The snake egg
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | The snake egg |
| Original title | The Serpent's Egg The Serpent's Egg |
| Country of production |
Germany USA |
| original language |
German English |
| Publishing year | 1977 |
| length | 119 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 16 (formerly 18) |
| Rod | |
| Director | Ingmar Bergman |
| script | Ingmar Bergman |
| production |
Horst Wendlandt Dino De Laurentiis |
| music | Rolf Alexander Wilhelm |
| camera |
Sven Nykvist Dietrich Lohmann |
| cut | Jutta Hering |
| occupation | |
| |
The Snake Egg is a historical film drama from Swedish director Ingmar Bergman from 1977 . The German - American co-production tells the story of an unemployed circus acrobat against the backdrop of an impoverished Berlin during the hyperinflation at the end of 1923 .
action
The Jewish-American trapeze artist Abel Rosenberg lived with his brother Max in Berlin in the winter of 1923. Since Max's injury, both are without engagement. One night he finds Max shot dead in their boarding room. When more dead appear in Abel's distant circle of friends, he is suspected by the police. A former acquaintance of Abel, the scientist Vergérus, offers him and Max's widow Manuela a room and work on the premises of his clinic. Vergérus turns out to be the person responsible behind the series of acts of violence, who conducts cruel experiments with starving unemployed people and films them. When he is about to be arrested, he kills himself with a cyanide capsule . Before his death, he prophesies the emergence of a new political movement in Germany that will harness the anger, fear and frustration in the population: “Everyone can see what the future will bring. It's like a snake egg. The almost fully developed reptile can be clearly seen through the thin skin. ”Manuela is admitted to a mental hospital, Abel, who is about to be deported to Switzerland , hides in the crowd. The final title reveals that Abel has since disappeared without a trace.
background
The Snake Egg was Bergman's first film not shot in Sweden after he chose “exile” in Germany on a (soon dropped) charge of tax evasion. The film was shot in Munich , where Bergman had settled.
The title refers to a quote from William Shakespeare's drama 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.
- ( So think of him like a snake's egg,
- That, hatched, would become perishable like his whole species
- And so kill him still in the shell. )
Bergman's first choice for the male lead was Dustin Hoffman , who turned down the role as well as Robert Redford , Richard Harris and Peter Falk . Ultimately, the choice fell on David Carradine . The film was made for the then large sum of 9.2 million German marks . The art director Rolf Zehetbauer built for The Serpent's the complete Old Berlin Bergmannstraße on the studio grounds of Geiselgasteig on. Bergman's decision to have a horse killed for a scene in which starving Berliners cut a horse carcass into pieces caused controversy.
The snake egg opened in German cinemas on October 26, 1977 and in Bergman's home country of Sweden on October 28, 1977. In the USA, the film opened on January 26, 1978, and in GDR cinemas on May 16, 1980.
Reviews
“In his fortieth feature film (his first outside of Sweden), Ingmar Bergman tries to analyze the genesis of fascism on the basis of a fable that is often popularized . With its thickly applied doomsday symbolism and a caricature-like type drawing, however, the film seems rather crude and intrusively profound. "
"Bergman's first film shot in Germany, made with international cast and great expense, appears a little more binding and conventional than his previous work."
Book publication
- Ingmar Bergman: The snake egg: film narration. Translated from Swedish by Heiner Gimmler. Hinstorff, Rostock 1979.
Web links
- The Serpent in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The snake egg at filmportal.de
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Hauke Lange-Fuchs: Ingmar Bergman: His films - his life, Heyne, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-453-02622-5 , pp. 229-240 u. 304-305.
- ↑ a b The snake egg on the website of the Ingmar Bergman Foundation , accessed on July 19, 2012.
- ↑ Hans C. Blumenberg : Holzweg zum Hölle: Fiasco as a lesson: Ingmar Bergman and "Das Schlangenei" , Die Zeit 45/1977.
- ↑ Interview with David Carradine, quoted from Adam Groves: Real Animal Killings in Reel Life , accessed July 19, 2012.
- ↑ a b The Snake Egg in the Lexicon of International Films .
- ↑ The Snake Egg in the Internet Movie Database.
- ^ Lothar R. Just: Heyne Filmlexikon. 10,000 films from 100 years of film history, Heyne, Munich 1996, ISBN 978-3-453-08685-2 .