The Serpents Egg

The Serpent’s Egg

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But when I met him for the first time, Carradine seemed absent-minded and a bit strange. To help him get into the right frame of mind for this film, we launched the shooting with a viewing session of two classic Berlin movies: The minute the lights in the theater went out, Carradine fell asleep, snoring loudly. When he woke up I had no chance to discuss his role with him. Carradine's behavior repeated itself during the filming. He was right owl and kept falling asleep on the set.

He was found slumped just about everywhere, sound asleep. At the same time he was hard-working, punctual, and well prepared. Because of this, among other factors, we finished the film within our planned time schedule.

The Serpent's Egg - Wikipedia

I was pleased, to say the least, and very proud of our accomplishment. I made myself immune to the rather tepid reaction from the critics. I remained optimistic, refusing to see the film what it was. After the film release, my life began to calm down; then I painfully realized the serious extent of my failure. Jurgen Schildt in Aftonbladet:. Ingmar Bergman's first film made abroad has a power that does not derive from speculation or distorted vision, but from simplicity and its physical watchability. It aims at the middle ground and hits the spot.

Franz Josef Strauss, who is juggling some serpent's eggs down in Munich , should perhaps for safety's sake be given a couple of free tickets to the West German premiere. As per the domestic policy motto: He shines as a horror film director, turning the film's climax into an unremitting assault on the nerves.

The problem is that it all gets a little too much of a good thing, a little too much spurting blood and polished violence as entertainment. It may sound like a film that is as black as night. There are no discernible smiles, and Bergman really is not joking when he says that he has made his first horror film: But the power of its execution masks the darkness of its vision: The opening of The Serpent's Egg is masterly.

The contrast between poverty and luxury, between the depths of depression and a hectic life of pleasure is portrayed with a tremendous power of suggestion that precludes naivety, conveying a cohesive feel of the inferno with an overall impression of sickness. In the true spirit of a spy thriller, mystery is heaped on mystery, leading via endless Kafkaesque corridors to the chamber where human experiments are carried out.

Here it is that, by looking through the shell of the egg, one can divine the reptile's future birth. Perhaps there is no greater task for a filmmaker than to depict the origin of evil. One can confidently declare that Ingmar Bergman has made a creditable attempt, but I am not sure that he is a truly accomplished embryologist. Los Angeles Aspect ratio: About the film Ingmar Bergman writing on the less than happy circumstances surrounding the beginnings of the project in Images: My Life in Film: Sources The Ingmar Bergman Archives.

My Life in Film. Commonly regarded as one of Bergman's biggest flops, "The Serpent's Egg" is not likely to benefit from contemporary reappraisals.

About the film

I am really not quite sure what really is "The Serpent's Egg" more weighing flaw: The whole alienating premise of the film or David Carradine's robotic performance. But basing my choice on my better judgment, I'm gearing more towards the latter. Throughout this whole Ingmar Bergman-directed feature, aside from that final, pseudo-scientific revelation, the film really felt nothing but an aimless exercise in existential angst. With our disillusioned and hapless protagonist roaming the decaying streets of 's Berlin that is completely unaware of a governmental take-over being led by someone named Adolf Hitler, I think that the groundwork as to why he's slowly being consumed by despair was not properly established, resulting with us being left with a main character that is both underwhelming and emotionally plodding.

I just don't think that David Carradine, a cult actor known for roles such as "Caine" in "Kung Fu" a bit unrelated but it's interesting to note that his character here is then named "Abel"; a sort of an unconscious biblical allusion and later as "Bill" in Tarantino's "Kill Bill", fits these kinds of roles. He's just relatively too tough-looking to really make his character believable and empathetic.

Even Liv Ullmann, an actress of great emotional depth, is a bit out of place playing a forgettable character. But then, there's Sven Nykvist's calculated cinematography that constantly puts dread and bleakness even in the most joyous cabaret settings and at the same time, finds emptiness even in a crowd. This is particularly evident in the film's impressive and disturbingly ambiguous opening scene that is, until the climactic final exposition where Nykvist has shot a scene of people of different ages and walks of life descending a stair with deeply melancholic and exhausted faces in stark, grainy black and white.

At certain points, the film's flimsy hands seem to let go of my already fleeting attention, but there's no doubt about the uncannily fascinating impression that the climactic 'explanation' scene, pulled off rather brilliantly by Heinz Bennent who played an experimentation scientist who knows the core secret as to why people like Abel are slowly slipping off from sanity, has left me. Yes, it does felt that that crucially revelatory sequence looked and sounded more like a scene that you may see from those 'mad scientist' movies rather than from 'art' films like this, but for it to prophetically foretell the Nazi revolution's supposed 'New Society' and at the same time highlighting and comparing its idealistic superiority to an old one founded by the goodness of man is truly unnerving and, in a way, very brave.

And considering that this is Ingmar Bergman's first and only Hollywood film, "The Serpent's Egg" should be remembered more as a testament of his unbounded audacity rather than as a disappointing speed bump in his otherwise flawless oeuvre. The Serpent's Egg 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 , Wild Strawberries and Persona 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 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 , 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.

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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. More Top Movies Trailers. DC's Legends of Tomorrow: Black Panther Dominates Honorees. Trending on RT Avengers: Post Share on Facebook. It is, however, his first completely non-Swedish production, made after his voluntary self-exile from Sweden over taxation issues.

Set in Berlin in the early s, it explores the fear and despair the city evokes in Manuela and Abel Rosenberg Liv Ullmann and David Carradine , two Jewish trapeze artists. The suicide of Manuela's husband Abel's brother , has stranded them in Berlin. Berlin is shown to already possess the sinister elements of cruelty and anti-Semitism which laid the groundwork for the later Nazi takeover.

A series of misadventures gets them sent to a medical clinic for treatment. However, the clinic is actually a site for Nazi-type "racial" experiments on humans, which generally either madden or kill the subjects. Das Schlangenei was savaged by the critics for its improbable-seeming story and more particularly, for casting David Carradine best known for his earlier appearances in the Kung Fu U. Liv Ullmann as Manuela Rosenberg.

David Carradine as Abel Rosenberg. Heinz Bennent as Hans Vergerus. James Whitmore as The Priest. Paul Barks as Cabaret Comedian.

Toni Berger as Mr. Christian Berkel as Student. Ema Brunell as Mrs. Paula Braend as Mrs. Emil Feist as Cupid. Edna Bruenell as Mrs. Paul Buerks as Cabaret Comedian. George Hartmann as Hollinger.

The Serpent's Egg Blu-ray

Kai Fischer as Prostitute. Harry Kalenberg as Couil's Doctor. Glynn Thomas as Monroe. Georg Hartmann as Hollinger. Edith Heerdegen as Mrs. Klaus Hoffmann as Commando announcer. Isolde Barth as Girl in guard uniform. Grischa Huber as Stella.

Volkert Kraeft as Leader of the commanco.

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