Ingmar Bergman didn't always make good films. He generally scripted his films himself, and he obviously didn't notice or care when his scripts were not very good but filmed them anyway. Although not a bad film, this is not an altogether good script.David Carradine as Abel Rosenberg, an American Jew, comes to Berlin in October 1923 and finds his brother Max dead in his bed having shot his brains out. That's how it begins.The brothers were circus trapeze artitsts and out of work, and the dead brother had a girl friend (separated, Liv Ullmann,) who tries to take care of Abel, which is not very easy, since he is constantly misbehaving and spends every day and night drinking. The local police inspector, (Gert Froebe) with whom he got in touch concerning his brother's suicide, consults Abel over a number of mysterious and atrocious murders, and Abel gets into a paranoic state believing himself to be a suspect, which doesn't make his own situation any better.The character of the film is consistently depressive, and the occasional interesting moments are the insights into the extreme and absurd conditions of Berlin and Germany in 1923, which gave rise to Hitler. This makes it a fascinating time documentary. The cabaret scenes lift the show to a bizarre level of gleeful decadence, but they also gradually go from bad to worse, especially when they are interrupted by power cuts and brutal razzias by hoodlums.Bergman made this film in Germany while he was in exile from Sweden, chased out of the country by clumsy tax authorities, and he admits himself in his autobiography that he like many Swedes were ardent Nazis before the war. So there are some interesting explanatory excuses and motives for the film.It emanates into a Kafkaesque nightmare into an archive of terrible human experimentation, definitely heralding Nazism, and ultimately into a very dramatic finale with Heinz Bennent, another cavalier of Liv Ullman's, which gives the film its meaning, but you have to wait for it through many long and absurd scenes, many without reason or meaning.

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.

While not a masterpiece, this is also far from the mess most critics took it for. An intelligent failure (or modest success) Bergman looks at Germany in the 20s as laying the groundwork for Hitler and the Nazis. Liv Ullman is terrific, as always. And if David Carradine is only good, not great, he certainly didn't deserve the critical attacks he received. The nature of his character is a man so locked in passivity as to be enigmatic. You might not like that kind of character, but it's certainly not the actor's fault for carrying it out well! Yes, some of it is slow, and some a bit obvious, but those charges could also be leveled against some Bergman films labeled masterpieces. As a cautionary tale of where we were once before, and could end up again, I've certainly seen far worse. It has some truly chilling moments. And I think seeing it again may reveal even more

Highly unusual and underrated. Bergman says volumes about the future he saw before us in 1977 by returning to 1923 and making what to the casual observer seems to be a film about hindsight. What is most unusual about his treatment is that he completely abstains from moral judgment. He does not feel the need to point a finger and instruct the audience that the Nazis are bad. Dr. Vergerus is not portrayed, as is suggested in another comment, as a villain. In fact, he is given all of the trademark qualities of a villain and then his sincerity and tenderness concerning subjects both tender (his feelings for Liv Ullman's character) and horrifically vile (experiments) are given the most comprehensive hearing in the film and serve as its marvelously conflicting centerpiece. He may be said to be the most emotional character in the film. In the end he must take his own life to escape hypocritical prosecution at the hands of a police inspector who will no doubt be a Nazi official in 10 years time. Vergerus' death, as he views himself in a mirror slightly recalling Powell's "Peeping Tom" from another perspective, is shockingly memorable to this day.Carradine is perfect, and correct when he says on the DVD that Bergman didn't want a performance from him, just his mystique. We spend much of the film simply on nearly blank reaction shots of his face, and that's a good thing; his very unlikeness makes him a perfect fit. Carradine is the target of much malice and scorn within the cinephile community, but I can't quite figure out why (unless it is simply his arrogance, which I find a little charming). It might have to do with the mountain of junk movies he's been in. At least at the time he had given exceptional performances in "Boxcar Bertha" and "Bound For Glory." With David in "Kill Bill" and Keith in "Deadwood," I hope that Robert Carradine will find some sort of project better than the Lizzie McGuire movie to remind us that in "The Big Red One" he kicked some tail. I don't ever expect to see them embraced by the mainstream, just something that lets them be as good as they can be would be nice.Ullman gives an excellent performance. It requires her to do so many things that Bergman never had her do any other time, from being a dancing sexpot to flying into a completely spontaneous outburst.Woody Allen certainly seems to have drawn inspiration from this film for his "Shadows and Fog." The experiment footage is aggressively horrifying.The assessment that it was a failure in the eyes of Bergman is also mistaken. He said that it was a great disappointment to work on. This comment is illuminated by Liv Ullman on the DVD where she explains that it was the alien work environment that left him depressed and unsatisfied, but that upon a recent viewing he found to his surprise that he was quite proud of the film. I personally found it very entertaining, often surprising and simply a wonder at how Bergman was able for this film to completely sublimate his style to the demands of quite a different kind of picture, but still make it his own.In its way it is a sort of pre-war "Third Man." It is not among his best, but when your best are many of the best films ever made that's not a harsh judgment. It is more than just an oddity or an Altman-esque "interesting failure."