Just from reading the screenplay, Saraband appeared as a manifesto of pure Bergamanism. It tells of Johan and Marianne’s return, the protagonists of Scener ur ett äktenskap (Scenes from a Marriage), thirty years later. They have aged and decidedly changed. […] The saraband is a Renaissance courtly dance, slow and lascivious, made for couples that come together and leave each other. Bergman, in choosing this title, instead of the original one (Anna), that outlined too openly a Christian film on the icon and its power, did not renounce anything, he only transferred it: the ineffable is also a musical question. Of the dexterity of the direction, astonishing in the smallest detail and of the accuracy of the acting I haven’t said anything. They reach and surpass, in absolute purity, what Bergman had achieved in his great masterpieces. And Saraband is, in a certain sense, his greatest masterpiece. At any rate his most beautiful last film.

Jacques Aumont, in “Cahiers du cinéma”, 588, 2004