#63 - The Serpent's Egg

Ingmar Bergman does German Expressionism. To be honest, I would have had no clue that this was the case if it wasn't for the bonus features. You see, I have never seen any German Expressionist films. Hell, I've never seen any Bergman films either. So, I guess what we have here isn't the norm for Bergman, but according the bonus features, its a honest recreation of German Expressionism, so I have that to go off of. I will say that I enjoyed the movie on its own, mostly because of the ending, but it was the DVD features that really brought it into perspective, so I am thankful for that.

With no prior experience, I am going to talk about German Expressionism based on what I have seen on this DVD. I know of, and have seen images from Fritz Lang movies, but I don't really know too much. I know some of you out there do.(I'm talking to you Boog!!) There was a tremendously strong sense of a life spinning into chaos while everything was in extreme decay. And this is social and personal decay we are talking about. I found some of it to be disturbing, as it was meant to be, but a lot of it was kind of boring. I only mean boring because I had no idea what the point was. I didn't know why I was watching this movie, or what the point was. I now understand that part of it was my naivete about the film style. I also found that I just had to watch the movie and the point was made quite clear. The ending of this film is truly great filmmaking. It's paranoia. It's fear. It's shock. It's all captured through the lens. I do not want to say anything about the end other than it's a huge "Oh shit!!" moment. It is a moment that absolutely destroys the foundation of the world we thought we were watching.

I have to mention it because it is apparently part of the style, but there are a number of cabaret scenes in this movie, all of which are done in a grotesque style. It's that poor, downtrodden cabaret where the colors aren't bright, the clothes are dingy, and the makeup is gawdy. Its an interesting element of the decayed world that has been created.

I am interested to see more Bergman films, partly because this was a good film, and partly because I am interested in seeing what his films are normally like. Good thing is that this movie is part of a boxed set. Bad thing is that for some reason the whole thing didn't get put into my queue. It doesn't make any damn sense and is another stupid thing about the blockbuster.com membership. Normally when a movie is part of a boxed set it offers to put the whole set into your queue, but it didn't on this one, and it didn't on some others. So while I have a Kurosawa set and an Ed Wood set buried in my queue, I also have random Shirley Temple, Kimstim, and Merchant Ivory films from boxed sets scattered throughout the list. What kind of crap is that? I wanna these other movies, but this ridiculous obsession with keeping things random compels me to now just rent the damn things. Instead I will plague my eyes with crappy Don Bluth cartoons, made for TV movies from the BET network, and military reports on nuclear tests. What the hell is wrong with me?