Dalla nube alla resistenza (1978)From the Cloud to the Resistance

As part of exploring the context of Moses und Aron (1974) I am exploring Huillet and Straub's other films including this one.

Compared to most of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub's major works, Dalla nube alla resistenza (From the Cloud to the Resistance, 1992) has had relatively little attention (in English at least). It's barely mentioned in the books of Roud, Byg, Turquety and Busch/Hering, and while, of course Claudi Pummer covers it in Fendt's books, there are also few documents relating to it in the rest of the work, nor in Shafto's Writings.

Structure-wise the film divides into two halves, The Cloud adapts six segments from Cesare Pavese's novel "Dialogues with Leucò" (1947). The Resistance abridges another of author's novels "The Moon and the Bonfires" (1950). Whereas the first half neatly divides into six, with each section getting its own introductory intertitle and each starting afresh in terms of characters and setting, the second half is more of a single unit with the scenes and characters arranged a little more conventionally (although that is hardly a description that suits Straub and Huillet's filmic style). Of course the title shouldn't really be read as indicating a joining together of two different films. There's a flow throughout the "Leuco" section as ideas of resistance build.

Geoffrey Nowell-Smith suggests that "the dialogues are more or less self-explanatory and do not require background knowledge of the obscurer by-ways of Greek Mythology". As someone whose knowledge of Greek mythology is largely limited to cultural osmosis and who doesn't quite have Nowell-Smith's intellect, I would have to disagree. The (English translation of the) novel alone caused Publisher's Weekly to note that "Pavese presumes the reader's fluency in the works of Homer, Hesiod and the Greek tragedians" and while the dialogues and the filming of them is interesting and the speeches are peppered with interesting phrasing, it's not easy to catch the overall drift, even after repeated viewings.

One of the things that is interesting about the film, however, is how, perhaps more than any of their other works, it draws together the threads of the couple's previous work and joins it to their future output. Nowell-Smith recalls Straub himself comparing the film to Not Reconciled and expands on some of the points of similarity. The Ancient World setting is not the only factor which recalls Othon, History Lessons, Moses und Aron and Antigone. The light, landscapes, language and literature of Fortini/Cani also springs to mind and the story of a man returning to his home town after living far away for a long time is thematically similar to Sicilia (1998). Particular shots are strongly reminiscent of Workers, Peasants. or The Death of Empedocles.

Naturally, there's also a link to the other Straub and Huillet films based on Pavese's work. Like the first part of Dall nube, the pair's 2005 film Quei loro incontri (These Encounters of Theirs) draws on "Dialoghi con Lueco", using its final five dialogues. Following Huillet's death Straub directed four further short films also based on Pavese's work Le genou d'Artemide (Artemis's Knee, 2008); Le Streghe, femmes entre alles (The Witches, Women Among Themselves, 2009); L'inconsolable (The Inconsolable One, 2011) and La Madre (The Mother, 2012), 

The opening scene features Issione (Ixion) debating with Nephele ("The Cloud") who is not quite in the sky, but up a tree. While she is character to be physically highest above the ground, there's already a sense that already the supposed elevation of the gods is not all it's cracked up to be. Many of the other mythical characters in these opening sections have traditionally been seen as divine to a degree, hence the Cloud of the title reached beyond this initial scene. Next Ippòloco (Hippolochus) and Sarpedonte (Sarpedon) talk in a wooden area. The location and the disruptive framing and editing recall a segment in The Death of Empedocles. By refusing to provide an initial establishing shot showing the two in relation to one another, and similarly by not using the negative space in the mid-shots of each character to indicate their relative positions, Straub and Huillet only gradually reveal how the characters are related physically. 

The most famous sequence from the film (pictured above) is a series of lengthy shots over the shoulders of the mythical king Oedipus and his the priest/prophet Tiresias as they travel on the back of a cart by a pair of white oxen. The road stretches out into the distance ahead of them, but the shot is composed in such a way that at the centre of the shot is the horse pulling the cart and the peasant worker/farmer who is guiding him. The length of this sequence, travelling along a road with the camera looking over the shoulder and ahead, recalls the mildly controversial, and equally emblematic, driving sequences from the pair's Geschichtsunterricht (History Lessons, 1972), also set in the ancient world. Similarly while most of the segment involves Tiresias and Oedipus' discussions about sex, the final shot here ends in a prolonged, meditative silence, allowing viewers, to soak in the gentle background sounds of nature and the trundling along of the ox cart.

Here however, the inclusion of the working class (hu)man interrupts the space between the two elevated figures and their dialogue and draws focus from them. While it is not quite the final scene in the first part, in some ways it's the segue from the first half of the film into the second. The focus has shifted from the mythical characters of "Dialogues with Leucò" to the ordinary twentieth century proletariat of "The Moon and the Bonfires".

The other thing that is instantly noticeable about the cart sequence is that it is not one long shot as I had imagined before seeing it, but a sequence of shots. Many (if not all) of the joins between these long tracking (carting?) shots are marked by a slowish fade to black. I suspect this marks an elipsis in the text, but would have to check. Certainly it gives the section a sense of discontinuity. This is a longer journey and it is only part of the conversation that being recorded. Notable then that the sequence ends in the aforementioned near silent shot.

