Admission UCB Students 50 cents - Others: Regular Viewing Member ticket prices

The Devil's Wanton is not only the best “early Bergman” but remains one of his most powerfully pessimistic statements on the human condition: the first film on which Bergman was given an entirely free hand by the studio, it is an autobiographical work which begins with a film director discussing a project with his former Math professor, who has been in an insane asylum and now wants to do a picture about Hell which would begin with a proclamation by the Devil: “As I from this day on will assume power over all peoples and countries of the world, I want to announce the following: I command that everything shall remain as before.” This mood of black humor is brilliantly sustained throughout as the story shifts to an affair between an actor-writer and a prostitute: here, Bergman reveals full mastery of the claustrophobic techniques employed in his recent pictures, at the same time commanding a much more dynamic, somewhat expressionistic visual style reminiscent of Cocteau's in Les Parents Terribles.