PURPOSE: To utilize an optical controller as a liquid-crystal optical shutter, by sandwiching liquid crystal in a homogeneous array between base bodies while at least either base body is made transparent, and making linear polarized light incident to the liquid crystal at a specific angle of incidence.

CONSTITUTION: The liquid crystal 3 which has a refractive index nISO in liquid phase and a refractive index ne to an abnormal light beam while nISO<ng<ne are sandwiched in the homogeneous array between the transparent base bodies 1 and 2 having a refractive index ng, and those base bodies 1 and 2 have transparent resistors 4 and 5 as heating means. The linear polarized light is made incident to the liquid crystal 3 in a liqid crystal cell at some angle of incidence greater than an angle sin-1(nISO/ng) through a polarizing plate 8 having a transmission axis direction coincident with or nearly coincident to the molecular axis direction of the liquid crystal 3. The incident light is controlled into transmitted or reflected light by controlling the electric feeding to the transparent resistors 4 and 5.