The Serpent's Egg (1978)

A rare Ingmar Bergman film that leans on plot over characterization, "The Serpent's Egg" is an atypical melodrama set in 1923 Berlin. Inflation is catastrophically high (money value is measured by weight rather than denomination), and growing anti-semiticism foreshadows the coming Nazi regime. After nostalgic opening credits that suggest the creative synergy between Bergman and Woody Allen flowed both ways, the film begins with American-in-exile trapeze artist Abel Rosenberg (David Carradine) discovering brother Max's grisly suicide. He delivers the news to Max's ex-wife Manuela (Liv Ullman), now working in a sleazy cabaret, and soon moves into her room. From there, Jewish Abel fends off a local detective (Gert "Goldfinger" Frobe) hoping to frame him and puzzles over Manuela's second job with a ominous, secretive medical organization. The final act turns quite Kafka-esque, and is strangely flamboyant and unsubtle by Bergman standards. "The Serpent's Egg" (the title is a metaphor for the seeds of Nazism) is one of Bergman's few English-language projects, though we also hear plenty of untranslated German through Abel's ears. The director casts recognizable American actors Carradine, James Whitmore and Glynn Turman for international appeal (the latter two's scenes are wholly trivial), but this compromise is a fatal mistake: Detached, wooden Carradine just isn't equipped for his part's challenges. Unable to suggest any depth to his character's emotional life, the late "Kung Fu" star leaves a frustrating hole at the film's center. Commonly regarded as one of Bergman's biggest flops, "The Serpent's Egg" is not likely to benefit from contemporary reappraisals.

The Serpent's Egg (1977) 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 (1957), Wild Strawberries (1958) and Persona (1966). 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 (1966). 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 (2003), 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. 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.