In the final three dialogues we get two hunters discussing the wolf they have just caught which they believe may formerly have been a man. The surrounding rocks and caves which form the backdrop of this discussion suggests these are stone-age hunters. One shot here evokes Moses and the burning bush - though not Huillet and Straub's depiction of it. Then Litierse (Lityerses) and Eracle (Heracles) discuss human sacrifice and how the blood that soaks into the field is soon forgotten (linking to Fortini Cani)

Finally, an unnamed father and son discuss historic stories of sacrifice. Two two are shepherds, so not only just human, but solidly working class, rather than kings or prophets. Furthering this move from the divine to the profane, the son is critical of the sacrificial system. His father provides numerous answers, but the son is unconvinced, suggesting that there will be further disconnect between heaven and earth int he next generation. As with the cart sequence (and elsewhere), the scene ends with a moment of silence and there are visual similarities here with the orgy scene in Moses und Aron (1975), not least the short where the son lays a bowl of liquid (here milk; blood in Moses und Aron) on the floor.

The longest "gap" in the film is not so much a gap in the audio fabric of the film as in the opening half, but in the visuals, towards the end of part two. The second half of the film sees a man ("The Bastard", formerly a foundling) return to his home town having made his fortune in America. Much of this part consists of the man's discussions with his former friend Nuto. Nuto is a communist and describes the events of the fascist period which the foundling escaped by his emigration to America, though Christopher Small notes how many of the villagers "remain quietly loyal to fascism". Yet he also hears stories of the resistance to the Nazis.

The foundling also befriends a boy Cinto who is from such an unstable family that Cinto is given a knife to defend himself with. Towards the end of the film, things in Cinto's family come to a head as his father kills his wife and burns down the farm with only Cinto escaping. But rather than depicting these horrific, violent acts, or even just showing the person narrating them, Straub and Huillet cut to blackand leave only the description as a voice-over. It's a fascinating way of emphasising the violence without glorifying it or manipulating it to build excitement. The prolonged absence of images is striking, but comes in the opposite spirit to the presentation of violence in conventional cinema. It also recalls the gap Moses and Aron between Acts II and III between which Aron's rebellion has been (violently?) overthrown and now Aron in lying l bound-up on the ground, awaiting trial.

There's plenty more in the film that repeated viewings would bring out more clearly and I'd be interested to read more about it from someone who is familiar with the books. It's a shame this one has not been given more attention, nevertheless the sources might be of interest.
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- Nowell-Smith, Geoffrey (1980) "Dalla nube alla resistenza (From the cloud to the resistance)", Monthly Film Bulletin, January. pp.45-6. Available online:
https://webapps.cspace.berkeley.edu/cinefiles/imageserver/blobs/5f9725b8-0ecf-434f-a30f/content/linked_pdf:

- Pummer, Claudia (2016), "(Not Only) for Children and Caveman: The Films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet", in Ted Fendt (ed.), Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Vienna: Synema Publikationen, pp.56-9.

- Small, Christopher (2019), "A Straub-Huillet Companion: From the Clouds to the Resistance", mubi.com Notebook Column, July 18. Available online: 
https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/a-straub-huillet-companion-from-the-clouds-to-the-resistance

Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie? (Pedro Costa, 2001)

Regular readers will know that, owing in part to my fascination with Moses und Aron (1975) I like to write about the work of the film's directors Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. At the risk of pushing things even further I recently got a chance to watch Pedro Costa's documentary Où gît votre sourire enfoui? (Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?, 2001) shot in the editing suite as Straub and Huillet worked on their 1999 film Sicilia!. 

Naturally this is a film that I have wanted to view for a while, not least because Jean Luc Godard called it "the best film ever made about film editing" (see this video), so the fact that it you can currently stream it from Grasshopper/Projectr.tv. was great news for me.

As you might expect the film reflects much of its stars' trademark style: diagonal shots and long takes captured with a fixed and seemingly impassive camera. If you count film as a text, then one could even go further and note that the passage of Elio Vittorini's novel "Conversazione in Sicilia" into Huillet and Straub's film and then into Costa's documentary is typical of their multi-layered adaptations. Indeed much of the running time is given over to close-ups of that 'text', primarily shot from the screen in the editing suite. Brief excerpts play and then are re-wound, forward and back until the subtitler gives up translating and we wait while one of them pinpoints the frame they were trying to find.

The subtleties revealed by this are immense. Seemingly insignificant details, the slackness in a wrist, the bow of a head, a branch flitting about in the background are highlighted and debated as the pair seek to solve the problems they cause. As someone without any experience of what happens in the editing room it's hard to know if this is typical or not. Perhaps if Costa had set up shop with Scorsese and Schoonmaker the same level of exacting precision would have been captured, but it seems unlikely that the rigour on display here is typical. It's perhaps all the more surprising because of the length of the typical shot in a Straub-Huillet film. One wonders about the number of shots it has taken to even taken them to get this far.

Yet if Costa's film bears many of the marks of its subjects' style then one key difference is the way in which the dialogue is delivered. In many Huillet-Straub films it is deliberately very mannered and forced. There's an emphasis on rhythm and cadence of the language (which gets mention at one point here). Yet the dialogue here is quite the reverse. I don't know for a fact how Costa shot it but all the indicators point towards it simply being their natural dialogue. And what dialogue it is! Much of it is the back and forth of a married couple who are closing in on 40 years of working together. They bicker and chide, but never with anger, or to cause offence - these conversations feel well worn, familiar, perhaps even comfortable. Huillet (as the primary editor) is trying to focus on the task in front of her and Straub injects with something unrelated. Or he messes with the light. Clearly these discussions have happened many times before and so you sense so much about the strength of both their relationship and the nature of couples who have been together for so long. She knows how he is: he wouldn't object to changing but just cannot Time has mellowed their little conversations, and in any case there is a film to make.

