It's a strong film, as Bergman films are, but it is not as good as some of his earlier works, mainly because of the rather repetitious feel of the story.

It's in those fully imagined marital fights that the film sheds it straightjacket of alternating plot twists, and lets the richer, more mournful emotions creep in.

The subject of this Ingmar Bergman film is repression, but everything is dismayingly on the surface.

The trouble with From The Life Of The Marionettes is that we don’t care about any of the main characters: it might as well be a documentary about polar ice caps instead of people.