Gosford Park (2001) / The Serpent's Egg (1977)

Despite being the second-highest grossing film of director Robert Altman's illustrious career and stuffed with a who's who of British acting talent, Gosford Park has been almost entirely eclipsed by the BBC show that was initially created as a spin-off of the same: Downton Abbey. But Julian Fellowes' success with his small-screen follow-up should in no way diminish Altman's ensemble who-dun-it, which establishes the ground rules for the upstairs / downstairs class dichotomy with a complexity that frustrates and fascinates in equal measure.

As the guests arrive for an overnight shooting party (attendees include Kristin Scott Thomas, Charles Dance, Clive Owen, Helen Mirren, Emily Watson, Ryan Phillippe and Maggie Smith among others), the stage is set for a muted melodrama between the ruling class and their long-suffering servants. Family patriarch William McCordle (Michael Gambon) is despised by most of his blood relatives and bedding most of the female staff. So when he winds up murdered, there is no shortage of suspects to blame for the crime.

Although the film was sold as a murder mystery, Gosford Park is really nothing of the sort. Fans of Downton Abbey will be on familiar ground, but even they might find Altman's fly-on-the-wall approach somewhat off-putting. Shot with concurrent cameras to capture multiple conversations in the same room, characters are introduced with an irritating casualness, back stories pile up with abandon and accents are often impenetrably murky. Yet, the film's lived-in approach becomes progressively more entertaining as the personalities begin to clash.

As in Downton, Fellowes' script emphasizes the social politics and professional obligations that burden both classes with an often-inexplicable laundry list of dos and don'ts. It's that fading society, caught between one war and the next, that provides the film's most compelling character study amidst a film overstuffed with a few characters too many.

Arrow Film's new Blu-ray features a brand-new 2K restoration from a 4K scan and looks very good (Altman's films are typically a grainy affair). Extras include a pair of commentaries and new interviews recorded exclusively for this release, along with an illustrated collector's booklet featuring new writing on the film.

Born from the unlikely partnership of art film legend Ingmar Bergman and swing-for-the-fences producer Dino De Laurentiis, The Serpent's Egg (1977) winds up being an oddity in both filmmakers' careers. Burdened with a relentlessly depressing story that sports a bizarre twist in its final act, the film certainly doesn't rank high among Bergman fans, with large segments of the Berlin-shot production almost playing as a Woody Allen spoof of the director's Freudian tendencies. But approached as a cross-genre film noir experiment, there are some points of interest to appreciate along the way.

Abel Rosenberg (David Carradine) is an American Jew living in 1920's Berlin, a city facing a crushing economic depression that will only too soon pave the way for the rise of the Nazis Party. After his brother's suicide, Abel falls under the care of his ex-wife, Manuela (Liv Ullmann) a cabaret singer / prostitute whose relationship with a mysterious doctor offers them a reasonable income and a roof over their heads. But the doctor has an agenda of his own that might very well hint at the Holocaust to come.

Shot while Bergman was an exile from his native Sweden, The Serpent's Egg is an intentionally unpleasant experience from the very first scene. Mixing politics with melodrama, murder and a dash of super-science, its trajectory is unpredictably awry and the characters a generally self-loathing lot. Carradine makes for a particularly mopey lead, but co-star Liv Ullmann and Gert Frobe pick up the dramatic slack. Bergman's script name-drops the masters of German Expressionism while DP Sven Nykvist mirrors their origins in his beautifully shot sets and locations. As pointed out in the extras, even Bergman failure is interesting, and the gonzo finale proves the director was still willing to try something new...even if it wasn't a perfect fit.

Arrow Films' Blu-ray is certainly a good-looking affair in HD with a nice helping of extras too, including a surprisingly candid commentary from the late David Carradine, a new career-spanning retrospective with critic Barry Forshaw, more archival material and a collector's booklet.