Review of The Serpent's Egg

The film is very well shot and lit, it certainly has high production values. It is compelling to watch, though it seems long at times. There is a slow-moving intensity to it, both literally, with the slow-motion shots early and late on, and in the sense of a slow rhythmical tread to the story. Set, supposedly in 1923, there are surely too many ideas from a later time, the Thirties in particular, to make it properly credible. What is well caught is the despair and darkness of post-World War 1 Germany, with collapsing economy, high unemployment and the resultant problems. The revelation of the medical experimental factory looks too far-fetched and fantasticational to me and ill-consorts with the setting and time-period. Another issue is that there is little or nothing to like or admire in the central character, played quietly but intensely by David Carradine. One keeps on wishing that he'd followed his brother's example and shot himself, so dark and unpleasant is he. One feels an affinity for the Liv Ullmann and Gert Frobe characters, trying hard to live honestly in a world falling apart. I feel that big problem is trying to equate two different periods in Berlin at one and the same time. The Twenties and Thirties were not the same, though connected, of course, and should have been kept separate. Putting them together didn't help the film of its credibility.