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Fear, Loathing, and Despair in Berlin, November 1923

This film universally considered "the master's failure" but I don't agree with the statement. It is very different from the rest of Bergman's films I've seen but that does not make it failure for me. It is only Bergman's second film in English and it boasts an unusual for his films large budget (Dino De Laurentis was a producer) with enormous and elaborate sets. Bergman was able to recreate on the screen Germany (Berlin) of 1920th exactly how it was seen in the films of 1920th German directors - Fritz Lang's films come to mind first. Another film that The Serpent's Egg reminded me of was Bob Fosse's Cabaret - the theme of the Feast during the Time of Plague sounds very prominent in both films, and the cabaret's musical numbers in Bergman's film could've came from Fosse's. I was very impressed by Liv Ullmann's singing and dancing in the beginning of the film - she can do anything.

In spite of the film's obvious differences from Bergman's earlier work, it explores many of his favorite themes. It is in part a political film about the helpless, distressed and terrorized members of society that face the merciless and inevitable force of history and are perished without a trace in the process. Also like the earlier films, The Serpent's Egg explores its characters' self-isolation, inability to communicate, their attempt to cope with the pain of living, their despair, fear, and disintegration.

The Serpent's Egg may not be a perfect film and a lot has been said about the abrupt and heavy handed ending, the dialogs that don't always work, and David Carradine's performance as a main character. Perfect or not, I think it is an interesting, visually always amazing (cinematography by Sven Nykvist is above any praise) and very honest and thorough study of the human condition in the unbearable situation.

In the documentary 'Serpent's Egg: Away From Home' (2004), Ingmar Bergman, Liv Ullmann and David Carradine talk about making the film, how it started and how and why it was so different. Liv said that couple of years ago she and Bergman had seen The Serpent's Egg for the first time, and they both liked it. I am in a good company, then, because I believe that Serpent's Egg is an unforgettable film and everyone who was involved in making it should not be ashamed of it. I am yet to see a Bergman's film that I don't like.

One can look at Ingmar Bergman's the Serpent's Egg as being many things, but it should not be looked at through the same prism that one looks at say Through a Glass Darkly or Scenes from a Marriage. This is Bergman being 'cinematic', and for the lone moment of a career spent with low-budget film-making and theater as his passions, a big-budget, a Hollywood star, and a sprawling canvas to work on, was at his finger-tips. It's also one of his few shots at not only an 'homage' kind of movie, but also one in English (one of only two). So it's the dark horse (no pun intended) when compared to the more one-on-one based films. This time the star, David Carradine, is not only an acrobat, but also in a city where the environment is grim, to the point of a scarcity of hope amid the post WW1 German cityscape. It's not the kind of film, in other words, that'll make money in the mass US market coming off the high of Star Wars (though it's been said that this film did make back it's money in Europe and then some). It's the kind of uncompromising vision that goes for broke, and it's a fascinating journey.

Carradine, who is at his best with a certain style and down-played quality that keeps him still cool today, is an American in Berlin, where his brother's just died in a rather grotesque fashion. This puts a certain immediate marker of doom over him and his sister in law, played by Liv Ullman (if, for no other reason to see the film, it's for her work, as usual). Over the span of a week (surprisingly so, if not for the voice over one might feel it being longer), amid the rain and nights and drunken stumbles and over-heated moments, Abel Rosenberg tries to deal with all that's going on. But there are stranger things lurking ahead with his upcoming job. This story is dealt with by Bergman in a curious way- it SEEMS a little longer at times, but it doesn't lose a certain momentum, of stripping away its character's defenses bare. Even Carradine, an actor who's mostly had a career as a larger-than-life kind of persona, gets intense with his work here.

