The Serpent’s Egg

In late 1923 Berlin, Abel Rosenberg, an unemployed alcoholic and former trapeze artist, discovers that his brother Max has died by suicide. He is offered money by his old boss to return to the circus, but he declines, feeling he won't be as good without Max. The revelation sets a bleak mood and unsettles Abel's sense of purpose.

Abel goes to Max's wife Manuela to break the news of his brother's death. They struggle to connect over the loss, foreshadowing their complicated relationship to come. The moment marks the start of their intertwined fates in a fractured Berlin.

Unable to articulate a clear reason for Max's suicide, Abel clings to a line from Max's note about poisoning. The ambiguity deepens his despair and pushes him toward a destructive drinking spree. The moment gnaws at him as he drifts through the city.

Seeking solace, Abel drinks heavily and spends the night at Manuela's house. When she leaves for work, he steals from her to buy more alcohol, signaling a downward spiral that will entangle them further. The event foreshadows the instability of their future.

The police pull Abel in to identify several bodies found near his residence, and suspicion quickly settles on him. He tries to escape but is recaptured, amplifying his paranoia and fear of being framed. The incident marks Abel's first brush with a concrete accusation.

Manuela visits Abel in the hospital and reveals that all her money is gone, deepening their precarious situation. Abel is released due to lack of evidence and returns home with Manuela, only to face eviction when authorities discover they are not married. The couple's fragile finances tighten their grip on their lives.

Manuela confesses she is a prostitute and explains she fabricated an office job to hide her shame. As November brings the threat of armed confrontations between extremist parties, the couple lives on the outskirts of Berlin in constant fear. The social chaos mirrors Abel and Manuela's precarious shelter.

Abel secretly follows Manuela and learns she has been going to church. She confides in a priest about her guilt over Max's death and the fear that haunts their lives. The church visit reveals her coping mechanisms and the couple's shared anxieties.

Abel discovers that Manuela obtained their apartment by providing sexual favors to the brothel owner. He is initially repulsed, but the couple reconciles and shares a passionate kiss, signaling a fragile tenderness between them. The relationship teeters between affection and exploitation.

Soldiers overrun the brothel, killing the owner in a brutal raid that throws Abel and Manuela into further danger. The violence underscores the era's chaos encroaching on ordinary lives. The couple's safety becomes increasingly precarious.

Abel finds a job as a file clerk in a hospital while Manuela works at the clinic, living amid abandoned buildings. He discovers files detailing inhumane experiments on patients, which terrify him and trigger his withdrawal from intimacy as Manuela's mood swings intensify. The moral dread of the era weighs on them both.

After a drunken incident and a sexual encounter with a prostitute, Abel returns home to find Manuela dead and cameras scattered around the apartment. He flees to an abandoned industrial building, where he fights off an unknown attacker in an elevator and decapitates him in a moment of desperate violence. The night's horrors shatter any remaining remnant of normal life.

Back at the hospital, Abel confronts the doctor about the experiments. The doctor defends the program, claiming volunteers acted out of desperation, and shows Max injecting himself with a serum that led to his suicide. As the police arrive, the doctor commits suicide with cyanide. The moral ambiguity of the experiments is laid bare.

Abel is placed in a psychiatric ward to recover, and the police chief informs him that the circus has offered his old job, forcing him to accept. He ultimately escapes custody on the way to the train station and disappears, with a voice-over suggesting he remains at large. The boundary between sanity and flight dissolves.

The film closes with a voice-over suggesting that Abel evades capture and is never seen again, leaving his fate unresolved. The trauma of post-war Berlin lingers as the city moves on around him. The ending emphasizes the era's relentless uncertainty.