In between this domestic banality there is a masterclass in film philosophy and practice. Straub talks about this similarities between editing a film and a sculptor working with marble. Just as the sculptor has to work with the veins in the raw material so must they. Elsewhere Straub, in the words of John Dickson "can’t help telling stories about Bunuel, Ray, Chaplin, and Eisenstein, as he paces in and out the door of their editing room, which might as well be the portal to another world".(1) 

That portal effect (see above) is one Costa creates by his immersion of the camera in the dark recesses of the editing suite. There are no establishing shots, introduction or pre-suite interviews. The film starts in the editing room and remains there except for a few scenes where the pair present the show to an audience. The camera moves position, occasionally someone even turns on the light, but it's a film of warm shadows and silhouettes. The filmmakers are present, usually on camera (unless Sicilia! is), but only rarely in such a way to be able to capture their features. Instead we capture their essence. Their warmth and humour, but also their focus, particularly Huillet's who keeps the more restless Straub on course.

I'd like to go into more detail, but am both pushed for time and my three-day ticket has expired. I'm aware that Costa's role is pivotal. As Jean Pierre Gorrin asks "What did he do to give us the Straubs with such vitality?"(2). But I'm also short of time and the chance to re-watch it. But the film has been written about else where (in addition to Dickson and Gorrin) and those reviews do enough to re-kindle my memories.

It would be easy to dismiss this as a film about insignificant details, and, as with many of Straub, Huillet's films it can seem paradoxically dull and engorssing. But it's a film that stays with you. Its words and images. Having never heard Huillet and Straub talk before it's fascinating to see them move, speak, discuss and work, and to see the relationship between them. For that along it will be memorable, but it also captures so much of their spirit. In a wonderful final shot the two approach the theatre inside a cinema where Sicilia! is playing. Outside in the red velvet lobby Huillet continues up the stairs to the projection booth, but Straub stays behind as the music drifts out from inside. He sits on the stairs as if soaking in the moment. In one sense he seems to revel in having a solitary moment left to his own devices. But in another he seems alone and bereft without her. Like so much that has gone before its a moment that seems to encapsulates their relationship perfectly.

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1 - Dickson, John (2017) "Pedro Costa’s WHERE DOES YOUR HIDDEN SMILE LIE? (Documentary Revival)" in Cine File: Cine: List (Friday July 21 -  Thursday, July 27). Available online: https://www.cinefile.info/cine-list/2017/7/21/-friday-july-21-thursday-july-27-

2 - Gorrin, Jean Pierre (2016) "Nine Notes on Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?" in Ted Fendt (ed.)  Jean-Marie Straub & Danèle Huillet, Vienna: Synema Publikationen, p.156.

Antigone (1992)Die Antigone des Sophokles nach der Hölderlinschen Übertragung für die Bühne bearbeitet von Brecht 1948

Antigone is Huillet and Straub's final film set in the ancient world. Indeed, not only is that when the story is set, but the entire film is shot within the ancient Greek theatre in Segesta, Sicily. The location instantly recalls 1975's Moses und Aron, the majority of which is shot in the Alba Fucens amphitheatre in southern Italy. Antigone is Straub and Huillet's most visually similar film to Moses und Aron. In addition to the ancient white bleachers and stones, the distant mountains in the background, and the light from blue Italian skies, there is the use of the fixed camera - a technique that was used for significant chunks of the earlier film, but for the entirety of Antigone. While the camera is sometimes positioned high up, and a variety of focal lengths and compositions are used, all the scenes are shot from the one position. I'm tempted to call it stage right because while the action (such as it is) takes place on either side of the camera, a row of large stones runs down the middle of the theatre. Behind those stones there are really only a group of four elders. Occasionally a character crosses the line of stones, but otherwise the elders stand there almost motionlessly in front of the ancient bleachers, the empty stands suggesting both the remoteness of the king, Creon, and the elders' role as representatives of the absent people.

Part of the reason the people are absent is that the men are at war with Argos. As king of Thebes, Creon is not at the battle and is detached from his people - unable to empathise with their suffering, read the mood of his troops, or sense the way the battle is going. "He orders victory before victory is assured and turns weapons against his own troops to drive them into hopeless battle" (Byg, 220). When Princess Antigone's brother (Polyneices) deserts, Creon orders him to be killed. Antigone resists his tyranny to the point that she is also sentenced to death. Creon presses on with the assault on Argos, but his campaign is struck by a series of calamities as the battle is lost; his sons die; and then the men, women and children of Argos instead turn, attack and indeed conquer Thebes.

In addition to the location, the camera work and the static group of elders, there are several other links with Moses und Aron, though mainly those typical of Huillet and Straub's distinctive style. Shots are largely long takes which are largely static, but occasionally the camera pans well over 90°, almost whizzing by. Both films are adaptations of mid-20th century German works, themselves based on iterations of ancient sources. The film's full title in this respect, which translates as "Antigone of Sophocles After Hölderlin's Adaptation for the Stage Edited by Brecht in 1948" particularly draws attention to the literary stages of development the story we are witnessing has gone through - an event in the past recounted in its time and then adapted again and again by Sophocles, Hölderlin, Brecht and nowStraub/Huillet, each who bring their own themes to it.

In  both works themes of truth and its inaccessibility are to the fore - Moses senses it but finds it impossible to transmit without distorting it; distortion of truth takes place in Antigone also as Creon prefers to believe a lie rather than listen to, or witness the truth. In both, Moses/Creon's acts of violence take place off-screen, as if merely the inevitable conclusion of the exchange of words we witness.

A further similarity is the manner in which most of the actors deliver their lines with relatively little expression, though Werner Rehm's performance as Creon stands out in marked contrast. Byg praises his nuanced performance as "a picturebook version of a hammy, provincial actor" which corresponds to "the professionalism of power" (222). In contrast, Astrid Offner - the amateur actor who plays Antigone - gives a subtler performance which is nevertheless utterly compelling in its steely determination. Whilst the reasons for the dramatic turn of events off screen seem largely due to Creon's hubris, arrogance and failure to listen, such is the power of Offner's performance, that it's difficult to escape the feeling that Antigone's defiance has somehow called all this disaster down upon him in judgement.

