"Actor: Gaby Dohm"

• The Serpent's Egg | DVD | (02/08/2004) from £14.97   |  Saving you £1.02 (6.81%)   |  RRP £15.99

  Abel Rosenberg (Carradine) 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 (Bennett) work that led to his own brother committing suicide...

• From The Life Of The Marionettes | DVD | (25/02/2002) from £10.35   |  Saving you £9.64 (93.14%)   |  RRP £19.99

  Made in Munich while Bergman was in self-imposed exile from Sweden, From the Life of the Marionettes is not so much a "whodunit" as a "whydunnit". The film opens with the shockingly violent and senseless murder of a prostitute by Peter, a young, successful businessman. Through a series of non-chronological flashbacks to a time before the crime, we attempt to fathom just what impelled Peter to perpetrate this terrible murder. Along with wife Katarina, the character Peter also featured in Bergman's 1973 film Scenes from a Marriage. Here, as there, we see that they are wedded in the sense of being emotionally chained to each other, yet hating each other for their mutual dependency. There is also a perturbing scene in which they both appear to "get off" when he takes a knife to her throat. His cold and duplicitous psychiatrist glibly ascribes the murder to a repressed homosexuality resulting in a violent outburst, while Katarina's business partner, who is gay, appears to harbour a desire to sabotage the pair's marriage. This film has an airless, fake-lit quality about it, which reflects the conditions of the characters' lives but by the end, leaves you mesmerised and still uncertain as to why what happened has happened. A late but great Bergman work. On the DVD: This edition adequately enhances the stark monochrome in which most of the film is set. Bergman's notes reveal that his depictions of Peter in his psychiatric ward were based on his own behaviour during a recent spell in a similar institution following his arrest for tax evasion. Philip Strick's critical notes observe that the sparing use of colour at the beginning and end of the film signify what may have been the only times in Peter's life when he "experienced reality". --David Stubbs

• The Serpent's Egg | DVD | (08/10/2001) from £N/A   |  Saving you £N/A (N/A%)   |  RRP £9.99

  Abel Rosenberg (Carradine) 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 (Bennett) work that led to his own brother committing suicide...