The invention relates to an improvement in the contrast of an antiferroelectric liquid crystal cell which is constructed with an antiferroelectric liquid crystal sandwiched between a pair of substrates. The antiferroelectric liquid crystal cell has a layer structure such that when a Fourier transform is applied to an output voltage produced as a result of the application of a sinusoidal voltage as a reference frequency to the liquid crystal cell, the transformed output voltage contains frequency components at odd and even multiples of the reference frequency, and the optical path length of the liquid crystal cell lies in the range of 100 nm to 800 nm.