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.

TheLittleSongbird 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

Michael_Elliott Serpent's Egg, The (1977) * 1/2 (out of 4) If it's true that every great director makes a bad movie then this here is Bergman's bad movie. David Carradine stars as a circus performer in 1923 Berlin who moves in with his sister-in-law (Liv Ullmann) after his brother's suicide. The two make what money they can to survive but they both find it difficult being Jewish and things take an even worse turn when Carradine's character takes a job for a strange scientist. I've read several negative reviews of this film and it appears the movie was originally attacked for being disgusting or hard to watch because of the subject matter. I didn't find anything, even the ending, to be disturbing but I did find the movie hard to watch because it was really, really boring me to death. I really couldn't believe I was watching a Bergman movie because everything in this movie came off as being flat to me. There wasn't a bit of life in this thing and I realized by the ten-minute mark that I was going to be in trouble. One big problem is the entire story structure, which just seems invisible to me. I'm not sure what Bergman was trying to do here and I've heard many say this film has more "story" than most of the director's films but I'd disagree. I didn't find any story here and to make matters worse is that Carradine really seems out of place. Not once did I buy him in this role and I don't think he delivered the power the movie needed especially in the more emotional scenes. I also found Ullmann to be rather bland, which is the first time I've said that about her. The one saving grace is a major one and that's the cinematography by Sven Nykvist. I'd almost recommend this movie because of his work alone and that opening sequence where Carradine discovers his brother's body is certainly a beauty to look at.

michelerealini The film is interesting, of course -it tells about the rise of Nazi power. But this is the less "bergmanian" film of Ingmar Bergman. It's not an intimate portrait of people -as the Swedish director always does. Here we have a big budget movie, with many actors... Although the presence of Liv Ullmann, Bergman loses his targets. On one side he wants to analyze a period, on the other one he has to follow more mainstream rules -because he works for a big budget production. As a result he "fails" (it's a big word) in both things -although the film is not a failure.We feel Ingmar Bergman is not really at ease. This is not his natural dimension -he's a super director because he has an extraordinary ability of understanding neurosis and anxieties, his favorite context are the relationships among a few people. In "The Serpent's Egg" these trademark are really minor.