Where Bergman gets entangled in everything he's got going on is a sense of structure to it. It's not the kind of 'soul-searching, hell if I know if God can help' film, but one more connected to the perverse, lurid qualities of the control some people could have over these people at this point of time in the world. One could say it's connected stylistically with the films of Murnau and Lang, however I would argue that more than half the time I did still feel like I was seeing a Bergman film, with his part n parcel cinematographer Sven Nykvist expressing greatly what is there in the huge set constructed of 1922 Berlin. And because of this, there's still the close-ups, and the surreality that's induced. But because there's so much to work with, with sometimes overwhelming scenes (like when Carradine walks into that bar, loaded with people, compact and tight, or whenever there's a chase or 'danger' kind of moment for Rosenberg, or just having to deal with large crowds or difficult lighting set-ups), the narrative thread gets tangled up. The opening shot of the people walking in slow-motion is brilliant, yet I didn't feel that same brilliance in the film.

Several directors hit this kind of moment in careers, where a larger-than-usual concept is provided by the appropriate budget. That it's in English is unusual, and though Bergman is functional in the language, one can tell there's not the same fluidity in the writing at times. However I don't discredit the Serpent's Egg as this horrible quagmire of a picture, as I was almost led on to believe. It still contains some extraordinary stuff, like the Cabaret scenes, as weird and compelling as some of the stuff in the Silence. Or the terror instilled when Heinz Bennent's character shows Rosenberg the 'footage' towards the end of the film. But it's also one of the more difficult films of Bergman's I've seen, that moves at a pace that's post-modern, and not too steeped in the 20's (that is one of its strong points at times in theme), while resisting going for the easy, Hollywood big-budget kind of movie-making. 7.5/10

While not a masterpiece, this is also far from the mess most critics took it for. An intelligent failure (or modest success) Bergman looks at Germany in the 20s as laying the groundwork for Hitler and the Nazis.

Liv Ullman is terrific, as always. And if David Carradine is only good, not great, he certainly didn't deserve the critical attacks he received. The nature of his character is a man so locked in passivity as to be enigmatic. You might not like that kind of character, but it's certainly not the actor's fault for carrying it out well!

Yes, some of it is slow, and some a bit obvious, but those charges could also be leveled against some Bergman films labeled masterpieces. As a cautionary tale of where we were once before, and could end up again, I've certainly seen far worse. It has some truly chilling moments. And I think seeing it again may reveal even more

The title, The Serpent's Egg, had me wondering for a moment until I realized that it did not refer to the the Doctor and his bizarre experiments nor to Abel and his misery, but to the encapsulated Germany of the 1920s and the environment that led to Hitler's ascent in the 1930s. That is, Germany being the 'egg', Hitler and the Nazis as the 'Serpent', and the environment as the embryo of the egg.

In many ways, this is a cynical film, in that it attempts to show that degradation, fear and loss of life and livelihood is sometimes stronger than humanity and even love. Isn't this true about Germany in the 1920s, and other nations at other times as well? We only have to look at ourselves after the attacks of 9/11 to see a time when fear overcame reason. Fear allowed us to meekly accept the chipping away of our own civil rights and privacy, and also government sponsored torture.

It also gives us a glimpse at one of Hitler's truisms, which is that if he could have a person at age 7, then that person would be a Nazi for life. The experimenting Doctor re-states this in his observations that the sons and daughters of the defeated German populace will be the ones who create the new German society, of which he already is a part with his inhumane human experiments.

Of course, all this is done with hindsight, so how can it be wrong? It can't, but then it's still a good review of a period in Germany that many Americans know nothing about, and should learn if they want the answers to the question of how Naziism came to be. It wasn't just some sort of aberration never seen in history before nor repeated.

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.

In November of 1923, in a Berlin where a pack of cigarettes costs four million marks and people has lost faith in the present and future days, the alcoholic and unemployed American acrobat Abel Rosenberg (David Carradine) loses his brother Max, who has just committed suicide after feeling depressed for a period. Seeing the modifications in the behavior of people, but without clearly understanding the reasons, Abel moves to the room of his former sister-in-law Manuela Rosenberg (Liv Ullmann), who works in a cabaret in the night and in a whorehouse in the morning. Together, they move to a small apartment near to the clinic of their acquaintance, Professor Hans Vergerus (Heinz Bennent), who gives a job opportunity to Abel in his clinic. While working in the place, Abel discloses the evil truth behind the researches of Hans.

