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United Kingdom released, PAL/Region 0 DVD: LANGUAGES: Swedish ( Dolby Digital 2.0 ), English ( Subtitles ), SPECIAL FEATURES: Black & White, Booklet, Filmographies, Interactive Menu, Production Notes, Scene Access, Trailer(s), SYNOPSIS: A maths teacher approaches a former pupil, now a film director, with an idea for a film: the Devil declares that the Earth is hell. Upon considering the idea for his next project, the director shares his memories with a journalist while filming an ill-fated passage from his past... Based in and around a movie studio, this experimental and intriguing film is essentially a film within a film and is notable for being the first Bergman film in which Death, a key leitmotif, makes an appearance... ...Prison (1949) ( Fängelse ) ( The Devil's Wanton )
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This early Bergman film is watchable, creative and impressionistic in its visuals and, it must be admitted, pretty bleak. It also, in many ways, looks like the slightly immature anguish of a young artist rather than the far deeper and more subtle essays on existence which Bergman produced later in his career.
The premise of the film is boldly (and baldly) stated - a young film director is given the suggestion for a new film - is life hell? He turns the idea down but events for two couples explore this idea, including, crucially, the sufferings of a prostitute. Bergman posed the following questions as an introduction to the film: "What is her guilt that she has to live this nauseating life? Is earth Hell? And is there in that case also a God, and where is He, and where are the dead? I wanted to make a film about this, and I wanted to make other people just as agitated and inquiring about it as I am."
There are several experiments with film form here - credits are read in voice over, there is a film within a film and a dream sequence, and it is on the whole a good watch - but the material is raw, and somehow a little adolescent. Within a couple of years though, masterpieces like 'Summer Interlude' would start to appear. By comparison, 'Prison' looks like some sketches before the main events.
Recommended for Bergman completists and anyone looking for slightly forgotten European / art cinema. As always, the Tartan DVD release provides an excellent print and a handful of small extras - a 4 page booklet, film notes and trailers for other Bergman films.
The premise of the film is boldly (and baldly) stated - a young film director is given the suggestion for a new film - is life hell? He turns the idea down but events for two couples explore this idea, including, crucially, the sufferings of a prostitute. Bergman posed the following questions as an introduction to the film: "What is her guilt that she has to live this nauseating life? Is earth Hell? And is there in that case also a God, and where is He, and where are the dead? I wanted to make a film about this, and I wanted to make other people just as agitated and inquiring about it as I am."
There are several experiments with film form here - credits are read in voice over, there is a film within a film and a dream sequence, and it is on the whole a good watch - but the material is raw, and somehow a little adolescent. Within a couple of years though, masterpieces like 'Summer Interlude' would start to appear. By comparison, 'Prison' looks like some sketches before the main events.
Recommended for Bergman completists and anyone looking for slightly forgotten European / art cinema. As always, the Tartan DVD release provides an excellent print and a handful of small extras - a 4 page booklet, film notes and trailers for other Bergman films.
Format:DVD
Bergman's first film where he wrote his own script, and had real
artistic control (in exchange for a tiny budget.).
An aging film professor, just released from a mental asylum, visits an
old student, now a successful director, and challenges him to make a
film showing that the devil really rules the earth. While dismissive in
the moment, the director is haunted by the idea, and a journalist
friend suggests the film could take off from his experience
interviewing a very young prostitute.
We then enter the prostitute's story, and it's (intentionally) never
fully clear if what we're seeing is the film that arose from the
concept, or the truth of the girl's life.
Beautifully photographed, and full of inventive touches (the main
credits are spoken, not seen, over a long tracking shot of a dark
cobblestone street), I was also surprised that it contained more of a
dark sense of humor, about itself and the world, then most critics
acknowledge. In turn, that keeps the film's occasional youthful
over-obsession with despair from ever feeling unbearably sophomoric.
I will admit it lost steam for me in the last third, some of the
performers aren't quite up to the heavy burdens of the script, and a
few sequences are awkward and bespeak Bergman's comparative youth. But
the next morning I found myself haunted by images and moments even if
the whole only felt partly successful.
The Tartan DVD is a very nice transfer.
artistic control (in exchange for a tiny budget.).
An aging film professor, just released from a mental asylum, visits an
old student, now a successful director, and challenges him to make a
film showing that the devil really rules the earth. While dismissive in
the moment, the director is haunted by the idea, and a journalist
friend suggests the film could take off from his experience
interviewing a very young prostitute.
We then enter the prostitute's story, and it's (intentionally) never
fully clear if what we're seeing is the film that arose from the
concept, or the truth of the girl's life.
Beautifully photographed, and full of inventive touches (the main
credits are spoken, not seen, over a long tracking shot of a dark
cobblestone street), I was also surprised that it contained more of a
dark sense of humor, about itself and the world, then most critics
acknowledge. In turn, that keeps the film's occasional youthful
over-obsession with despair from ever feeling unbearably sophomoric.
I will admit it lost steam for me in the last third, some of the
performers aren't quite up to the heavy burdens of the script, and a
few sequences are awkward and bespeak Bergman's comparative youth. But
the next morning I found myself haunted by images and moments even if
the whole only felt partly successful.
The Tartan DVD is a very nice transfer.
Format:DVD
An ex Maths teacher announces he's just been released from a lunatic asylum (as you do) to some people making a film. (He used to teach one of them). He says that he has ideas about the Devil. The filmmakers try to adapt those ideas into a screenplay. Apparently they reject those ideas -after making them - for this film, presumably.
The meandering narrative seems to explore scenarios that surround some pretty miserable and uninteresting people. I think I read that it's Bergman's first film to look solely at mild horror and the place of the Devil, both in philosophy, film and in folklore. Suicide, alcoholism, prostitution, even drowning babies born to the under-aged get limp, clumsy and unconvincing treatment.
It's pretty impossible to follow and no doubt spoilt by knowing what gems came later from the Master of Darkness.
Best thing to come out of it was a line that I've slightly altered - "Life Itself is a terminal illness "
The meandering narrative seems to explore scenarios that surround some pretty miserable and uninteresting people. I think I read that it's Bergman's first film to look solely at mild horror and the place of the Devil, both in philosophy, film and in folklore. Suicide, alcoholism, prostitution, even drowning babies born to the under-aged get limp, clumsy and unconvincing treatment.
It's pretty impossible to follow and no doubt spoilt by knowing what gems came later from the Master of Darkness.
Best thing to come out of it was a line that I've slightly altered - "Life Itself is a terminal illness "
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