The Serpent's Egg
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Movie Reviews of The Serpent's Egg
Movie Review: "I wake up from a nightmare, and find that real life is worse than the dream"
Summary: 4 Stars
"The newspapers are black with fear, threats and rumours. The government seems powerless. A bloody confrontation between the extremist parties appears unavoidable. Despite all this, people go to work, the rain never stops and fear rises like vapour from the cobblestones". These phrases, said by an unknown narrator, are a clear description of the dark mood that permeates this film.
The main character is Abel Rosenberg (David Carradine), an American circus artist who is stranded in Berlin along with his brother Max and Max's former wife Manuela (Liv Ullman), due to an injury that rendered Max unable to perform their trapeze act. Things deteriorate as they run out of money, as the general situation for all those living in Germany worsens too. It is the 1920's, and the whole country suffered from inflation, unemployment, and periodic outbursts of Anti-Jewish sentiment. Berlin wasn't a good place to live for anybody at that time, but the situation for the Rosenbergs was even worse, because they were poor, unemployed, Jewish and foreigners.
"The serpent's egg" (1977) begins with Max committing suicide, as an act of utmost desperation. After that, Abel is left with Manuela as his only ally in a place that steadily becomes fulls of omens presaging misfortune. To endure the mere fact of being alive when his brother is not, Abel gets drunk every day. The irreality that alcohol offers offers him is the only way of fighting fear, fear of what is happening in Berlin, and of what he sees looming in the horizon. In Abel's words, "I wake up from a nightmare, and find that real life is worse than the dream".
Evidently, Abel Rosenberg is an unlikely main protagonist, because he doesn't do much, merely existing in an unfriendly environment, taking in all that is happening without doing anything to change it. But maybe that is the task that the director, Ingmar Bergman, gave to him: to act as an eyewitness of times to come.
Near the end of the movie, we get an explanation regarding the title of this film. One of the secondary characters, a crazy scientist bent on experimenting on human beings, says that "... anybody who makes the slightest effort can see what is waiting in the future. It's like a serpent's egg: through the thin membranes, you can clearly discern the already perfect reptile". I think that Bergman tried to point out that the germs of Nazism were already in place long before Hitler seized power. The serpent's egg was there, and nobody tried to destroy it.
On the whole, I heartily recommend this movie. It is certainly gloomy, and doesn't get better near the end. Nonetheless, it is a masterpiece, because through a simple story, dark colours, metaphors, and flawless performances the director managed to convey what the mood of 1920's Berlin might have been like, and the kind of situation that can pave the way for a totalitarianism. After watching "The serpent's egg" you won't feel like singing, but you will certainly feel like thinking...
Belen Alcat
Movie Review: A thanatoxic culture
Summary: 4 Stars
In his earlier years as a writer/director, Bergman often said he wished film making was an anonymous art. Although he later rejected the desire as "romantic," I appreciate his point. It's difficult to watch a Bergman film with fresh vision. One simply expects a Bergman movie to be of a certain type, and if one comes along that disappoints this expectation, it's all too tempting to dismiss it as a dog.
Disappointed expectations are, I think, a good part of what lies behind negative responses to "The Serpent's Egg." It's true that the film isn't one of Bergman's best. Even he and Liv Ullman admit as much. He thinks it was overdone--"on steroids," as he says--and Ullman thinks that the Bergman got overwhelmed by the Hollywood big money and attitude that produced it. It also doesn't help that David Carradine, who plays the lead role, has got to be one of the worst actors Hollywood has ever produced. (What a study in contrasts, by the way, watching his wooden performance alongside Ullman's brilliant one.)
But even acknowledging its failings, "The Serpent's Egg" is, I think, a very good film. What it isn't is a "typical" Bergman film--at least on the surface. It's busy, gaudy, and has an undeniable Hollywood. Moreover, the script doesn't quite hold together, and at times has a tinny, cheap thriller tone. Yet it's still very much Bergman.
What Bergman wants to do is present a portrait of a culture that is self-destructively toxic. The serum which the evil Dr. Vergerus (nicely played by Heinz Bennent) uses to control minds is aptly named "thanatoxin"--thanatos is Greek for death--and is a metaphor for the alienation, violence, greed, debauchery, and hopelessness that social dissolution and poverty breeds. "People have lost the future," as one character says. Inspector Bauer (fantastically played by Gert Froebe), at one point says that he, like countless other petty civil servants, are simply trying to hang on long enough in the chaos to preserve a bit of local order. If these aren't Bergman themes, nothing is.
