Review of The Serpent's Egg (1977) by Dfw F — 12 Oct 2009

The Serpent's Egg Das Schlangenei, (1978) Most reviews of this film are bad. Even Ebert gave it only 2 stars. I think it's a good effort and maybe one of Bergman's hidden gems even disregarding David Carradeen's bad acting.

Ingmar Bergman's 2nd English-language feature (the Touch was the 1st) and his first film made outside his home country, bears the master's stamp right from the beginning in a superior collaboration with cinematographer Sven Nykvist and production designer Rolf Zehetbauer.

The film is a 1977 English film (with some German dialogue NOT TRANSLATED/SUBTITLED ANYBODY HAVE THIS DIALOGUE IN ENGLISH?) directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring David Carradine as Abel Rosenberg, which is set in 1920s Berlin.

This was Bergman's one and only Hollywood film. The title is taken from a line spoken by Brutus in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar: "And therefore think him as a serpent's egg Which hatch'd, would, as his kind grow mischievous; And kill him in the shell.

" It is Dino De Laurentis production and was filmed in Germany while Bergman was in exile from Sweden on his tax problems. Ingmar Bergman comes very close to camp in this 1977 study of life (or lack thereof) in the decaying Berlin of the 20s.

Bergman's paranoia runs dementedly and tediously out of control in this Grand Guignol recreation of 1923 Berlin. Carradine is improbably cast in the central role of a Jewish trapeze artist called Abel Rosenberg, wandering innocently through a night-town world of bottles, brothels, and (inevitably) cabarets, and trying to ignore the violence, depravity and anti-Semitism screeching at him from every street corner.

The torments he endures, with miscast Ullmann (who's further afflicted with throwaway lines like 'I can't stand the guilt'), have indeed been devised by a foresighted mad scientist straight out of Dr.

Strangelove. Abel Rosenberg--After the apparent suicide of his best friend, an out-of-work trapeze artist in Berlin begins to drown in a whirlwind of alcohol, depression, and a love affair, while Nazi cruelties blossom in the streets.

Bergman himself states: "If I had created the city of my dreams, a city that does not exist and never has, and yet manifests itself acutely with smells and loud sounds, if I had created that city, not only would I have been moving in it with total freedom and an absolute sense of belonging but also, more important, I would have brought the audience with me into an alien but secretly familiar world.

In The Serpent's Egg, however, I ventured into a Berlin that nobody recognized, not even I." Viewers will certainly find "Serpent" possesses a dream-like quality, fusing extended scenes of mental disintegration with stylized, sometimes vulgar imagery (like Ullman's raunchy grindhouse intro in a green wig).

Sven Nykvist's marvelously moody cinematography, period lieder and jazz tunes, and a conclusion recalling the Fritz Lang thrillers of the Twenties (with a major nod to Michael Powell's more contemporary "Peeping Tom") are major ingredients in Bergman's cold, mini-epic.

Oh well it is Bergman's Hollywood movie. I believe a "bad film" by Bergman eclipses many director's best films Four stars. I think the Serpents Egg is one of Bergman's shamefully neglected works.

Recommended viewing flaws and all.