THE DEVIL’S EYE. Because Ingmar Bergman also made comedies!
Therefore, somewhat surprising to some may be the following fact – the Swedish director had a sense of humor. Furthermore, he let it resonate in his films several times, creating works with labels as exotic-sounding as “Bergman comedy.” Among the few films that can be described as such, the most well-known and respected is probably Smiles of a Summer Night from 1955, a social farce featuring many actors, which marked the director’s first significant international success. However, even more unusual for the Swede seems to be the later, and rarely remembered The Devil’s Eye, five years after.
Filmed in the same year as The Seventh Seal, a year before the premiere of The Virgin Spring which opened the so-called Trilogy of Faith, The Devil’s Eye surprises with its lightness and economy. In this film, Bergman tells the story of Don Juan sent to Earth to seduce Britt-Marie, the pastor’s daughter whose virtue causes a stye on the titular devil’s eye. Bergman’s imposed tone of the tale with a wink almost completely detaches The Devil’s Eye from the psychological considerations of the characters, this time treated more sketchily than deeply, which largely sets this film apart even from the director’s other comedic attempts, usually embedding humor in more profound characterizations. Differences are also noticeable in the film’s form. The story unfolds on three levels – in a somewhat baroque hell, a realistic village where the pastor and his daughter live, and in a studio where Gunnar Björnstrand comments on the events as a narrator. The narrative follows the successive stages of the devil’s plan, who, to cure his affliction, orders the legendary libertine to seduce an innocent girl.
Played by a constellation of actors known from Bergman’s other works – besides Björnstrand in the leading roles, we see Bibi Andersson, Jarl Kulle, Gertrud Fridh, and Nils Poppe – it seems to be Bergman’s most atypical film, conflicting with the main stream of his style not only through its comedic superficiality but also its sketchy treatment of the problem. Yet, The Devil’s Eye fits into the director’s oeuvre in its own way.
In this film, despite the unconventional theatrical farce, fundamental motifs and themes of Bergman’s work reappear, including morality, passion, and feminine sexuality. With the “standard program” of the Swedish master, The Devil’s Eye also shares the presence of theological themes, although they are presented radically differently here. If in Bergman’s greatest dramatic works, such as The Silence or The Seventh Seal, the hypothetical God was discussed through the prism of his silence, in Bergman’s comedy, he shifted the perspective, and supernatural forces are not presumed additions or fulfillments of reality but the starting point of the entire story. The director, specializing in poignant portraits of people overwhelmed by doubts and theological dilemmas, this time begins his tale in the devil’s office, troubled by the kindness of people above, on Earth. The problem addressed in the film is thus not the ontological condition of man, his morality, and the uncertainty of existence, but the struggles of heaven and hell in the world of men. One could say that in a genre atypical for him, Ingmar Bergman uniquely reversed the classical perspective of metaphysics and the relationship between man and the supernatural world.
The Devil’s Eye also brings back, taken to an extreme in the films directly following it, the motif of the silence of God, which we will not be able to witness in the film, although his main adversary and his entire hellish kingdom appear in the opening scenes. The narrator states that in comedy, God cannot not exist, and indeed, the actions of Don Juan and his servant Pablo seem to be torpedoed by heavenly forces. Yet they remain only speculation, while hell materializes clearly and distinctly. This may sound absurd, but The Devil’s Eye is a film that can be considered Gnostic in its message if we look at the presentation of good and evil. In this context, it is also worth noting the punchline of this comedic morality play.
This film also features typical Bergmanesque focus on the conflict within man between passion and corporeality and higher emotions, though narratively, Britt-Marie seems to be the main character experiencing this conflict; in fact, the main “arena” of these struggles is Don Juan himself. Being a personification of sexual temptation, the legendary seducer experiences the loss of the effectiveness of his abilities when confronted with unexpectedly morally strong girl, taming and neutralizing his advantages. Again, there is a comedic reversal of the direction of considerations – it is not the man who is caught in the clutches of the body and emotions, but the very force struggles with man. It must be admitted that this is humor worthy of the creator of The Virgin Spring perhaps very selfish and hermetic, but also indicative of his self-awareness as an artist and a considerable degree of distance to his own intellectual journeys.
The comedy in Bergman’s film mainly arises from the bizarre collisions of characters with emotional states and actions that do not suit their image. Therefore, genuinely funny is the grotesquely unflappable and dignified Don Juan, who discovers long-forgotten noble feelings within himself, as well as the satirically portrayed Satan played by Stig Järrel, struggling with a minor ailment, simultaneously considering himself the ruler of the worldly realm and blaming everyone around for his own oversights. Similarly amusing is the portrayal of contemporary pragmatic Protestants discussing the presence of embodied evil forces in their home in a natural and unproblematic way. However, the most wit is seen in the self-referential character of the narrator, who mockingly, to some extent, ridicules the demiurgic authors/creators and questions the basic frameworks of the story.
Looking at it historically and considering the chronology of Bergman’s cinema and the stages in his existential reflections expressed through successive films, The Devil’s Eye can be seen as a kind of diversion, a light interlude of the Swedish creator, taking a deep breath before perhaps the heaviest images in his career. The Devil’s Eye does not have the power of Bergman’s best achievements and even in the field of comedy, it yields to, for example, the aforementioned Smiles of a Summer Night. Nevertheless, even in such seemingly distant from his “regular” work, Bergman did not refrain from interweaving a simple story with deeper reflections, linking it to the key themes of his filmography. The point? Bergman was a great director, and it’s worth delving into his rich oeuvre because even in lesser-known and less successful films, something interesting can be found. And besides that, The Devil’s Eye is very enjoyable to watch, which further confirms Ingmar’s artistry.
Tomasz Raczkowski