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Snakes in Movies   As You Like It (1936)   Spoiler Alert ! Some of these pictures and descriptions may give away plot details that you might not want to know before watching the film.   This early movie version of the Shakespeare play gives us the great "Seven ages of man" speech (All the world's a stage, etc.), a wrestling match, a gender reversal, a sarcastic fool with a funny hat, a fight with a lion, a triple wedding, and a snake scene, but for a musical comedy there is little music and less comedy in this movie. The costumes are silly, with tall pointed hats on the ladies and tights on the men, and the acting feels very outdated, though it was probably in style in the 1930s. The female lead, Rosalind, is barely intelligible due to Elisabeth Bergner's heavy Viennese accent. The one bright spot is that the male lead, Orlando, is played by Laurence Olivier, in his first Shakespeare film, who went on to become one of the most celebrated actors of his era. But I'm only here to talk about the snake scene. I've seen the play before, but the snake was never shown, it was only talked about. This movie actually shows us the snake, however briefly. The plot is complex with a lot of characters, but all you need to know to understand the snake scene is that Rosalind and Celia are noblewomen who were banished to a forest where they disguise themselves as a man and a peasant, and Orlando's evil brother Oliver has Orlando banished to the same forest, but then he is banished there himself later on. Orlando and Rosalind are in love with each other, but Orlando doesn't recognize Rosalind because she's disguised as a man. That gives her the opportunity to have some fun with him. The snake scene. We see Orlando walking through the woods where he encounters his brother Oliver lying on the ground on his back with a large snake crawling over his neck. Then we see a lioness away. We are not sure what just occured until shortly later when we see Rosalind and Celia meet a strange man in the woods. The man is Oliver, and he tells them what happened: Orlando was walking in the woods when he sees his estranged brother Oliver lying on his back with a snake around his neck. The snake is frightened of Orlando and crawls away under a bush, where a lioness just happens to be crouched, waiting to eat Oliver. Orlando thinks about abandoning his brother, because he always treated Orlando so badly, but he eventually decides to help Oliver by fighting the lion. Then he brings his brother to his cave in the forest and provides him with food and clothing and entertainment. This kindness turns Oliver into a good man and a friend to his brother. The girls are so impressed with Oliver's transformation that Celia falls in love with him and then everybody gets married and the evil Duke gives his stolen throne back to his banished brother and everybody lives happily ever after, the end. Shakespeare knew how to please the crowd. The snake is a live python, probably a Burmese Python.