character profiles and backstories included divorce in one way or another, and marital discord could often become a smaller part of a story’s overarching plotline.
This development would have long lasting effects on the subgenre and how much its boundaries could truly extend. If the late 20th-century properly cemented divorce as a vernacular dramatic device, the 21st-century would fully take advantage of this in heavily inspired forms. Several films from the past two decades have used divorce as a narrative foundation to explore different emotional and social dimensions, and the result is an amplified focus on social issues from the ’80s and ’90s divorce films. While it rarely overshadows divorce as the crux of a story, it’s present enough to equally and effectively share a thematic spotlight.
With this narrative philosophy in mind, many of the 21st-century’s best divorce films have gone on to receive international acclaim. Asghar Farhadi’s A Separation (2011) opens with the conflict of a divorcing Iranian couple, but morphs into a legal battle between two families, delivering commentary on class, religious law, and the social pressures that lead to deception. Andrey Zvyagintsev’s Loveless (2017) takes divorce’s parent-child dynamics to a bleak extreme, as it depicts the disappearance of a divorcing couple’s son, the ensuing police search, and the ruinous effect it has on the couple themselves.
Every era in divorce cinema doesn’t pass by without a landmark film that staunchly defines a precedent for the subgenre’s future. Kramer vs. Kramer standardised an accessible dramatic-comedic tone alongside social commentary, and likewise, Scenes From a Marriage harrowingly examined the litany of personal and domestic reasons behind separation. It’s with this in mind that Marriage Story (2019) proves itself to be the clear spiritual successor to both, and it’s likely to serve as the next major influence for whatever’s next for divorce in film.
Marriage Story is notable in how it encompasses so much emotional ground with a complete awareness of the divorce process. Here, the separation at the center of this story is between Charlie (Adam Driver), a theatre director, and Nicole (Scarlett Johansson), an actress. On the surface, their seemingly amicable divorce mainly concerns where they want to live. For Charlie, it’s New York, where his theatre company is; and for Nicole, it’s Los Angeles, so she can live closer to her family and revive her on-screen career. As their divorce gradually becomes more burdensome and convoluted, their deep-seated grievances slowly begin to emerge, testing the limits of their relationship.
Writer-director Noah Baumbach has made no secret of his familiarity with separation. The Squid and the Whale (2007) was a semi-autobiographical film charting his experience with his parents’ divorce, and his creation of Marriage Story added onto it his own separation with actress Jennifer Jason Leigh. It’s through this Bergman-esque introspection that Marriage Story became capable of touching on every possible aspect of its protagonists’ divorce. Traces of Kramer vs. Kramer’s legal battles all the way to Scenes From a Marriage’s domestic issues can be seen all throughout the film, making clear how much inspiration it truly contains.
Baumbach adeptly uses his piercing wit as well as his influences to show how Charlie and Nicole’s divorce — with its lawyers, expenses, and procedures — viciously turns them against each other and intensifies their animosity. As A.A. Dowd phrases it, however, “the feelings that first brought them together are still there, informing their flawed attempts to move on without destroying each other.” Charlie and Nicole emerge deeply scarred from their arduous separation, but the final stretch of Marriage Story subtly reaffirms what remains of their love, even after everything falls apart. It’s a film that chooses not to feature a complementary social issue alongside divorce, but depicts divorce itself as its own systemic problem, forcing hatred into couples that try to stray from it. At the same time, it truly believes that love can still persist, even despite the amplified emotions that come in the process of separation.
Like any dedicated relationship, it’s difficult to anticipate the direction divorce in film might head next. The subgenre has morphed from evasive feel-good comedy to morally complex domestic drama over the course of nearly a century, leading many to wonder about the unexpected places it may end up in the future.
We’ve come to a place with divorce both as a social issue and as a subject in film where we now understand its nuances on a more thorough, serious level. However, as is the case with every equally complex topic, there’s still an entire world of ideas and concepts to explore. It’s exciting to consider the social, emotional, and thematic areas that the divorce subgenre might expand to, but it’s also worth remembering what exactly led it to where it is now.
From comedy, satire, domestic drama, social commentary, and beyond, each of these phases in divorce cinema will serve as reflections of their own time. We’ll still be attracted to divorce as drama for how it confronts our ideals about family, but the ways we depict divorce in film will never stop changing.
Header image: Scarlett Johansson, Azhy Robertson, and Adam Driver in Marriage Story. Photo: IMDb.
