GamerTab
That was an excellent one.
UnowPriceless
hyped garbage
Fatma Suarez
The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful
clanciai
Ingmar Bergman didn't always make good films. He generally scripted his films himself, and he obviously didn't notice or care when his scripts were not very good but filmed them anyway. Although not a bad film, this is not an altogether good script.David Carradine as Abel Rosenberg, an American Jew, comes to Berlin in October 1923 and finds his brother Max dead in his bed having shot his brains out. That's how it begins.The brothers were circus trapeze artitsts and out of work, and the dead brother had a girl friend (separated, Liv Ullmann,) who tries to take care of Abel, which is not very easy, since he is constantly misbehaving and spends every day and night drinking. The local police inspector, (Gert Froebe) with whom he got in touch concerning his brother's suicide, consults Abel over a number of mysterious and atrocious murders, and Abel gets into a paranoic state believing himself to be a suspect, which doesn't make his own situation any better.The character of the film is consistently depressive, and the occasional interesting moments are the insights into the extreme and absurd conditions of Berlin and Germany in 1923, which gave rise to Hitler. This makes it a fascinating time documentary. The cabaret scenes lift the show to a bizarre level of gleeful decadence, but they also gradually go from bad to worse, especially when they are interrupted by power cuts and brutal razzias by hoodlums.Bergman made this film in Germany while he was in exile from Sweden, chased out of the country by clumsy tax authorities, and he admits himself in his autobiography that he like many Swedes were ardent Nazis before the war. So there are some interesting explanatory excuses and motives for the film.It emanates into a Kafkaesque nightmare into an archive of terrible human experimentation, definitely heralding Nazism, and ultimately into a very dramatic finale with Heinz Bennent, another cavalier of Liv Ullman's, which gives the film its meaning, but you have to wait for it through many long and absurd scenes, many without reason or meaning.
Lee Eisenberg
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.
kosmasp
It might really be crazy, but seems like this is one of the Bergman movies that actually did not get a high rating here. And it is crazy (for me), because this is one of his movies that I really enjoyed (though that may be a poor choice of word). It really is out there, but still coherent in its storytelling, so that you can follow it, but be amazed by the direction it takes.And while it would be difficult for me to explain its appeal and/or the plot to you (even if I had put spoilers in this, which I'm not going to do!), I can tell you that it is really gripping. Carradine might be one of the reasons for this, but not the only one. I still wouldn't know if I could recommend this to a first time Bergman viewer ... but then again, which of his movies could that be?
zetes
A film even most Bergman enthusiasts dislike. However, as weak as it is, I have to admit I found a lot to like about it. First, the bad: David Carradine is pretty awful. He's had an uneven career, giving several very good performances and many bad ones. In the interviews included on the MGM DVD, it seems clear that he was out of his element working with Bergman (the featurette, incidentally, is a must-see; it's hilariously awkward, especially with Carradine's positive take on the film and his own work in it and how it contradicts what Liv Ullmann has to say). Secondly, this was the biggest budget Bergman ever worked with (Dino de Laurentiis produced it when Bergman was hiding from Swedish authorities in Munich), and it feels like a lot of his attention to the emotions of the film, and possibly also David Carradine, was diverted to the handling of the massive amounts of extras and the massive sets of 1920s Germany. Third, the script takes too long to develop. The first half of the film can be excruciatingly slow, and most of the good material comes in near the end. I fear that, for most, it'll be a matter of too little, too late. The good: well, to counteract Carradine's crusty performance, we have the fantastic Liv Ullmann. True, she's a little hard to understand through her accent (I should have probably also noted in the "bad" section the sound, which I think was just badly done; I watched the film with subtitles, but then, hey, it's a Bergman film, so no big deal, right?), but she's as expressive as always. She brings out a lot of emotion, and does it subtly. The setting, Depression-era Germany, is vividly recreated. The Bergman film The Serpent's Egg reminds me most of is Hour of the Wolf, in that it is a horror film. The setting is truly horrifying. The film builds to a surreal, dreamlike climax with Carradine winding his way through a labyrinth. These scenes are impressively done, as are several others. I love the one-shot scene where Carradine wanders into a crowded dance club looking for booze. There really is a lot to like, even though, overall, it's pretty hard to enjoy. Honestly, I think it's well worth seeing.
