Log24

Don Giovanni, Part II

(See entries of June 8, 2004,
and June  4,  2004.)

Ingmar Bergman long ago
"earned the nickname of
the 'demon director,'
such are the demands that
he makes on his performers."

— Anthony Lane in
The New Yorker,
June 14  & 21, 2004

AFP/GETTY IMAGES

Ingmar Bergman
on the set in
the late 1940's

From the entry of
June 4 last year:

Commentary by Jack Kerouac,
from an entry of May 21, 2004:

"So what do we all do in this life which comes on so much like an empty voidness yet warns us that we will die in pain, decay, old age, horror–?  Hemingway called it a dirty trick.  It might even be an ancient Ordeal laid down on us by an evil Inquisitor in Space, like the ordeal of the sieve and scissors, or even the water ordeal where they dump you in the water with toes tied to thumbs, O God– Only Lucifer could be so mean and I am Lucifer and I'm not that mean, in fact Lucifer goes to Heaven– The warm lips against warm necks in beds all over the world trying to get out of the dirty Ordeal by Death…."

Commentary by The New Yorker:

"… listen to the words of Pablo, the servant of Don Juan, who is summoned from the underworld in 'The Devil's Eye,' Bergman's little-known comedy of 1960. Pablo seduces the wife of a minister, and then, sorrowful and sated, falling to his knees, he addresses her thus:

'First, I'll finish off that half-dug vegetable patch I saw. Then I'll sit and let the rain fall on me. I shall feel wonderfully cool. And I'll breakfast on one of those sour apples down by the gate. After that, I shall go back to Hell.' "