The actors' static poses, unmoving shoulders and with feet which typically remain rooted to the ground, bring a surface calm to proceedings that only focuses attention on the forcefulness of the spoken word. As a result, on the few occasions when characters are not static, it is suddenly quite shocking. The strongest example of this is when a messenger, having spoken out his message, drops dead, the onscreen death, not least because despite the numerous deaths that occur during this story, it is the only one actually shown on screen. Many movies these days show unending action and violence, but have little of any value to say about it. In contrast, Antigone refuses to distract or entertain its audience with on-screen violence. The violence takes place off screen, indicated only by the actors themselves leaving the frame of the camera shots. "Axes, axes" cries Creon as he heads off to save his son. Moments later he re-enters the ancient theatre carrying his son's bloodied robe.

As the play reaches its terrible climax, Creon leaves the theatre once again, the camera pans once again, coming to rest on a distant Sicilian mountain, entirely unaffected by the human drama that has been unveiled. But Straub and Huillet are not done. The film cuts to a closing quote from Brecht in 1952, during the Korean War and surely with one eye on the Second World War in the rear view mirror: "For humanity is threatened by wars compared to which those past are like poor attempts and they will come, without any doubt, if the hands of those who prepare them in all openness are not broken".

The quote is accompanied by the sound of helicopters, recalling not only a line from the play about "the whirr of birds above" but also the war-as-entertainment newscast footage from the first Gulf War which concluded just a few months before filming began. But the helicopter sounds also recall Bernd Alois Zimmermann's opening music - which integrates phrases from Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" - and combines with them to evoke Apocalypse Now (1979) and Vietnam. There's a parallel, then, between this portrayal of the war of the Ancient Greeks, and the American Empire of our own day. Antigone defiant stand against tyranny seems to halt Creon's kingdom and imperial designs in their tracks. Huillet and Straub bid that we do likewise in our own day.

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- Byg, Barton (1995) Landscapes of Resistance: The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Cézanne: Dialogue with Joachim Gasquet (1990)

Painters have been a popular subject for filmmakers, going as far back as Pathé's 1910 film about Murillo (L'Orgueil) and Giulia Cassini-Rizzotto's 1919 Leonardo da Vinci, not least because of the connections between the two art forms.¹ It's hardly surprising, then, that Huillet and Straub - whose films revolve around adapting the work of artists from all kinds of art forms - would eventually create a film about a painter, and in their own idiosyncratic fashion.

As their subject they chose Paul Cézanne, an artist who, at least in the eyes of Benoît Turquety, shares their passion for "objectivity" and "impersonality" ². As with so many of their films Cézanne (1990) straddles the gap between adaptation and documentary. Whereas most 'films about painters' have tended to be either biopics or documentaries Straub and Huillet take a different approach, combining scraps of biographic material with images of his finished paintings as displayed in galleries. Throughout words from Gasquet's conversations with Cézanne are read out, with Huillet speaking Cézanne's words and Straub occasionally posing one of Gasquet's questions.

The resulting film has the feel of a cinematic scrapbook. In terms of the rest of their body of work it perhaps bears closest resemblance to Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's 'Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene' (1972). As with that film Cézanne features photographs, actors reading others words in lengthy excerpts as if standing-in for the original orator, seemingly unconnected film footage and shots of landscapes. Turquety divides the film into two.³ The first half overlaying photographs of the artist with words purportedly from his conversation with Joachim Gasquet; a shot of Cézanne's "La vieille au chaplet"; excerpts from their own Death of Empedocles (1986); and Renoir's Madame Bovary (1933) and long takes of country scenery including Mont Sainte-Victoire. The second features shots of nine more of Cézanne's paintings in their present locations, finished off by a shot of the gated area where his Paris studio was situated.

Here is the full sequence of  the film's 75 shots:

- Opening credits on white then on black.
- Two distant panning shots of Aix-en-Provence. Quiet ambient noise.
- Still photo of Cézanne accompanied by recollection of the conversation by Joachim Gasquet
- Painting 1. "La vieille au chaplet" (1895-6)
- Excerpt from Madame Bovary (Jean Renoir 1933) - 50 shots.
- Static shot of Mont Sainte-Victoire
- Excerpt from The Death of Empedocles (Straub/Huilllet, 1986) comprising five static shots taken on the slopes of Mount Etna - featuring Andreas von Rauch reading words from Hölderlin's play.
- Static shot of Mont Sainte-Victoire, eventually panning right
- Three still photos of Cézanne
- Static shot of Mount Etna, from Death of Empedocles.
- Painting 2. Still Life with Apples and Oranges (1895-1900)
- Painting 3. Montagne Sainte-Victoire (1890)
- Painting 4. Le Mont Sainte-Victoire vu des Lauves (1904-1906)
- Painting 5. Rochers et branches à Bibémus (1895-1904)
- Painting 6. La Montagne Sainte-Victoire, vue de Lauves (1905)
- Painting 7. Apples, Bottles, Chair Back (1902-1906)
- Painting 8. Les Grandes Baigneuses (1894-1905)
- Painting 9. The Gardener Vallier (1906)
- Painting 10 Femme nue debout (1895)
-Gate to Cézanne's Paris studio . Quiet ambient noise.
- End credits on black.

Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg is one of my favourite Huillet-Straub films, in part because it manages to be so rhetorically passionate, despite rigorously striving for  objective neutrality. You have to know enough about how they handle the material to be struck by it, but once you do it's incredibly powerful. Here's the subject is clearly less emotive, but I do like films such as Cézanne, Introduction and their 1968 film The Bridgegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp which approach the same theme by collaging different types of visual and aural material. The artists featured in these two films, Schoenberg, Cézanne, Renoir, Hölderlin and Flaubert all shared a similar approach to their art - an 'objectivist' approach as Turquety would explain it.

There are also obvious similarities with the pair's later A Visit to the Louvre (2003) which not only features numerous shots of paintings, but also includes dialogue which Joachim Gasquet noted down from his conversations with Cézanne. Thematically there are similarities too - Huillet's concern with how paintings are displayed in museums and galleries looms in visit to the Louvre and Cézanne seems to have been conceived, in part, from Straub and Huillet's experiences of visiting these paintings in galleries around the world as they toured with Moses und Aron (1975). Huillet railed against the "horrible...madness" of making them "invisible" by hiding them behind protective glass.⁴ Elsewhere Straub talked about paintings being "prisoners of a museum".⁵

It is perhaps because of this that the film makes so much of framing. It is perhaps best known for the manner in which it displays the ten paintings by Cézanne. Whilst the majority of them are in landscape format, meaning it would have been easy for Huillet and Straub to crop out the galleries' frames, they not only include them, but also include a little of the museum's wall. This is partly out of a sense of objectivity and respect for Cézanne's original compositions and framing. Nonetheless, at times they do not even centre the canvas in the precise middle of the frame - clearly a deliberate act for such meticulous filmmakers. This presentation draws attention to the paintings imprisonment and how paintings created to capture and reflect light are now trapped inside under artificial lights. It also distorts perspective, "the film-frame makes every painting the same scale, their relative sizes are equalized, even if they are actually very different".⁶

But by this point 'framing' has already been introduced as a theme in various different ways. Böser notes how in the excerpts of Renoir's film "a dominant stylistic feature of the film are secondary apertures, frames within frames which frequently establish shot compositions of a pronounced symmetry" noting also "double framing" and "prominent vertical or horizontal lines".⁷ Then there is the moment in their own film when Empedocles stands up with the result that his head is no longer in the frame as if he is breaking out of the frame.

It's significant as well that before encountering these photographed paintings inside, the film starts and ends with exterior shots. The first of these are of the place of his birth; the last of where he lived, and worked, in the last days before his death. "The film is thus bookended by the two geographic locations central to the painter's life"⁸. Indeed he worked on painting 9, "The Gardener Vallier" (1906) on the day of his death. These shots are accompanied only by the natural ambient sounds which are so central to Straub and Huillet's broader body of work. As the film cycles through the paintings the frames begin to lose their hold, first paintings appear not in a visible frame (no's 6 and 7); then a framed painting appears but accompanied by natural sounds, the like of which cannot be heard from within the central London gallery where it resides; then the painting of "The Gardener Vallier" on an easel worked on the day before he died - as if capturing at the moment of his death; finally we have an unfinished painted over sketch, a painting where Cézanne is still attempting to capture the light on, and the fire below, the surface. These are two themes Cézanne/Huillet's "narration" touch on. Elsewhere, referring to Mont Sainte Victoire we hear "these hunks of rock were made from fire, and there is fire in them still."

That penultimate shot of "The Gardener Vallier" gets increasingly meaningful the more you probe.  It is one of nine attempts at the character by Cézanne late in his life (six oil paintings and three water colours) and the film lends them, and itself, an air of melancholy by Cézanne/Huillet reflections which end with "c'est effrayante, la vie" (life is terrifying). Gasquet himself discusses these works - though not in one of the passages in the film - claiming that when the old gardener failed to show up for sittings, the artist modelled for himself, setting himself up in front of the mirror.⁹ This corresponds, in a way, to the relationship between the first painting displayed in the film - "La vieille au chaplet" (Old Maid with Rosary) - and the ensuing clip from Renoir's Madame Bovary. As the painting is displayed 'Cézanne' discusses how the inspiration for the painting - notably its colours - came from Flaubert's novel.

In many of Straub and Huillet's films there's a fascination with texts and layers of history. Here things are simpler than with their works set in the ancient world, but the use of Gasquet's recollections is one way in which this surfaces. There is the original conversations between the two men; Gasquet's subsequent recording of them much later; and then Huillet/Straub's selection, abridgement and performance of them. Like anyone Gasquet's words are prone to the loss and distortion of the memory of these events, and the possibility of deliberate embellishment or fabrication. Gasquet's words 'frame' our impressions of Cézanne and their unreliability highlight the inaccessibility of the past. In a similar fashion, even our impression of Cézanne's art is limited and distorted by their being filmed, variations in colour, lighting, grain and perspective all change how the viewer sees the paintings.

That this film was originally commissioned by a gallery to accompany an exhibition of a selection of the artists works, only adds a further interpretative layer.¹⁰ It reflects that is so central to Moses und Aron - the tension between a purity vision and the impossibility of communicating it more widely without reducing or distorting it. "As the institutional guardians of art, such institutions may be viewed to exert a tangible impact on our experience of the exhibits in their care and possession".¹¹ Also as with Moses und Aron (as well as Class Relations (1983) and others) Huillet and Straub's interest in unfinished or incomplete works again resurfaces with inclusion of some paintings that Cézanne had not yet completed, testifying to the ragged edges and reality of artistic process and thought. Even the film itself exists in two versions the French version I have discussed here (and which is available on YouTube) and a German version which is twelve minutes longer.

Sadly, the gallery that commissioned Cézanne, Musee d'Orsay, declined to show it in the end saying it was "not an educational film, but an auteur's film".¹² Yet despite such a poor initial reception, Cézanne has gone on to become one of their most analysed latter works (at least among English language texts) given more serious consideration than their more popular films from the final third of their career. Thirteen years later Straub and Huillet would return to Cézanne, again through the recollections of Gasquet, in their 2003 film A Visit to the Louvre only this time the focus was the works of other artists such as Courbet, Tintoretto and Veronese with Julie Koltaï giving voice to Cézanne's thoughts on their work.

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1 - Rizzotto was an Italian actress who turned to directing after the First World War. There's a great write up on her here by Alessandro Faccioli, Marzia Maino. As well as tipping me off about this, Michelle Facey also mentioned two 1911 Italian documentaries on Leonardo. Thanks to Roland-François Lack for the tip-off about L'Orgueil.
2 - Turquety, Benoît (2020) Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub: "Objectivists" in Cinema, (Translated by Ted Fendt), Amsterdam:Amsterdam University Press.
3 - Turquety. p.207
4 - Huillet, Danièle (2016) "Quite a lot of Pent-Up Anger" in Straub, Jean-Marie and Danièle Huillet, Writings, translated and edited by Sally Shafto with Katherine Pickard. New York:  Sequence Press. p.229-231.
5 - Chevrie, Marc (1989) 'Jean-Marie Straub et Daniele Huillet: Entre Deux Films', Cahiers du Cinema, (418) April. p.64. Cited in the catalogue for the 2019 BFI/Goethe Institute retrospective.
6 - Turquety. p.209.
7 - Böser, Ursula (2004) The Art of Seeing, the Art of Listening: The Politics of Representation in the Work of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang. p.173-4
8 - Shafto, Sally (2012) "Artistic Encounters: Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet, and Cézanne" in Angela Dalle Vacche (ed.) Film, Art, New Media: Museum Without Walls? London: Palgravce Macmillan. p.216.
9 - Cited in Platzman, Steven (2001) Cézanne: The Self-portraits. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press. p.190.
10 - Böser, p.188.
11 - Böser, p.188.
12 - Raymond, Jean-Louis (1995) 'Rencontres avec Jean-Marie Straub et Daniele Huillet, Le Mans' in Rencontres: Jean-Marie Straub et Daniele
Huillet, in Bruno Tackels (ed.) Strasbourg: Limelight. p. 33.

Book Review - Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub: 'Objectivists' in Cinema

Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub: "Objectivists" in Cinema
Benoît Turquety
(Translated by Ted Fendt)

Amsterdam University Press 
(2020)
315 pages
Hardback
ISBN 978-9463722209

The resurgence of interest in Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet in recent years has seen a blossoming of scholarship about them, particularly in English. Benoît Turquety's Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub: "Objectivists" in Cinema, translated into English by Ted Fendt, sits alongside  Fendt's own "Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet" (2016); Sally Shafto and Katherine Pickard's "Writings", also 2016; and Ute Holl's 2017 "The Moses Complex", about Moses und Aron; and with Tobias Hering and Annett Busch's "Tell It to the Stones: Encounters with the Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub" due later in the year there is suddenly a wealth of material.

Turquety's angle is his argument that Huillet and Straub's films share striking similarities with the work of the Objectivist poets, especially Louis Zukofsky, he also discusses George Oppen and Charles Reznikoff. The brief introduction lays out this scope. Returning to Jacques Rivette's review of Fritz Lang's Beyond Reasonable Doubt (1956) Turquety suggests Straub and Huillet attempted to take it to an extreme "in which all traces or residues of subjectivity -- of personal intervention and even of style -- disappear in favour of a form precisely calculated according to rigorous principles" (11). He sees similarities with their use of pre-existing texts, precision and minimising personal comment, with artists such as Poe, Baudelaire, Flaubert, Mallarmé and particularly a group of early 20th century poets known as the Objectivists. He concludes with a brief introduction to them and the principles behind their work.

The remainder of the book is sub-divided into four sections: Part One "Foundations", Part Two "Language/Authority", Part Three "Interruptions" and Part Four "Trials, Series". Chapter 1 ("Erotic Barbarity") looks at 1969's Othon or to use its official title Les Yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer, ou Peut-être qu’un jour Rome se permettra de choisir a son tour (Eyes don’t want to stay shut all the time, or Perhaps one day Rome will let herself choose at her turn). Turquety uses Othon as an access points to the pair's oeuvre in general - the visibility of the layers of history, the importance of sound, the actors' delivery and particularly their use of framing which could be considered "violently off-balance" (27) or conversely, "atonal" (28). This desire to "have it both ways" (29) is also echoed in their desire for both "intelligent classicism...and radical novelty" (29) and "material and fleeting meaning" and whilst this "disconcerts people" it is also a reminder that "The work exists first as the site of loss" (29).

The other chapter in part one is called "Objectivity and Objectivities" and takes a close look at the word "Objectivists" in the book's title. Turquety starts by repeating an oft-used summary of Huillet/Straub, that "they 'deconstruct' the 'codes' of 'classical cinema' (31), before discussing three different meanings for the term 'Objectivity': "the work of art as an object" (39), "the 'objectivity' of perception" (39) and in the sense of "impartiality" (40). The question facing Huillet and Straub is "How does one make political cinema if it must also be a hands-off cinema?" (41). Turquety finds here a link to similar questions being posed in the earlier part of the last century by "The Objectivists", a group of poets whose ideas mirror those of Straub-Huillet's, and so spends the majority of the chapter discussing their ideas. Primarily homing in on Louis Zukofsky, he also discusses George Oppen and Charles Reznikoff, declaring that the "three of them represent the core of what is at stake" (49). Turquety discusses the theory behind their work, breaking it down into three sections "The Eye and the Object" (50-53), "Sincerity and Objectivation" (53-56) and "Objectivist Politics" (56-62) before shifting the focus to the similarities with Cézanne and composers Bach and Schoenberg whose work was so prominent in Huillet and Straub's early films. The summary here seems to be that the "originality of Objectivist art theory is its affirmation that abstraction (objectification) and figuration (sincerity) are complementary, that sincerity is necessary for objectification, but also, in return, objectification alone permits exactitude...at the heart of sincerity" (58).

