The Serpent's Egg is an atypical Bergman film, despite being written and directed by him, featuring Sven Nykvist in the cinematography and Liv Ullmann in the lead role.
Why? Because it also has some particular characteristics, which set it apart from the typical work of the Swedish director.
It is a major international production, led by Dino de Laurentiis, aimed at the global market, including the North American one, and not just the circuit of festivals and auteur cinema, which Bergman was used to. That's why it has an American star in the lead role (David Carradine) and is spoken in English.
It was entirely filmed in Germany, which Bergman would repeat in 1980, in From the Life of the Marionettes, during a voluntary exile, motivated by tax issues, which also distances these two films from the Bergmanian norm.
It is still a film of silences, much more than dialogues or monologues, which is also not characteristic of Bergman, essentially a playwrighter, who adapted particularly well to cinema. But also, in this regard, it is not a unique case. In The Silence, from 1963, Bergman was also sparse in dialogues, without this harming, on the contrary, the quality of the work.
Why, then, is this Serpent's Egg so unloved, among the Swedish director's vast cinematography? Maybe because it's a hybrid, a film that's too authoritative to please the general public, and too mainstream to please regular Bergman fans.
The story is smart and interesting. It portrays, with an unusual viscerality in the author, the causes of the rise of evil, of Nazism, in Weimar Germany. Showing that the serpent was already visible, in its transparent egg, using the Vergerus metaphor, long before Hitler came to power and caused its hatching.
It even leaves the idea that, had the revolution had a leader at its height, the outcome could have been different. Hitler was a miserable Austrian corporal, who did not deserve anyone's trust or respect, among the aristocracy of old Prussia.
But the evil, symbolized by Vergerus, was rooted in the cultural and economic elites of old Germany. And these hoped for a revolution, which would put Germany in the global leadership, "within ten years", said Vergerus, when a worthy leader emerged, who would not be an incapable person like Hitler.
In fact, Hitler would come to power ten years later, in 1933, and would put into action all the theories of selection and racial clearance, practiced and defended by Vergerus. But despite everything, it failed, with the tremendous costs that are known.
Was it a lack of leadership? Is social and racial Darwinism on the prowl for new and more effective leadership? This was the fear that Bergman conveyed, in this work from 1977.
Fortunately, exactly a century after Vergerus' predictions, we can say that his theories did not succeed and racial engineering fell into disrepute.
But, is it really true? Other challenges arise in the present, with the advancement of artificial intelligence and the dilution of the frontier between human and digital.
Could this be the new revolution, which will allow man to ascend to a new evolutionary stage, as the positivists like Vergerus dreamed of?
This could, therefore, be a much more interesting film than it might seem at first glance.
Why? Because it also has some particular characteristics, which set it apart from the typical work of the Swedish director.
It is a major international production, led by Dino de Laurentiis, aimed at the global market, including the North American one, and not just the circuit of festivals and auteur cinema, which Bergman was used to. That's why it has an American star in the lead role (David Carradine) and is spoken in English.
It was entirely filmed in Germany, which Bergman would repeat in 1980, in From the Life of the Marionettes, during a voluntary exile, motivated by tax issues, which also distances these two films from the Bergmanian norm.
It is still a film of silences, much more than dialogues or monologues, which is also not characteristic of Bergman, essentially a playwrighter, who adapted particularly well to cinema. But also, in this regard, it is not a unique case. In The Silence, from 1963, Bergman was also sparse in dialogues, without this harming, on the contrary, the quality of the work.
Why, then, is this Serpent's Egg so unloved, among the Swedish director's vast cinematography? Maybe because it's a hybrid, a film that's too authoritative to please the general public, and too mainstream to please regular Bergman fans.
The story is smart and interesting. It portrays, with an unusual viscerality in the author, the causes of the rise of evil, of Nazism, in Weimar Germany. Showing that the serpent was already visible, in its transparent egg, using the Vergerus metaphor, long before Hitler came to power and caused its hatching.
It even leaves the idea that, had the revolution had a leader at its height, the outcome could have been different. Hitler was a miserable Austrian corporal, who did not deserve anyone's trust or respect, among the aristocracy of old Prussia.
But the evil, symbolized by Vergerus, was rooted in the cultural and economic elites of old Germany. And these hoped for a revolution, which would put Germany in the global leadership, "within ten years", said Vergerus, when a worthy leader emerged, who would not be an incapable person like Hitler.
In fact, Hitler would come to power ten years later, in 1933, and would put into action all the theories of selection and racial clearance, practiced and defended by Vergerus. But despite everything, it failed, with the tremendous costs that are known.
Was it a lack of leadership? Is social and racial Darwinism on the prowl for new and more effective leadership? This was the fear that Bergman conveyed, in this work from 1977.
Fortunately, exactly a century after Vergerus' predictions, we can say that his theories did not succeed and racial engineering fell into disrepute.
But, is it really true? Other challenges arise in the present, with the advancement of artificial intelligence and the dilution of the frontier between human and digital.
Could this be the new revolution, which will allow man to ascend to a new evolutionary stage, as the positivists like Vergerus dreamed of?
This could, therefore, be a much more interesting film than it might seem at first glance.