Michael_Elliott Serpent's Egg, The (1977) * 1/2 (out of 4) If it's true that every great director makes a bad movie then this here is Bergman's bad movie. David Carradine stars as a circus performer in 1923 Berlin who moves in with his sister-in-law (Liv Ullmann) after his brother's suicide. The two make what money they can to survive but they both find it difficult being Jewish and things take an even worse turn when Carradine's character takes a job for a strange scientist. I've read several negative reviews of this film and it appears the movie was originally attacked for being disgusting or hard to watch because of the subject matter. I didn't find anything, even the ending, to be disturbing but I did find the movie hard to watch because it was really, really boring me to death. I really couldn't believe I was watching a Bergman movie because everything in this movie came off as being flat to me. There wasn't a bit of life in this thing and I realized by the ten-minute mark that I was going to be in trouble. One big problem is the entire story structure, which just seems invisible to me. I'm not sure what Bergman was trying to do here and I've heard many say this film has more "story" than most of the director's films but I'd disagree. I didn't find any story here and to make matters worse is that Carradine really seems out of place. Not once did I buy him in this role and I don't think he delivered the power the movie needed especially in the more emotional scenes. I also found Ullmann to be rather bland, which is the first time I've said that about her. The one saving grace is a major one and that's the cinematography by Sven Nykvist. I'd almost recommend this movie because of his work alone and that opening sequence where Carradine discovers his brother's body is certainly a beauty to look at.

Graham Greene The Serpent's Egg (1977) is one of director Ingmar Bergman's most flawed and problematic pictures; the kind of film that impresses us with its grand ambition and incredibly intricate attention to detail, but seems to lack any sense of the pain, emotion and character examination that marked out his far greater works, such as The Seventh Seal (1957), Wild Strawberries (1958) and Persona (1966). Of course, there are numerous references to these earlier films scattered throughout The Serpent's Egg, with the very Bergman-like notions of angst, catharsis and personal exploitation figuring heavily within this bleak malaise of abrupt violence, sleaze and alienation; as well as the familiar presentation of a central character who is a performer, thus leading to the usual self-reflexive conundrums that this particular structural device can present. Within these confines, Bergman attempts to create a film that could satisfy two wildly differing creative view-points, only with both perspectives further muddied by the film's troubled production and by Bergman's perhaps misguided attempt to create a work that could be more acceptable to a mainstream, American audience.On the one hand we have what would appear to be a straight, historical melodrama documenting the brutal decadence and oppression of the pre-Second World War Weimar Republic, and the struggle within this world of rising power, industry and an ever-changing political climate of the tortured artist attempting to make ends meet. With this angle, the film also attempts to chart the lingering air of violence and conflict left over from the First World War, whilst also prefiguring and foreshadowing the violence, guilt, hate, deceit and paranoia that would eventually follow with the inevitable rise of the Nazis. This aspect of the film is perhaps less in keeping with the kind of work that Bergman was producing during this era, with the generic, historical aspect obviously showing through; taking the emphasis away from the characters and the duplicitous games that they play with one another when rendered in a claustrophobic, purely psychological state. This idea has defined the majority of Bergman's best work, with the simplicity of the story and the unpretentious presentation of two people simply existing within the same limited emotional space, which is too often lacking from the presentation of the film in question. With The Serpent's Egg, Bergman attempts to open up his world, creating a fully functioning universe of characters and locations that jars against the (ultimately) personal scope of the narrative.Through punctuated by a couple of scenes of incredible violence, the earlier scenes of the film could be taken as a fairly dutiful stab at an almost Hollywood-like historical film, before adding this whole other (narrative) layer in the second act that seems to conspire to pervert the story into a tortured, Kafka-like nightmare of fear, paranoia and dread. Here the film becomes interesting, because it gets to the root of Bergman's talent for exploring a path of personal despair and abject horror in a way that easy to appreciate on an emotional, psychological level. The film becomes more closed-in, as the locations are used more sparingly; the characters whittled down to the bare minimum, stressing the power games and confliction between the central couple and their seemingly perfunctory antagonist in a way that is reminiscent of a film like Shame (1966). As the story progresses further, we realise that the antagonist character is far from the token, mechanical villain, as Bergman introduces themes that tip the film into the realms of science-fiction, and yet, stories of this nature and urban legends are abundant when looking at the period leading up to the tyranny of Third Reich, and in particular the "work" of people like Josef Mengele and Horst Schumann amongst others.This second half of the film ties the themes together in such a way as to overcome the central flaws of the film, which are numerous and seem to be the result of Bergman working towards the American market and in language that wasn't his own. There are some incredibly effective sequences, but too often, the script falls flat or the performances are allowed to wander. Many also attribute the lead performance of David Carradine as a reason why the film doesn't quite work, and although I'm a fan of Carradine and his slow, laconic persona that was put to such great use in a film like Kill Bill (2003), he does seem woefully miscast and at odds with the kind of expressionistic examinations that Bergman's work required (I can't image the original choice of Dustin Hoffman working much better either). Ideally, the film would have definitely benefited from the appearance of, say, Max Von Sydow, but it's not like Carradine is terrible. His heart and spirit are in the right place, and his continual appearance of pained confusion and eventual desperation seem to fit the continual stylistic juxtapositions of the script and are used well by Bergman, as both the character and the actor become puppet-like caricatures in a way that makes sense within the drama.Although The Serpent's Egg is, without question, a flawed work, it is not without merits. The period detail of the production and costume design and the atmosphere that Bergman evokes is fantastic throughout, while the second half of the film, with its lurid desperation and escalating sense fear and obsession makes sense within the context of Bergman's career as a whole. Some of the images have the power and the potency to remains with the viewer long after the film has ended; while the significant horror of the film, and the roots with both pre and post war German history are, as far as I know, unique in contemporary cinema. Often a rather ugly, brutal and depressing film, The Serpent's Egg is still required viewing for Bergman fans, even if it does pale in comparison to his far greater works.