Part 2 ("Language/Authority") takes two different approaches to the couple's 1975 film Moses und Aron, which will be where this volume is of most interest to regular readers of this site. Chapter 3 - "The Power of Speech (or the Voice), of Seeing and the Path: Moses and Aaron" - offers a detailed analysis of the film, not as long as Ute Holl's monograph, but at almost 75 pages, it's the second longest piece of writing on the film available in the English language. working sequentially through the film it compares Schoenberg's work with Huillet/Straub's, noting the areas where they subvert his meanings with their own intentions. Despite initially seeming neutral, Straub and Huillet's subtle uses of cinematic techniques such as mise en scène present a different take on the subject from Schoenberg's opera. Take for example the widely discussed opening scene where God, the burning bush and Moses' face all remain off camera. "The theme of seeing (or not seeing) is one of the foundations of the opening sequence" (79). "We do not see what Moses sees: we do not see Moses seeing....it would be unthinkable for this to happen differently" given both works explore the problems of a god who is unseen, "this framing was, in some ways, the only logical one" (79).

The difference between the two works perhaps finds its fullest expression in shot 19 where the choir representing the people (rather than the choir representing God) is first displayed on screen. "It sings off-screen before a pan brings it into the frame" (81). Because the God-choir remains off screen the fact that the people-choir begin the shot off-screen "it is inevitable that we think both choirs are the same", that "burning bush=off screen people" (81). Turquety considers this "a forced, if not radical, inversion of Schoenberg's content" (81). Later he explains that "Huillet and Straub effectively make a counter-reading of Schoenberg's opera and empty it of what is at the centre: God" (93).

Turquety then examines the depiction of  the three miracles (though finding the term "problematic" (98)). I'm not sure I completely agree with his argument that "Historically, there was a miracle -- at least a 'sign' or 'prodigy'. Egyptian magicians performed them too, to a certain extent" (102, emphasis original). Nevertheless, his point is that onscreen because, for example we see a staff being thrown in one shot, then a snake in the next, and then a staff being picked up, the "miracle is the hole between the images" (102). He also notes the circularity of these miracles, "water is blood and then water again" (100).

Finally in this chapter, Turquety ends by looking at the orgies and power struggles in Act II and the unfinished Act III. Again Huillet and Straub subvert Schoenberg's stated intention that the orgy gets increasingly out of hand, by producing a "logical" (113) and "rather well-behaved" (115) orgy. Turquety cites the July-August "Cahiers du Cinema" interview in 1975 where Straub observed that "they are a people suffering from despair" (p.20, cited on 113). Turquety considers Act III as a "theoretical reversal of the situation, a response to the question: what would have happened if the other had won" (120), in other words "here is a film that offers two endings and maintains that both are the ending" (120, emphasis original). He sees this as Straub/Huillet's "desire to exacerbate the tension to the point of mutually destroying the two 'conductors'" , Moses and his brother (121). Furthermore this is the nature of the objectivity Turquety is discussing in Huillet and Straub's work. "The work forms an impasse and implodes; it is this implosion" (122).

The second chapter in this section (4. 'Speech Against Power, or Poetry, Love and Revolution: "A"-9') primarily returns to Zukofsky - "a young, leftist, Jewish and atheist intellectual" (130) - and offers an in-depth analysis of his objectivist poem "A"-9. Starting by analysis the poems relation to the rest of his work "A", the nature of it's two distinct halves and its adoption of the canzone song form, he proceeds to draw on some of the similarities with Straub and Huillet's work. In particular, he draws attention to their similar "use of pre-existing texts through interferences between semi-independent, superimposed structures, apposition, disjunction, quotation, etc., techniques always reflecting in problems in the relation between language and things, language and images, language and power, the gaze, love and art." (147). Turquety concludes that for both Zukofsky and Huillet/Straub "the resulting forms are their objectivation" (147).

Part three consists of a single chapter (five) though at eighty pages long it is by far the book's longest. In it Turquety turns to a number of Huillet and Straub's other works: Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg's 'Musical Accompaniment to a Cinematographic Scene'" (1972), History Lessons (1972), Too Early/Too Late (1981), Cézanne (1989), Every Revolution is a Throw of the Dice (1979) and The Bridgegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp (1968) as well as Chaplin's Modern Times (1936) as discussed by Zukofsky. Indeed Turquety summarises Zukofsky's 1936 essay on Chaplin's art as that which moves beyond artistic intentions (which are "always predatory" (166) - "it does not matter what an author thinks", 166-7) and which "to allow the work to act on its own" (169). That Huillet and Straub held Chaplin in such high esteem surprises many, but becomes a little more comprehensible in light of the fact that his mastery of cinematic tools had inspired Zukofsky's to make it "a goal of poetry" (306).

