Noah Baumbach Cites Ingmar Bergman’s ‘Persona’ As Inspiration For ‘Marriage Story’ As More Images Are Released

With yesterday’s lineup announcement from the Toronto International Film Festival, film fans were finally given more information about what filmmaker Noah Baumbach has been working on. For months, his latest project was only known as “untitled Noah Baumbach film,” but now, thanks to the festival, we know that his latest is called “Marriage Story” and stars none other than Scarlett Johansson and frequent collaborator, Adam Driver.

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The upcoming drama tells the story of a dissolving marriage between a playwright and his actress wife, who are involved in a bitter divorce battle regarding the custody of their son. “Marriage Story” is Baumbach’s first film since the 2017 film “The Meyerowitz Stories,” which much like his latest, will be released courtesy of Netflix.

While many might immediately think of “Kramer vs. Kramer” when coming up with the iconic divorce films, the filmmaker said, in a new interview with IndieWire, he does “love” that film but his influences were more diverse than just that classic. Baumbach specifically mentioned a couple of comedies that were influential for how he wrote the dynamic between partners, Ernst Lubitsch’s “To Be or Not to Be” and Howard Hawks’ “Twentieth Century.”

“Both of those movies have performers who are in personal relationships in and out of their work,” he said. “What helped with this family is that because they’re show people, the theatricality of it all feels organic to them. This gave me a real opportunity in what would otherwise be considered a naturalistic movie.”

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Another film that influenced “Marriage Story” doesn’t have anything to do with the plot, but more with the craftsmanship — Ingmar Bergman’s “Persona.”

“I knew I wanted a lot of closeups in this movie. It’s a movie where you often have two people in a space together, and I loved how he would frame those actresses,” said Baumbach.

As mentioned, “Marriage Story” debuts at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival and will arrive on Netflix after.

You can also see some new pictures from Baumbach’s film below: