If you're never watched a film directed by Ingmar Bergman and decides to do it by watching "The Serpent's Egg", it might be a great choice for you but it will you make you hate all of his brilliant masterpieces. My perception of this film is very awkward, considering that I've watched ten of his films (including "Persona", "Wild Strawberries" and "Fanny and Alexander"), all of them magnificent, but then he comes with an American project which is very difficult to relate with since it is different than anything the Swedish master ever done before. It is faster than his previous classics, not much philosophical or methaporical, and instead it's quite meaningless for the most of its entirely until we reach the conclusion (and even faster than his other films it is tiresome at parts). Bergman is present in the beautiful cinematography by Sven Nykvist and the opening titles, a trade mark that Woody Allen used to present his films.
The story of a American trapezist (David Carradine) in German investigating the reasons behind his brother suicide, during Weimar Republic's inflation crisis of 1923, might be a excellent material for a talented director/writer like Bergman but here, in his way of trying to built a suspense, create horror and disgust in our eyes something got lost in the middle. A better construction of characters or make them interesting in some way, anything. The historical background is very interesting but these characters are so driven by the automatic pilot that gets very difficult to really feel something for them and we should felt something for them. After all, they lived during troubled times, no jobs to find, no food to eat to the point of eating horse meat (yes, one was killed off-screen but the corpse's presented in the film), and there's brutality here and there (in one of the most violent moments a Nazi officer beats a Jewsih cabaret owner by smashing his head on a table. Bergman is a master in not showing us the event, we can only hear the head hitting something hard and we as audience get very uncomfortable, feeling this guy pain).
If the performances of Liv Ullmann and David Carradine keeps going like a switcher from good and bad each time they appear and disappear off the screen, James Whitmore in just one scene gives a memorable moment playing a priest. Some of the supporting roles were more interesting than the main ones.
The point made by the film at its conclusion was excellent but it came a little late. The idea of the seeds of 2nd World War being created in a horrific and strange experiment looked real, very believable, but Bergman could have explained more about it, it sounded something weaker than what we were expecting from what Carradine wanted to discover about the other characters deaths, which reminds of a important topic to be debated: what in the world happened to the villain? Noises on the screen of police wanting to enter in his room, then he looks into sort of a mirror, then collapses and die? I really didn't get it! And to reach the brilliance of this film is to wait and wait, and see strange and pointless scenes (the funny brothel scene is one of them), a lousy investigation made by Gert Frobe's character which includes arresting Carradine without evidences, and more.
I'm sounding a little bitter about "The Serpent's Egg" but in fact I enjoyed. The bitterness comes from my fears of giving the first thumbs down in a Bergman's film while watching it. When you see the whole picture you realize that it works, it's well made, has its flaws but it's not as great as his other classics. I can't complain much about this film because the director had many problems at the time (tax evasion and things like that which made him get out of his country), and a director must live of his films, he needs to write and direct, and this was a nice work for him, he made the best of what was available to do for another kind of audience. Of course, when you see Bergman + Carradine + Ullmann + Dino DeLaurentiis as producer you really want to see a spectacle of film and not a minor work, almost forgettable. The potential for being great was there at everyone's hands but it's good anyway. 7/10
The story of a American trapezist (David Carradine) in German investigating the reasons behind his brother suicide, during Weimar Republic's inflation crisis of 1923, might be a excellent material for a talented director/writer like Bergman but here, in his way of trying to built a suspense, create horror and disgust in our eyes something got lost in the middle. A better construction of characters or make them interesting in some way, anything. The historical background is very interesting but these characters are so driven by the automatic pilot that gets very difficult to really feel something for them and we should felt something for them. After all, they lived during troubled times, no jobs to find, no food to eat to the point of eating horse meat (yes, one was killed off-screen but the corpse's presented in the film), and there's brutality here and there (in one of the most violent moments a Nazi officer beats a Jewsih cabaret owner by smashing his head on a table. Bergman is a master in not showing us the event, we can only hear the head hitting something hard and we as audience get very uncomfortable, feeling this guy pain).
If the performances of Liv Ullmann and David Carradine keeps going like a switcher from good and bad each time they appear and disappear off the screen, James Whitmore in just one scene gives a memorable moment playing a priest. Some of the supporting roles were more interesting than the main ones.
The point made by the film at its conclusion was excellent but it came a little late. The idea of the seeds of 2nd World War being created in a horrific and strange experiment looked real, very believable, but Bergman could have explained more about it, it sounded something weaker than what we were expecting from what Carradine wanted to discover about the other characters deaths, which reminds of a important topic to be debated: what in the world happened to the villain? Noises on the screen of police wanting to enter in his room, then he looks into sort of a mirror, then collapses and die? I really didn't get it! And to reach the brilliance of this film is to wait and wait, and see strange and pointless scenes (the funny brothel scene is one of them), a lousy investigation made by Gert Frobe's character which includes arresting Carradine without evidences, and more.
I'm sounding a little bitter about "The Serpent's Egg" but in fact I enjoyed. The bitterness comes from my fears of giving the first thumbs down in a Bergman's film while watching it. When you see the whole picture you realize that it works, it's well made, has its flaws but it's not as great as his other classics. I can't complain much about this film because the director had many problems at the time (tax evasion and things like that which made him get out of his country), and a director must live of his films, he needs to write and direct, and this was a nice work for him, he made the best of what was available to do for another kind of audience. Of course, when you see Bergman + Carradine + Ullmann + Dino DeLaurentiis as producer you really want to see a spectacle of film and not a minor work, almost forgettable. The potential for being great was there at everyone's hands but it's good anyway. 7/10