Sugar-Coated Bedbug

The Devil's Eye (Svensk Filmindustri), a minor, clever, somewhat symbolixed comedy by Sweden's Ingmar Bergman, is intended as a bawdy song of innocence and experience, a frisky marriage of heaven and hell.

The action opens in the latter region, where His Satanic Majesty has acquired a painful sty in his evil little eye. This, his ministers agree, is when a fellow needs a fiend. They remind Mephisto that "a woman's chastity is a sty in the Devil's Eye.'' and point out the perfection that has caused his infection--the virgin daughter (Bibi Andersson) of an innocent country parson (Nils Poppe). "Where innocence is greatest.'' Mephisto murmurs wickedly, "evil is nearest."

Abracadabra! The Evil One relieves Don Juan (Jarl Kulle) of his atrocious eternal torment, seduction without satisfaction, and restores him to life with infernal instructions: lance that sty. The Great Lover--whom Bergman wittily conceives as the typical hero of a hair-oil ad, the sort of won't-you-be-my-Valentino every schoolgirl at some point adores--arrives at the rendezvous to find his ladylove smeared with housepaint and dressed in blue jeans. He stares in dismay. What is it?

It is a normal, healthy, 20th century girl--and that, though his nibs doesn't know it, means trouble. Drawing an unfathomable sigh. Don Juan exposes the poor young thing to his invincible romantic glower. She looks at him curiously, as though he were one of her mother's old beaux. "Kiss me." he murmurs torridly. She readily complies, suffers no evident reaction, coolly informs him: "You're the 37th. I want to kiss 50 men before I get married.'' Smugly, she assures him that she is in love with her fiance. Has Don Juan never been in love? "People who can love" he replies, with regret he had not realized he felt. "can be counted on one hand, and their suffering is without end. They are mirrors which reflect God's light upon us other wretches, groping in the dark." She looks at him as if he were an exotic tidbit--say, a sugar-coated bedbug.

That night, getting desperate, Don Juan sneaks into his victim's bedroom. All at once, even before he makes a pass, she gives in. "You can do what you like with me." she says quietly. "I can't endure your suffering. I beg you to free me from your suffering." Victory on these terms is more humiliating than defeat. Doesn't she love him. even a little? "No." Suddenly he begins to understand that, on the contrary, it is he who loves her; that for the first time in life or death he is in love. In dignity and silence he descends again into hell, he returns to a torment infinitely more terrible because now, with a heart awakened by love, he can truly feel the meaningless enormity of his eternal lust.

The machinery of Bergman's allegory clanks at every turn of the plot--it needs quite a few more squirts of midnight oil. But as always his actors are excellent, his camera work refined, his script concise and elegantly written. As always his deep-revolving spirit dredges up great gloomy gems of wisdom that flash light from many facets into the heights and depths of life. Among them is one of the first water: "Love shields one from--nothing."

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