"The Serpent's Egg" is an underrated, but also excellent work of Master Ingmar Bergman, one of my favorite directors. In the environment of a Germany with hyperinflation, where people in a moment exchanged marks in weight so fast the currency lost its value; lack of job opportunities, with massive unemployment; the great people and nation humiliated and hopeless, paying for the loss of World War I, Bergman presents his view for the seeds of the Nazism. He introduces the evil character of Professor Hans Vergerus and his sick experiments, and the common person Abel Rosenberg, who sees the modifications in a country where he has problems with communication, since he does not speak German, but can not understand. Unfortunately this movie has not been released on DVD in Brazil, and my VHS has a bad quality of image, impairing the magnificent cinematography, especially in the nocturnal shots. The cool David Carradine is in the best moment of his career and is amazing in the role of Abel Rosenberg. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "O Ovo da Serpente" ("The Serpent's Egg")

I can't quite understand these alleged Bergman "fans" who say that this film is somehow lacking. Whereas "The Serpent's Egg" is not on par with say, "Fanny and Alexander" or even "Scenes from a Marriage," and even though it is, admittedly, not "Bergmanian" in the sense that the director's strength lies in acute insight into the emotional complexities of his characters, it is NOT, in any way whatever, an inferior film. Here we find Bergman writing and directing a film that steps briefly away from his norm. The fact that this film is better than, for comparison, anything from Polanski (who's "element" is the long-winded suspense film) makes it worth much regard. In fact, I am moved to say that "The Serpent's Egg" is a display of writing/directorial versatility that remains unsurpassed to this day.

This being said, no film should really be rated in terms of previous works of its own writer/director. It should be rated in comparison only to other films. Bergman is a superior director and one of the most talented writers at that. Whereas Bergman himself always strove to be better than Bergman, we should be fair for a second and admit that he is almost always better than anyone else.

A film even most Bergman enthusiasts dislike. However, as weak as it is, I have to admit I found a lot to like about it. First, the bad: David Carradine is pretty awful. He's had an uneven career, giving several very good performances and many bad ones. In the interviews included on the MGM DVD, it seems clear that he was out of his element working with Bergman (the featurette, incidentally, is a must-see; it's hilariously awkward, especially with Carradine's positive take on the film and his own work in it and how it contradicts what Liv Ullmann has to say). Secondly, this was the biggest budget Bergman ever worked with (Dino de Laurentiis produced it when Bergman was hiding from Swedish authorities in Munich), and it feels like a lot of his attention to the emotions of the film, and possibly also David Carradine, was diverted to the handling of the massive amounts of extras and the massive sets of 1920s Germany. Third, the script takes too long to develop. The first half of the film can be excruciatingly slow, and most of the good material comes in near the end. I fear that, for most, it'll be a matter of too little, too late. The good: well, to counteract Carradine's crusty performance, we have the fantastic Liv Ullmann. True, she's a little hard to understand through her accent (I should have probably also noted in the "bad" section the sound, which I think was just badly done; I watched the film with subtitles, but then, hey, it's a Bergman film, so no big deal, right?), but she's as expressive as always. She brings out a lot of emotion, and does it subtly. The setting, Depression-era Germany, is vividly recreated. The Bergman film The Serpent's Egg reminds me most of is Hour of the Wolf, in that it is a horror film. The setting is truly horrifying. The film builds to a surreal, dreamlike climax with Carradine winding his way through a labyrinth. These scenes are impressively done, as are several others. I love the one-shot scene where Carradine wanders into a crowded dance club looking for booze. There really is a lot to like, even though, overall, it's pretty hard to enjoy. Honestly, I think it's well worth seeing.

When asked by an interviewer about his notorious 1969 flop `A Place for Lovers,' Italian director Vittorio de Sica, who had previously made some of the most influential films in the history of cinema, simply replied `I'm an artist. Artists make mistakes.' It was an honest, straightforward statement that acknowledged the necessity of failure in the business of moviemaking. Filmmakers have their boundaries, and when those lines are crossed it is only appropriate that they are shocked and prodded back into their proper place.