One scene is especially memorable. Liv Ullman goes to a priest because she feels guilty about the suicide of her ex-husband. The priest, who seems over-worked and under-inspired, finally tells her that God is so far away that absolution can only come from other humans. In the name of his humanity, he forgives her, and then he asks that she forgive him his apathy, his indifference. Classic Bergman, and terribly moving.
Movie Review: Is It Really The Master's Mistake?
Summary: 4 Stars
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.
Movie Review: Carradine's Commentary is One of the Best Parts
Summary: 4 Stars
This is definitely one of those art films that few people will "get" and even fewer will like. I think it is worth watching in order to see what Bergman did with an unlimited budget, his first Hollywood producer, and an international cast.Some people may not realize that when Bergman chose Carradine to star in THE SERPENT'S EGG he was fresh off the success of tv's KUNG FU and had 35 state plays, two tv series, and numerous starring and leading roles in movies under his belt. He was nominated for the Academy Award for his role as Woody Guthrie in BOUND FOR GLORY (1976). While researching Carradine's movies, over and over again I read the phrase, "Who would have thought that David Carradine could turn in such an excellent performance?" Yet he does, time and time again, and has moved under the radar of public and critical attention for over 25 years.
As Carradine says in his commentary, it's a hard movie to watch twice, yet I was fascinated by his insight into the production, Bergman's style and methods, and the plot. THE SERPENT'S EGG is a mixture of 1920's style German expressionism, human despair, psychothriller, political commentary, and science fiction. It tackles the subject of proto-Nazi human experimentation in a world where the government controls every detail of a man's life. When the opening scene involves a man discovering his brother's suicide, you know you're in for a bumpy ride.
I found the commentary sparing and insightful. I hate those commentary tracks where actors and others talk, talk, talk but say very little. It was refreshing that when he had nothing to add, Carradine was quiet and let the movie speak for itself.
The DVD Savant says of the commentary, "A relaxed and friendly David Carradine provides an informative commentary. He treats the experience as if he were an explorer returned from a strange land with a story he barely expects people to believe. I wasn't expecting such insights from this year's KILL BILL, and the track makes me want to revisit older Carradine performances, like his interesting cop in the oddball monster movie Q THE WINGED SERPENT. I never met an oddball movie I didn't like."
Neither have I. THE SERPENT'S EGG qualifies as one oddball movie, and I hope you'll see it and give the commentary a chance.
Movie Review: Ahead Of Its Time
Summary: 4 Stars
Ingmar Bergman's "The Serpents's Egg" was met with critical derision and popular indifference when it was first released. Some thought cynically that it was an awkward attempt by Bergman to crack the commerical American market (it's in English, unlike all his other films other than "The Touch.") And it was on a trendy subject (Nazism) and in an unfamiliar genre for the director (the thriller.) As the years have gone by, however, we as the audience have become more used to post-modernism and genre self-reflection in movies, like the self-conscious referentiality to other films of the "Star Wars" series; or the work of Quentin Tarantino. It's now possible to see "The Serpent's Egg" more clearly as Bergman's homage to German Expressionist horror cinema. It's like "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" or "M" filtered through Bergman's own unique vision. It's a master critique of a genre by a master filmmaker who deploys his usual obsessions in a startlingly different way. Later films bear the same imprint as "The Serpent's Egg", like Steven Soderbergh's "Kafka", David Lynch's "Eraserhead" and "The Elephant Man", or Woody Allen's own "Shadows and Fog."
But maybe it's not such a big departure for Bergman as some thought. He had made genre films before. "Hour of the Wolf" and "Cries and Whispers" had elements of horror. "Shame" was a larger-than-usual-scale war film. "The Silence" is about political upheaval. It's thrilling to see Bergman's version of a more sleazy, horrific "Cabaret". David Carradine is oddly passive as the hero, the Jewish acrobat Abel Rosenberg, but his victimization fits the film's theme. One can argue that Bergman's unpleasant encounter with the Swedish tax collectors that led to his exile to Germany gave him a new appreciation of the dangers of totalitarian impulses even in a supposedly "benign" welfare state like Sweden. "The Serpent's Egg" is a terrifying portrait of the human hubris that eventually led to Nazi experiments of human beings in the concentration camps. And despite the "mad scientist" trappings, it's a convincing, despairing examination of the fascist world view. Bergman fans should definitely take another look at this film. It really is a neglected treasure.