Glucedee It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Zlatica One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

Staci Frederick Blistering performances.

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.

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?

Rodrigo Amaro 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

Cosmoeticadotcom When Ingmar Bergman was in self-imposed exile from Sweden, in the late 1970s, over a flap where he was accused by the Swedish government of tax evasion, he made several films abroad. One of them was The Serpent's Egg (Das Schlangenei-Örmens ägg), an English language film (his second- The Touch was the first) made in 1978, in West Berlin studios, for legendary film producer Dino de Laurentiis, who was reeling from the financial disaster that was his 1976 remake of King Kong. This film did nothing to change the producer's fortunes, as it is easily the worst Bergman film I've yet seen. This is a reputation that most other critics agree with, as well. That said, it is not really a bad film- merely a muddled and poorly edited one, and by Hollywood's dim standards, especially considering this is a horror film, it is quite complex and superior to films in that genre that had mass appeal, such as the Hollywood fare of the day, like the remake of Invasion Of The Body Snatchers and Coma.But, die-hard Bergmaniacs who have never seen it will be as repulsed as those to whom this film is an anomolous monstrosity. It is jagged, non-fractal, and often a totally disorganized mess. Yet, despite all that, it does come together quickly and cohesively in the last twenty minutes to provide a chilling and well acted end. If only the opening hundred minutes were even half as good this film might rank as a horror classic along the lines of Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Yet, as poor as the bulk of the film is, what is even more astonishing is that Bergman, himself, is listed on IMDb as having written the screenplay. It seems hard to believe, as this is easily his worst screenplay- far worse than noble failures like Cries And Whispers, although the look of the film is unmistakably a Bergman film- from the musical score to the lighting and photography by Sven Nykvist.But, there are many problems besides the script…. All in all, The Serpent's Egg is to the Bergman canon what a film like Mr. Arkadin, that bizarrely brilliant abortion of a film, is to the Orson Welles oeuvre. That's to view it at its best. At its worst it is a bad sub-Kafkan work of art attempting to deal with the craziness that threads about the edges of individuals and societies. What is truly odd is that it narratively is 180° from the way most bad films unfold. Instead of fraying apart from a promising beginning, it is a mess that only near its conclusion seems to find its focus. The last twenty minutes are truly excellent, and Bergman at his best. Interestingly, it is also the only time the film really gets really 'personal' with its until then undeveloped lead character. Until then, it is off the rack and unspun. Bergman fans should watch this film, though, for in failures one can see the architecture that great artists use successfully in their great works, but which the greatness hides. Here, a faltering Bergman has the curtain pulled back, and we see him not as The Wizard Of Oz, merely as odd. Shiver.