Synopsis for
The Serpent's Egg (1977) More at IMDbPro »

Perhaps the film that makes the strongest reference to medicine/killing foreboding the Nazi period is Ingmar Bergmans The Serpents Egg, 1977, a film in which the protagonist Abel Rosenberg and his brother's widow Manuela Rosenberg find themselves unwitting subjects of medical experiments which include gassing with chemicals that induce severe psychotic states as they stay in living quarters which they later find out have one way viewing mirrorsthey are disguised laboratories. This film, whose action takes place in Berlin during the nineteen-twenties ominously announces the evils to come by way of its title: the serpents egg has a thin membrane through which one can see the monstrous creature forming inside. But, films which deal with the Shoah, and with Auschwitz in particular, even though the whole excuse for building the camps in the first place, was a medical one, and at that camp the life and death selections were done by doctors, do not show this.