Like de Sica, Ingmar Bergman has made many stunning films that skillfully explore the facets of the human soul. `The Serpent's Egg' is not one of them. This is a clumsy, heavy-handed mess that fails to find anything interesting in its subject. I'm sure this story has something interesting to say about the suffering caused by war, poverty, and bigotry, but Bergman doesn't seem to know how to translate his own script's ambitions to the screen.

Certainly, there are elements present that always make for an interesting Bergman film: family tragedy, frustrated love, a protagonist fearing for his own sanity, and a hint of the supernatural. But these elements do not flow together as they did in Bergman's previous films; on the whole, it comes off feeling static, lacking the urgency so desperately needed. Character motivations are frequently illogical, and the more interesting figures (such as a priest played by James Whitmore) are given too little screen time while the more frustrating characters are given too much. The film is also weighed down by banal dialogue that spells out the emotions of the characters in an insulting and sometimes laughable way. The performances don't help either; to call them `overwrought' is a dire understatement. David Carradine spends much of his time posturing and pouting, Liv Ullmann shrieks her lines enough to set your teeth on edge, and Heinz Bennett scowls and sneers his way through his final confrontation with Carradine just to make sure there are no doubts that his character is the villain.

The only really effective element to `The Serpent's Egg' is the atmosphere, thanks largely to photographer Sven Nykvist, who gives the smoke-filled cabaret halls a lurid, grimy feel. The recreation of 1923 Berlin is convincing, effectively portraying a society that justifies evil by using it to pull itself out of poverty. But the visuals are a thin shell that cannot hide the emptiness of the drama. Perhaps Bergman's vision was at odds with the demands of producer Dino de Laurentiis, who, at the time, was better known for action fluff such as `Mandingo,' `Death Wish,' and the 1976 remake of `King Kong.' Or perhaps Bergman, who made his most personal films in and around his Swedish homeland, did not know how to transplant his ideas into so foreign a setting. In any case, Bergman, like de Sica, later acknowledged his `mistake' in his autobiography `Images,' where he rightly described the film as one of the most disappointing experiences of his career. `The Serpent's Egg' is only of interest if you want to see what results when a talented artist pushes his art in the wrong direction.

Does Liv Ullmann ever do less than brilliant, does Ingmar Bergman never surprise?

Depression hit post Great War Germany, the moods, the sets, the atmospheres almost have you reaching for a bottle of whatever takes your troubles away from the very off, but also wondering how David Carradine might improve, or at least maintain the high level the director's portfolio had achieved to date (albeit acknowledging the Elliot Gould effect of The Touch). The answer is he doesn't and, while he does scrape through until the end, you're left reflecting on the fantastic selection of actors from Sweden the maestro deployed to such ground breaking effect through his lifetime behind the lens.

An intriguing story that gathers pace towards the end.

Often regarded as the nadir of Bergman's career, this film is not as terrible as one might understand it to be from its poor reputation, however it is not a very good film either. There are a handful of rather well composed shots, and other than the zooming, Sven Nykvist's camera-work is good. These are however the only real trademarks of Bergman in the film, and it does look as if anyone could have directed it. The two major downfalls though of the film are its screenplay and the acting by David Carradine. The script is dull, and the plot becomes rather messy as the film progresses, and even if the revelation is interesting, its insertion is quite awkward. Carradine tends to stumble about on set, and when he is not stumbling he is either haphazardly screaming or gaping. Many others have commented on his casting - it is hard to disagree that he was not the best choice. Either way, the film is hardly terrible, with some interesting ideas in the final quarter, some well directed scenes, and a great beginning credits sequence - but it is a low point for Bergman.

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.

Ingmar Bergman didn't always make good films. He generally scripted his films himself, and he obviously didn't notice or care when his scripts were not very good but filmed them anyway. Although not a bad film, this is not an altogether good script.

David Carradine as Abel Rosenberg, an American Jew, comes to Berlin in October 1923 and finds his brother Max dead in his bed having shot his brains out. That's how it begins.

