The Serpent's Egg (film)

The Serpent's Egg
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Produced by Dino De Laurentiis
Written by Ingmar Bergman
Starring David Carradine
Isolde Barth
Heinz Bennent
Toni Berger
Christian Berkel
Liv Ullmann
Cinematography Sven Nykvist
Distributed by Paramount Pictures
MGM Home Entertainment (DVD)
Release dates
  • 28 October 1977 (1977-10-28)
Running time
 120 min.
Language English
German

The Serpent's Egg is a 1977 American-West German drama film directed by Ingmar Bergman and starring David Carradine and Liv Ullmann. The story is set in 1920s Berlin and features English and German dialogue. 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.

Synopsis

Abel Rosenberg, an American-born Jew is an unemployed alcoholic and former trapeze artist, who uses alcohol to help him deal with the horrific nature and uncertainties of life in 1920's post war Germany as poverty and inflation have destroyed the German economy at the time. He returns home one night to discover that his brother Max has committed suicide. Abel meets up with his old boss who gives him some money in an attempt to persuade him back to his now successful circus. Abel realizes he will not be as good as he was with his brother and so declines but his boss allows him to keep the money anyway. The Jewish community are being portrayed in the media as a drain on society and despite being a Jew himself, Abel has little sympathy for anyone, Jewish or otherwise who gets themselves into trouble for "acting stupid". He goes to see his brother's wife to break the news to of his death to her. She asks what triggered Max's suicide but Abel is unable to provide a solid answer. The only sentence in Max's suicide note Abel can make out reads: "There is a poisoning going on".

In an attempt to drown his sorrow Abel goes on a drinking binge which lingers into the early hours and spends the night at Manuela's house. The next morning the two discuss possible new career paths Abel could look into. After Manuela leaves for work Abel steals from her in order to buy alcohol. He is later taken by police to the mortuary in order to identify a series of bodies, the first of which turns out to be that of Grether Hofer, his brother's former fiance who died via drowning. He is also shown the body of another man who was murdered via lethal injection, he does not know the man but comments that he looks remarkably like his deceased father. Next he is shown the body of an old lady whom Abel identifies as a woman who used to deliver papers to his village who he is told committed suicide. Finally he is shown the body of a young boy who was killed after being hit by a truck but does not recognize him either. Abel asks why he is being shown all of these horrific bodies and is told that all of the mysterious deaths happened within the vicinity of his home. He is told that he will have to remain in police custody until they are convinced of his innocence. Convinced that he is being set up due to his Jewish heritage he tries to escape the police station but is quickly recaptured.

Manuela visits Abel in hospital where she informs him that all her money is gone but Abel does not confess. Abel is released due to lack of evidence and returns home with Manuela. However on returning home Manuela is told by her landlady that Abel must leave because he and Manuela aren't married which the authorities do not approve of, Manuela decides to leave with Abel. As they prepare to leave Manuela confesses to Abel that she actually works as a prostitute and merely made up her office job out of shame.

November arrives and Germany has become ever more fearful that a bloody confrontation between extremist parties could soon plummet the country into another war. Abel and Manuela have found residence in another apartment on the outskirts of town. Manuela leaves for work one morning but Abel secretly follows her, discovering that she has actually been going to church. She confides in the priest that she feels responsible for her husbands death and is struggling to maintain her new life with Abel as the two have become consumed by fear.

That evening Abel discovers that Manuela acquired their new apartment by providing sexual favours to the owner of the brothel where she works. He is initially disgusted and decides to leave and find his own place to live, however he soon returns and shares a passionate kiss with Manuela. One night while Abel and Manuela are enjoying a drink in the brothel and enjoying the cabaret, the brothel is over-run by soldiers who beat the owner to death before burning the building to the ground.

Abel manages to secure himself a new job working as a clerk in a hospital, assisting with the archiving of patient cards while Manuela gains employment at the hospital clinic, they are also given an apartment surrounded by many derelict or empty buildings . One night Abel is alerted to files containing detailed reports of graphic and I humane experiments conducted on patients at the hospital throughout the years. Suddenly Abel becomes even more fearful and paranoid to the point where he won't even allow Manuela to touch him, Manuela herself starts to suffer from extreme mood swings. Abel gets drunk at a local bar and on his way home vandalizes a bakery and gets into a fight with the baker and his wife, but immediately has no recollection of why he did so. He is found in the street by a prostitute who convinces him to have sex with her which starts off normal enough but Abel soon becomes very sexually aggressive with her.

Abel returns home to find Manuela dead on the kitchen floor and that the whole apartment is littered with cameras. He flees the scene and soon finds himself in a mysterious, seemingly abandoned industrial building. Eventually he is discovered by an unknown attacker and the two fight in an elevator which Abel uses to cut off his attacker's head.

He returns to the hospital and confronts the doctor about the inhumane experiments carried out at the hospital. This time Abel is shown footage of the horrific experiments which includes a woman left in a room for 36 hours with a brain damaged baby who will not stop crying, to the point where the woman was driven insane and smothered the baby. The doctor claims that all of the subjects of these experiments were volunteers who he states "would do anything for a little money and a warm meal". Abel is then shown footage of a young man injected with a serum that drove him mad within the space of a few minutes, the effects of the drug wore off but the man committed suicide a few days later nonetheless. It is then revealed that Abel's brother Max was also a patient of theirs and in his desperation agreed to be injected with the serum as part of the experiment which later triggered his own suicide. Abel then discovers that he and Manuela had been subjected to the hospital's latest experiments in which their apartment was regularly filled with a gas which caused their recent extreme mood swings. The doctor comments that he, his brother and Manuela were chosen randomly for these experiments and that their research was funded by "independent means" (Implied to be Adolf Hitler). As the police arrive on the scene and attempt to enter the laboratory, the doctor swallows a cyanide capsule and states that Germany is in need of a revolution that ordinary people are too weak to carry out and that these experiments will benefit mankind in the long run, before dying.

Abel is later shown recovering from his ordeal in a psychiatric ward. The chief of police arrives to tell him that the circus have offered him his old job back and forces him to accept to the offer to begin right away. He also mentions that the Nazi party's latest attempt to seize power has failed.

In the film's closing moment a voice-over reveals that Abel escaped from police custody on the way to the train station and was never seen again.

Cast

Response

The film was made one year after Ingmar Bergman left Sweden for Germany following a tax evasion charge. The film opened to mostly negative reviews by critics. Many felt David Carradine was terribly miscast and that the movie was not like Bergman's past films.

References

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