Snakes on Film

Albert’s helpful pet viper, Adolphe, saves the day in this comedy set on Devil’s Island, but he does all of his dirty work — extinguishing the lives of the two villains — off-screen. In fact, we never actually see Adolphe: all his screen time is spent inside his cage, which makes identifying him a moot point. He’s described as “a little snake, about this big,” and “all different colours like a pretty bracelet,” which sounds more like a coral snake than a viper, insofar as French Guyanese snakes are concerned, but there it is. But a snake with a taste for music? “Vipers are very musical reptiles; they’re much more musical than people think,” says Jules (played by Peter Ustinov). I suppose: snakes are as deaf as Beethoven.