When Miss Julie had its Stockholm opening on the Small Stage of the Royal Dramatic Theatre, Dramaten, on 7 December 1985, it was Ingmar Bergman's (1918–2007) second staging of the play. Four years earlier he had staged the piece as Julie at the Residenz Theater in Munich with German actors and in a translation by Peter Weiss (Strindberg 1984a). In Munich Julie was presented together with Ibsen's A Doll's House – here as often in Germany entitled Nora – and Bergman's own stage adaptation of his TV serial Scenes from a Marriage. The triad was referred to as the Bergman project. The premiere took place on 30 April 1981. The three plays were presented in one and the same evening, Nora and Julie consecutively on the big stage of the Residenz Theater, Scenes from a Marriage at the Theater am Marstall close by. The same ticket gave access to all three performances. The idea was to present what Bergman called “three sisters” who all found themselves in gender-determined crisis situations.

Of the three performances, Julie was received with the greatest reserve. The reason may partly have been that, following upon Nora, it was witnessed by a rather tired group of critics. Another reason may have been that Christine Buchegger, Bergman's favourite actress, planned for the part of Julie, had suddenly become seriously ill and had to be replaced by Anne-Marie Kuster.

Bergman contrasted the life-denying Julie with the life-affirming Jean. In that respect his staging was very faithful to the text. But in his staging of the third part, that of Kristin, he differed from almost all earlier directors of the play. Kristin was not “a female slave [-] subservient and dull” like “an animal” in “her hypocrisy”, Strindberg's characterization of her in the preface (63). Instead she was a young – Gundi Ellert's Kristin was 30 – sensuous woman who “rules not only her kitchen, but also Jean. She is the reason why Jean is a winner – because [she] is the strongest of them all” (Bergman 17). Other important aspects of the direction were the emphasis on Julie's death urge; her epilepsy, inherited from her mother; and her mental strength when the suicide seems unavoidable.