Stars: Liv Ullmann, David Carradine, Gert Frobe, Heinz Bennent, Glynn Turman, James Whitmore Jr., James Whitmore

Director: Ingmar Bergman

Summary: Abel Rosenberg is a circus acrobat out of work, and living in a defeated Germany after the First World War. He takes a job at the Veregus Clinic and there he finds the truth behind the work of the Professor Veregus; work that led to his own brother committing suicide.

This unusual political drama by Ingmar Bergman was filmed at Bavaria Film Studios in Munich during the director's exile from Sweden after encountering problems with tax officials back home. THE SERPENT'S EGG, a big-budget German-American coproduction, was Bergman's second work in English after THE TOUCH and is set in 1920's Berlin, shortly before Hitler's rise to power. Abel (David Carradine), a Jewish trapeze artist, and his late brother's wife, Manuela (Liv Ullmann), a cabaret performer and part-time prostitute, are forced to seek employment at a medical clinic run by Dr. Vergerus (Heinz Bennent), because other work is hard to come by in the poverty-stricken and inflation-prone city. But Abel and Manuela's financial problems are overshadowed by a gruesome discovery: The mad-scientist-like Vergerus is secretly conducting human experiments--foreshadowing the horrors of the concentration camps. Carradine was considered miscast by many critics who didn't know quite what to make of this film. Nightmarish and gripping, it depicts the political turmoil, ever-increasing Nazi brutality, and general moral decay of the time period in vivid, graphic images. Bergman has admitted to being a follower of Hitler's in his youth, and some have speculated that this film, deviating from the director's usual subject matter, represented an act of repentance of sorts.

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Aspect Ratio:	4:3 Full Frame
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 0
Special Features:	Animated Menu, Scene Selection
Year:	1977
Release Date:	October 8, 2001
Runtime:	119 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	C H V 1005
Keywords:	General, Egg, Drama, Serpent's, Ormens, Schlangenei, Agg
Genre:	Drama