The brothers were circus trapeze artitsts and out of work, and the dead brother had a girl friend (separated, Liv Ullmann,) who tries to take care of Abel, which is not very easy, since he is constantly misbehaving and spends every day and night drinking. The local police inspector, (Gert Froebe) with whom he got in touch concerning his brother's suicide, consults Abel over a number of mysterious and atrocious murders, and Abel gets into a paranoic state believing himself to be a suspect, which doesn't make his own situation any better.

The character of the film is consistently depressive, and the occasional interesting moments are the insights into the extreme and absurd conditions of Berlin and Germany in 1923, which gave rise to Hitler. This makes it a fascinating time documentary. The cabaret scenes lift the show to a bizarre level of gleeful decadence, but they also gradually go from bad to worse, especially when they are interrupted by power cuts and brutal razzias by hoodlums.

Bergman made this film in Germany while he was in exile from Sweden, chased out of the country by clumsy tax authorities, and he admits himself in his autobiography that he like many Swedes were ardent Nazis before the war. So there are some interesting explanatory excuses and motives for the film.

It emanates into a Kafkaesque nightmare into an archive of terrible human experimentation, definitely heralding Nazism, and ultimately into a very dramatic finale with Heinz Bennent, another cavalier of Liv Ullman's, which gives the film its meaning, but you have to wait for it through many long and absurd scenes, many without reason or meaning.

It might really be crazy, but seems like this is one of the Bergman movies that actually did not get a high rating here. And it is crazy (for me), because this is one of his movies that I really enjoyed (though that may be a poor choice of word). It really is out there, but still coherent in its storytelling, so that you can follow it, but be amazed by the direction it takes.

And while it would be difficult for me to explain its appeal and/or the plot to you (even if I had put spoilers in this, which I'm not going to do!), I can tell you that it is really gripping. Carradine might be one of the reasons for this, but not the only one. I still wouldn't know if I could recommend this to a first time Bergman viewer ... but then again, which of his movies could that be?

David Carradine (Yes, the Kung Foo guy) lives in Berlin in a time when Hitler was putting his ideas together. He is a drunk, aimless and depressed. The alcohol affects everything in his life. One day, while in a Cabaret, he goes to his friend's room, and finds the man has shot himself in the head. Germany is in collapse. The Mark is worthless. There is mass unemployment and despair among the populace. He stays with his dead friend's wife and witnesses what is happening around him. He is Jewish but doesn't realize what that might mean in the future. He can only think of his next drink. He comes across acquaintances who offer him possibilities. He was once an aerialist in a circus. There are some interesting scenes. One where he is caught in a type of labyrinth, trying to find his way out of a building. After watching this it's hard to thing in a positive way. Not a typical Bergman film.

This must have seemed like such a great idea at the time. Put Ingmar Bergman (arguably one of the finest filmmakers of our time) at the helm of a big-budget international horror film starring the notable David Carradine and his can-do-no-wrong leading lady Liv Ullmann. As a concept, it's faultless; as a film, it's amazing this has as many moments as it does.

Taking place over a period of one week (November 3-11) in 1923 Berlin, "The Serpent's Egg" zeroes in on two desperate characters who are slowly overtaken by the horror of their situation. The country has virtually come apart around them; the German mark is practically worthless, unemployment is astronomical, and Adolf Hitler is laying the plans for his first attempt to seize power. Abel Rosenberg (Carradine) and Manuela (Ullmann) are out-of-work circus performers whose third partner Max (Abel's brother) commits suicide in the opening of the film. The rest of the movie concerns itself with their gradual awakening to the horrors perpetuated by their current employer Vergerus (Heinz Bennett).

Actually, the rest of the movie concerns itself with taking as hysterical and pessimistic view of life as possible. While not entirely unfamiliar to Bergman's fans, here the gloom is so all-pervasive and the time and place so alien, that the film is often nearly impossible to sit through. It becomes instead a movie of moments, each breaking out of the general tedium to grab the viewer by the throat.

