The Serpent's Egg (1978)

One of my all time favorites.

Boring

Clever, believable, and super fun to watch. It totally has replay value.

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

From what I've read, "The Serpent's Egg" is considered Ingmar Bergman's worst movie. Watching it, I didn't find it terrible. I guess that I haven't seen enough of Bergman's movies to fully judge (I've only seen "The Seventh Seal" and "Autumn Sonata"). It had the feeling of a 1920s expressionist film. I guess that the movie was a metaphor for the rise of Nazism: people slowly realized that something terrible was rising but felt helpless to stop it. The cabaret scenes are neat. I did find the ending abrupt, though.As he often did, Bergman cast Liv Ullmann. The surprising cast members here are David Carradine (Bill in "Kill Bill") and Gert Fröbe (the title role in "Goldfinger"); also appearing is James Whitmore (a noted actor for many years, he appeared in the Miracle Gro commercials towards the end of his life).So, it's not a masterpiece, but nothing terrible.

I say this with a heavy heart as I love Bergman and his films, but while it has good points and it is at least better than All These Women The Serpent's Egg didn't do it for me. It is an incredibly well made film, I cannot deny that, Sven Nykvist's cinematography is wonderful and adds so much to the atmosphere. The scenery is similarly evocative. On top of that, the opening sequence is a brilliant one and promises so much, Liv Ullman shows once more why she was and is one of Sweden's finest actresses and Heinz Bennett makes for an effectively sinister villain without it being too stereotypical.The Serpent's Egg however is while quite different and interesting a disappointment, especially considering that we are talking about one of cinema's greatest directors here. Bergman does seem out of his depth, introducing some interesting ideas but not developing them enough and there are not enough I feel of his distinctive trademarks. The story is rather convoluted with an ending that comes across as rather heavy-handed, some intriguing ideas that come across as half-baked and a brothel scene that is among my least favourite scenes ever in a Bergman film. The dialogue is rambling and banal and David Carradine's performance is overwrought and stiff on the whole.All in all, has its good and fascinating moments but one of Bergman's lesser films. 5/10 Bethany Cox

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.

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.