Film: Three Films: Jean-Marie Straub And Danièle Huillet
Release date: 22nd February 2010
Certificate: 12
Running time: 225 mins
Director: Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet
Starring: Gustav Leonhardt, Christa Lang, Kathrien Leonhardt, Gianni Buscarino, Angela Nugara
Genre: Documentary/Drama
Studio: Drakes Avenue
Format: DVD
Country: France/Italy/Germany
This is a genuine oddity – three films from two directors who worked for decades, yet received little acclaim during their lifetime. The three films are from three different decades, with no themes in common, and the DVD transfers are of fairly poor quality. There is also little in the way of extras, which does beg the question, why release them? And why in this form?
Chronicle Of Anna Magdalena Bach
Straub was a refugee from Algeria who lived in Germany, and made movies together with his wife Huillet for over 40 years, until Danièle died in 2006.
The first film chronologically, Chronicle Of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968), could easily have been made in the 1920s. Static both visually and aurally, it tells Bach’s story as narrated by his wife, consisting mainly of performances by Bach, played by Gustav Leonhardt.
He was a music scholar of International renown, specialized in the works of Bach, and a harpsichord virtuoso. Play he certainly can, act he certainly cannot, and the whole film suffers from a stilted, airless quality and lack of narrative drive. Clearly the aim is to make the viewer watch pieces of Bach music played by a master – but why not buy the CD? Watching a man in a wig play Bach and saying nothing adds zero to the experience. His wife’s narration is equally stiff and lacking in point.
Most films about composers are awful –Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, and Mozart have all been dumbed down or hyped up by Hollywood. And then there's Ken Russell's desecrations of Tchaikovksy and Mahler. Perhaps this is an attempt to show just how austere and tedious Bach’s life was, in which case it succeeds.
Sicilia!
From 1968 we suddenly leap forward to Sicilia! (1999), filmed in crisp black-and-white, but again a film which has the strangely dated quality – it could easily be 1959 here.
Adapted from a novel, the film simply consists of a series of conversations perceived by a man who has returned to Sicily - from America, he says, but we learn Sicilians aren't always truthful.
After an initial set-up, we see a man return home to see his mother, with whom he has a long, painful, and deep conversation about the past. She seems to revel in remembering how bad his childhood was – she claims to have beaten him, starved him, and even broken his legs. He persists in prodding at her memory, though, as he wants the truth about his father and grandfather. Why did the father leave home? Was he having an affair? Did she kick him out? And was the grandfather little better, or was he a great socialist?
The last scene is a meeting with an itinerant knife-sharpener- a kind of light relief and a figure of hope, an archetypal figure of the Sicilian past filmed in the open air of an empty square. He sharpens the traveller's penknife and returns half his fee.
The film's style is slow and steady – each scene ends with a long, static shot which seems to go on forever – but there is at least some sharp photography. The shot of the man trying to find the sharpener is reminiscent of De Chirico, and his scene is a telling one.
Un Visite Au Louvre
Another strangely dated experience, an apparent documentary about the Paris museum’s great works, but with a very personal commentary about such masterpieces as the Winged Victory Of Samothrace.
As illustrated here, entering into Straub and Huillet’s world is a strange experience, where time seems to stand still and people stare at each other saying little, as the world around them stays exactly the same. It’s a weird world, yet sometimes it can be engaging with glimpses of human emotions underneath the posturing and static shots.
Quite why these three films should be gathered together in one 2-disc pack is a mystery, unless they were the only ones available, and little has been done to clean up or restore the films. Yet they were never available on video, so another tiny piece of cinema’s massive jigsaw of a back catalogue has been filled in, which is clearly a good thing. MM
Chronicle Of Anna Magdalena Bach
Straub was a refugee from Algeria who lived in Germany, and made movies together with his wife Huillet for over 40 years, until Danièle died in 2006.
The first film chronologically, Chronicle Of Anna Magdalena Bach (1968), could easily have been made in the 1920s. Static both visually and aurally, it tells Bach’s story as narrated by his wife, consisting mainly of performances by Bach, played by Gustav Leonhardt.
He was a music scholar of International renown, specialized in the works of Bach, and a harpsichord virtuoso. Play he certainly can, act he certainly cannot, and the whole film suffers from a stilted, airless quality and lack of narrative drive. Clearly the aim is to make the viewer watch pieces of Bach music played by a master – but why not buy the CD? Watching a man in a wig play Bach and saying nothing adds zero to the experience. His wife’s narration is equally stiff and lacking in point.
Most films about composers are awful –Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, and Mozart have all been dumbed down or hyped up by Hollywood. And then there's Ken Russell's desecrations of Tchaikovksy and Mahler. Perhaps this is an attempt to show just how austere and tedious Bach’s life was, in which case it succeeds.
Sicilia!
From 1968 we suddenly leap forward to Sicilia! (1999), filmed in crisp black-and-white, but again a film which has the strangely dated quality – it could easily be 1959 here.
Adapted from a novel, the film simply consists of a series of conversations perceived by a man who has returned to Sicily - from America, he says, but we learn Sicilians aren't always truthful.
After an initial set-up, we see a man return home to see his mother, with whom he has a long, painful, and deep conversation about the past. She seems to revel in remembering how bad his childhood was – she claims to have beaten him, starved him, and even broken his legs. He persists in prodding at her memory, though, as he wants the truth about his father and grandfather. Why did the father leave home? Was he having an affair? Did she kick him out? And was the grandfather little better, or was he a great socialist?
The last scene is a meeting with an itinerant knife-sharpener- a kind of light relief and a figure of hope, an archetypal figure of the Sicilian past filmed in the open air of an empty square. He sharpens the traveller's penknife and returns half his fee.
The film's style is slow and steady – each scene ends with a long, static shot which seems to go on forever – but there is at least some sharp photography. The shot of the man trying to find the sharpener is reminiscent of De Chirico, and his scene is a telling one.
Un Visite Au Louvre
Another strangely dated experience, an apparent documentary about the Paris museum’s great works, but with a very personal commentary about such masterpieces as the Winged Victory Of Samothrace.
As illustrated here, entering into Straub and Huillet’s world is a strange experience, where time seems to stand still and people stare at each other saying little, as the world around them stays exactly the same. It’s a weird world, yet sometimes it can be engaging with glimpses of human emotions underneath the posturing and static shots.
Quite why these three films should be gathered together in one 2-disc pack is a mystery, unless they were the only ones available, and little has been done to clean up or restore the films. Yet they were never available on video, so another tiny piece of cinema’s massive jigsaw of a back catalogue has been filled in, which is clearly a good thing. MM
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