A fascinating film about the childhood years of cinema. In the role of the silent dancer of serpentine Olga Marinetti is the demonic Karina Fallenstein, who in those years experienced the zenith of her career, having managed to star with the best actors of past generations in the general decline of German cinema. Her lover, a film pioneer, is played by Ben Becker, who in those years starred in the role of a calculating Hamburger in the beautiful “Serbian Girl” by the greatly overrated Peter Zer and in the role of the envious brother of “Sister of Sleep” on the novel of the same name about a village organist. Heroes are surrounded by faces from the previous era of German cinema – Otto Sander, Eva Mattes and the more underground Wolf-Dietrich Sprenger. The fact that the director Helmut Herbst is primarily an experimentalist and animator, and that he took up this feature film only because of the idea of telling about the phenomenon of cinema in approach to its origins, is noticeable not only in the choice of the topic, but also in the inclusion of the chronicle of those years, some lighting solutions, and the very clarity of the narrative illuminates the madness of his other works, as in the case of his own game “German Revolution”. These films have a kraut aesthetics in common against the background of historical costume drama, although “Serpentine Dancer” was shot 10 years later, in Hungary, where the funds for such a bold and profound enterprise were found, and from where the heroine unsuccessfully tries to conquer world capitals, but her van gets stuck in the road mud because of the jealousy of her discoverer, whom in the final, despite everything, she does not leave in mysterious trouble.
9 out of 10