Director Jean Marie Straub (1933-2022) and his late wife Danielle Huillet (1936-2006), were one of cinema's most dynamic duos and collaborated closely for a whopping five decades. Their early works are seldom acknowledged though astonishing, Straub departed Germany and found himself en route to Italy after the 1960's and no longer working regularly in the German language. Not Reconciled (1965) would unite members of anti-Nazi resistance in the Thirties with the story of an architect's son who becomes a demolition expert in World War I and blows up his father's masterpiece.
Cronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (1968) was an acclaimed costume-piece, structured around the imaginary journal of Bach's second wife and featuring the performances of a couple of dozen extracts from Bach's music. Geschichtsunterricht (History Lessons,1972) was based on the Brecht novel about the life of Julius Caesar, whilst Moses and Aron (1975) was an interpretation of Schoenberg's opera. Straub's seemingly elliptical style makes few concessions to the viewer and his critical repute, especially in left-wing circles and was far in advance of his popular impact.
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| School gets a little camp in Straub's 1972 feature History Lessons. |
In 2013, Straub resurrected one of the abandoned projects both he and his wife intended to work on and adapted Georges Bernanos' Dialogue d'ombres for an inspired twenty-eight minute short that was screened at Vienna's International Film Festival. Straub was honored at the Locarno Film Fesstival and garnered a Lifetime Achievement award a earlier this month.