The opening is brilliant, and promises something really special. Likewise, the rat-infested piles of garbage are not something the viewer is likely to forget. But the conclusion they build up to is disappointing and unenlightening. Worst of all, we know no more about the characters at the end of the film than we did at the outset (Liv Ullmann, whose performance is wonderful considering the circumstances, has virtually nonexistent character development to work with).

Any fan of Bergman should try to see this once, if only for the light it sheds on his other films of the period, and his personal turmoil at that moment in time. Casual viewers need not apply.

Ingmar Bergman, one of the greatest film directors, one of the most prominent art craftsmen to tell a story through images, dialogue and narrative. Many absolute masterpieces under his belt, most not easily digested and understood. This "The Serpent's Egg" it's no exception. It's not one of those metaphor films, but it has many harsh scenes. Liv Ullmann is exceptional in the role of Manuela Rosenberg. Exceptional is Heinz Bennent as Hans Vergerus. Gert Fröbe also excels in what he can do best, police inspector, as in so many other movies (see Mabuse series). And David Carradine is also credible and efficient in the role of the Jew Abel Rosenberg. The film has great atmosphere and super cabaret scenes with specific music from the Nazi rise era in Germany. It's not Bergman's best film but it's worth seeing.

Seven stars. This is both clearly a Bergman film, and nothing like a Bergman film. Both aspects of that are driven home in the opening credits. We have the usual cast of technical folk, in white on black. But with an MGM leader, De Laurentiis(!) as the producer, and cut backs between the credits and shots of the heads of a bunch of shabby people walking toward camera. All backed by the sort of music that you'd hear in a Woody Allen film. I've seen a LOT of Bergman, so all this was really odd.

Then we get an opening scene that is PURE Bergman. Except that it's in English and unsubtitled German. Because the main character is an American Jew, living in 1920s Berlin, but speaking no German. The film wallows in decay, both physical and political. We see a city teetering on the edge of an abyss. The time frame lines up with Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch, so all the calling cards of the future horrors of fascism are on the table. But the institutions (mainly as represented by Gert Frobe's police inspector) still hold out hope that sanity might prevail. As an American in 2025, I found that an especially depressing aspect of the film.

So, here we have a disintegrating society, with two distintegrating protagonists (Carradine and Ullmann) stumbling along as their world implodes around them. Carradine (Abel) plays a character who spends a lot of the film behaving atrociously, but who still retained at least some of my sympathy for the situation he's found himself plunged into. Ullmann (Manuela) plays his sister in law/lover. I've had a crush on her for over 50 years now, so that colors my analysis. Her Manuela is trying to be a rock for Abel to cling to, but her world is collapsing, and so is her health.

The film is an exploration of an outsider, living in a culture that he does not understand, and that is also on the brink of chaos. Of course, both Bergman and the viewer knows what was to come. So it could come off as a polemic. But the final exploration of the hubris of evil is still horrific.

Democracy depends on citizens who value it. As I said above, that makes the film a depressing experience for any current American patriot. 2 May 2025.

The Serpent's Egg is almost universally panned because it bears the signature of Ingmar Bergman, yet it doesn't feel much like a Bergman movie - except in a couple of flashes.

Most of the movie is set in dark, humid and chilly inter-war Berlin, where the protagonist gets ever closer to a sinister revelation. This side of the movie feels a bit like another bleak 70s artifact, Soylent Green. When David Carradine gets - at last - hired as an archivist in a sinister clinic, the viewer's interest is piqued.

However, Carradine is saddled with a sister-in-law, Liv Ullman, who comes along with a different set of scenes, that recall Cabaret without the acrid verve of the original. Liv Ullman tries hard, but she is truly miscast. Jane Birkin would have been perfect in this role.

The dialog is poorly written and gives the movie the choppy quality that everyone has objected to. The lines sound translated, unnatural, and David Carradine can't be faulted for sounding lost.

The big budget is well spent, and the film is not boring, nor pretentious. Some effects are in poor taste (the opening credits, and an excruciating scene in a brothel).

I suspect that The Serpent's Egg would have a better reputation today if it had been signed by a lesser director, say, George Pan Cosmatos. Without changing a single shot, it would be remembered as an interesting attempt at something different.

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.