L'uovo del serpente

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.

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.

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

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