Jonathon Dabell Upon getting to the end of The Serpent's Egg, my first reaction was: "how could a director of Bergman's calibre have made a movie as bad as this?" When I'd had time to reflect on the film, I realised that it wasn't as awful as I'd first thought. The issue seems to be that when Bergman's name is given as the director of a movie, we expect something close to perfection. But should we really have a preconceived belief that The Serpent's Egg will be an outstanding film simply because it's made by the same person who directed The Seventh Seal, Wild Strawberries and Cries and Whispers? Surely each new film should be judged on its own merits (or lack of) rather than compared to earlier works?Jewish-American Abel Rosenborg (David Carradine) is an out-of-work circus performer living in Berlin in 1923. The city is in financial ruin following the German defeat in World War 1 – inflation is at astronomical levels, and unimaginable poverty exists everywhere. Abel discovers that his brother has committed suicide, after writing a bitter and rather unsettling suicide note. He tracks down his brother's widow Manuela (Liv Ullmann), and finds her eking out an existence by working in a seedy night-time cabaret act. Abel also meets an old acquaintance from his past, Dr. Hans Vergerus (Heinz Bennent), who offers living quarters for him and Manuela. Soon, Abel discovers that his brother is not the only person he knows that has died under strange circumstances – there are other acquaintances who have killed themselves or been murdered. A Berlin police inspector called Bauer (Gert Frobe) suggests that Abel is one of the leading suspects in the investigation into these unexplained deaths. Later, Abel is offered a job working at the clinic of Dr. Vergerus. Times are hard and money is in such short supply that he readily accepts the job, but gradually he learns that Vergerus is working on morally questionable, often sadistic, studies into human nature. His brother was part of these experiments (which is why he killed himself), and what Vergerus is doing anticipates the terrible atrocities that would later be carried out by the Nazis. Like an actual serpent's egg – (which is transparent, and allows us to see the fully formed snake before it hatches) – we can see the future of Germany (Nazism=snake) in a sort of "transparent membrane" (Dr. Vergerus's experiments=serpent's egg).The film suffers for several reasons. Carradine is somewhat miscast and struggles with the demands of his role, but his character is so central to everything that his awkwardness fatally damages the film. The narrative is awfully convoluted and long-winded, pursuing too many half-ideas that come to nothing, and there are moments when Bergman's difficulty in shooting an English-language picture is painfully apparent. Furthermore, there are long periods when the film comes across as uninteresting. These flaws made me strongly dislike the film at first. But as already mentioned I gave myself a little time to reflect and found occasional redeeming features, in particular the grimly realistic evocation of place and period (a Berlin in dire ruin and its people lost in despair). Sven Nykvist as always works his magic in capturing this hopeless mood with his deliberately gloomy and depressing photography. Also there's Ullmann, who gives a brilliant performance, very different from anything Bergman asked of her in their other collaborations. The Serpent's Egg is not a very good film overall, but it probably gets more of a raw deal because of Bergman's involvement. If anyone else had made it, the negative comments would still be there but I doubt the film would be reviled as much as it has been.

michelerealini The film is interesting, of course -it tells about the rise of Nazi power. But this is the less "bergmanian" film of Ingmar Bergman. It's not an intimate portrait of people -as the Swedish director always does. Here we have a big budget movie, with many actors... Although the presence of Liv Ullmann, Bergman loses his targets. On one side he wants to analyze a period, on the other one he has to follow more mainstream rules -because he works for a big budget production. As a result he "fails" (it's a big word) in both things -although the film is not a failure.We feel Ingmar Bergman is not really at ease. This is not his natural dimension -he's a super director because he has an extraordinary ability of understanding neurosis and anxieties, his favorite context are the relationships among a few people. In "The Serpent's Egg" these trademark are really minor.