By all accounts, Ingmar Bergman was a jovial and fun guy. In interviews, he's always smiling and happy. He was married five times and had affairs with most of his attractive female actresses. That doesn't seem like the kind of guy who made exclusively dour explorations of existential spaces, and he didn't. Most of what he's known for is stuff like The Seventh Seal and Winter Light, but he also had his share of lighter fare. I've always known, and loved, his rendition of The Magic Flute, but he did much beyond that.
The Devil's Eye was released in the same year as The Virgin Spring, but it feels like it's from a different era. The devil, you see, has a sty in his eye because there's a virgin on Earth who is about to be married still chaste. So, what does he do? He sends Hell's greatest weapon against chastity, Don Juan, out of his endless torment of unrequited sensuality to Earth to end this unbearable condition.
Farce and comedy run through the whole picture. Pablo, Don Juan's faithful servant, seduces a vicar's wife. The Devil, wanting to keep an eye on Don Juan's progress, sends one of his demons to observe. The demon is a trickster who whispers into people's ears, turns into a cat, and gets trapped in the vicar's cupboard when the vicar tricks him in on a search for gin.
Being an Ingmar Bergman film, though, the movie doesn't completely embrace the comedic elements. The scenes between the girl and Don Juan explore desire, commitment, and fidelity. They're filmed just as intimately as anything in The Silence Trilogy.
One might imagine that having such different tones might lead to something inconsistent, but Bergman actually manages between them deftly. There are no jarring shifts because he eases from one feeling into the next. It helps that the farce never gets too farcical and the drama never gets too dramatic.
The film is punctuated by a few moments of Gunnar Björnstrand speaking directly to the audience. He's easily the most outright funny element of the movie as he drily introduces elements, like the structure of Hell or reads stage direction from the script blithely.
It's really a quite enjoyable film that got hidden under the avalanche of more serious films that Bergman was producing around the time.
The Devil's Eye was released in the same year as The Virgin Spring, but it feels like it's from a different era. The devil, you see, has a sty in his eye because there's a virgin on Earth who is about to be married still chaste. So, what does he do? He sends Hell's greatest weapon against chastity, Don Juan, out of his endless torment of unrequited sensuality to Earth to end this unbearable condition.
Farce and comedy run through the whole picture. Pablo, Don Juan's faithful servant, seduces a vicar's wife. The Devil, wanting to keep an eye on Don Juan's progress, sends one of his demons to observe. The demon is a trickster who whispers into people's ears, turns into a cat, and gets trapped in the vicar's cupboard when the vicar tricks him in on a search for gin.
Being an Ingmar Bergman film, though, the movie doesn't completely embrace the comedic elements. The scenes between the girl and Don Juan explore desire, commitment, and fidelity. They're filmed just as intimately as anything in The Silence Trilogy.
One might imagine that having such different tones might lead to something inconsistent, but Bergman actually manages between them deftly. There are no jarring shifts because he eases from one feeling into the next. It helps that the farce never gets too farcical and the drama never gets too dramatic.
The film is punctuated by a few moments of Gunnar Björnstrand speaking directly to the audience. He's easily the most outright funny element of the movie as he drily introduces elements, like the structure of Hell or reads stage direction from the script blithely.
It's really a quite enjoyable film that got hidden under the avalanche of more serious films that Bergman was producing around the time.