As with previous chapters Turquety uses this selection of Straub and Huillet's films to note the common ground they share with objectivist poets. In particular, their use of quotation (often without attribution); montage as a form of ideogram; fixity's similarity to long static shots; the importance of form as much, if not more than 'content'; cuts as interruptions; and, lastly the way they use abstract links between material as a type of fugue to unite seemingly disparate material. These are the aspects of filmmaking which make Huillet-Straub films so distinctive and Turquety makes a strong, detailed persistent case for them as objectivist intentions, not that they are "trying to put 'cinematic equivalents' in place", but relying on "material form" (180). The author is not arguing that a "Huillet and Straub shot is an equivalent of Zukofsky's poem or would have the same effect or act in the same way" but that they share "common preoccupations, ambitions, conceptions, and concerns" (206).

Having drawn out parallels between the objectivist poets and numerous films across Huillet and Straub's career, chapter 6, which opens the book's fourth section, focuses on a single film, Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations, 1983). Turquety posits that both Straub and Huillet's film and Kafka's "The Man Who Disappeared", from which it is adapted, are built around "a series of catastrophic encounters that take the shape of endless trials." (240). The majority of this chapter hones in on the presentation of first such trial from Klassenverhältnisse where Karl attempts to defend the stoker in the presence of his captain. Huillet and Straub film this scene (and others) almost entirely from a single camera position. They use this approach to highlight the power dynamics which are latent in the scene primarily by their use of consistent camera placement and the cuts and editing between shots. By muting out more distracting elements, these facets are more clearly highlighted. Turquety relates this to similar themes in George Oppen's poetry. Whereas in Oppen's Discrete Series poetry "The eruption of the 'I'...interrupts and breaks the poem" (269), Karl, in the film's final scene, ultimately "abandons any idea of subjectivity" (272).

The trial theme is carried over into chapter 7 "On Dissolution" with two other of Huillet and Straub's films which also both structured around trials. Turquety opens with an analysis of The Death of Empedocles (1987), adapted from Hölderlin's play noting that "what Huillet and Straub maintain from the play is organized into two symmetrical parts, each ending in a big trial" (283). But the film is really about the force of language, "an instrument of domination (rhetoric) that prepares and fulfils its own dissolution" (285). Straub and Huillet "radicalize [(the play's] dramatic stasis by pushing the actor's immobility to the limit" (282) so that any small variation in pose, diction or use of the camera becomes significant. Turquety quotes Straub statement that "sensations must never be provoked, sensations must be translated" (281).¹ This thought also carries over into his discussion of Workers, Peasants (2001) starting with a comparison with another objectivist work, this time Charles Reznikoff's "Testimony" (287). Reznikoff's poem takes extracts "from testimonies and trials, from...within a judicial framework" (287) reformatting them into poetry with neutrality as a core principle. In similar fashion Workers, Peasants adapts four chapters focused on disputes from Vittorini's novel "Women of Messina" namely chapters 44-47 which stand out "in the novel, [as] the text of these four chapters is formally distinguished from the rest: it does not appear in classic narrative form, but in an almost theatrical manner" (293). As with Empedocles the directors draw "from a limited pool of gestures, postures, and other cinematic elements" (293) such that the film becomes "a study of the possibility, limits, and modalities of an objective language whose paradigm...is legal testimony (296). But in the published script Vittorini's prose is presented as verse, "though every word was written by Vittorini" (296), such reformatting destroys the link between form and content, creating "an objectivation of language" (296) which, as with Reznikoff, "superimposes a very different form of perception on the question of testimony...deeply modifying the problem of judgment" (296).  Thus the film reflects Reznikoff's emphasis on "neutrality", content based on testimony and comparable use of "editing" to reshape the material.

The book's brief conclusion neatly draws together its main arguments and ideas.  As Turquety has ably demonstrated the films of Straub and Huillet sits alongside the poetry of Zukofsky, Oppen and Reznikoff; as well as the writings of  Hölderlin and Kafka; the paintings of Cézanne and the music of Schoenberg through the value they place on ideas such as sobriety, impersonality and neutrality - ideas at the heart of Objectivism (303). Yet at the same time these are radical works, both in terms of form and (crucially) because of this mastery of form, politics - "only the strictest formal requirements could create a true political presence for an artistic work" (304). Returning to the idea that "intention is ultimately just a predatory manifestation" (305, author's emphasis) adaptation in the hands of Huillet and Straub is "not a matter of presenting a personal gloss of the original text, but presenting the text as neutrally as possible, while including several structural layers that, without touching it, simultaneously analyse it and even critique it" (305). It is this analytical approach which eschews a "focus on the characters' inner psychological conflicts and instead emphasizes relations -- of class, power and desire" (306). This is particularly true when remaining objective when handling materials in the form of testimonies and trials, "questioning language and its effectiveness, problems of truth and power (rhetoric), and the organization of space and politics (307). 

A significant proportion of the four other recent Huillet/Straub books mentioned in my introduction are given over to original documents and reflections of the couple's working practices. Whilst this is most welcome, it does mean that analysis of Straub and Huillet's work is still fairly sparse (in English at least). Roud (1971) and Byg (1995) only consider the first twenty years of the couple's output. Ursula Böser (2004) only adds Class Relations and Cézanne to this list of analysed works. Excellent as these titles are, it's great to have some in depth analysis on other films such as Too Early/Too Late and Workers, Peasants. The challenge for many will be, as it was for me, their inexperience with poetic analysis, but readers should not be put off - these sections are no harder to understand than the rest of the work and the comparison between, for example, line breaks in poetry and cuts between shots in cinema illuminates understanding of the latter, rather than obscuring it. Make no mistake, this is a complex work operating at a high level, but it is rewarding and repays repeated readings. There's the odd mistake (a bullet point falls into 'open breach' on page 241, for example) but ultimately Turquety's book throws fresh light onto Huillet and Straub's work in general which remains important, even as it is difficult to understand. And anyone wanting a more in depth understanding or Othon, Moses und Aron, Class Relations, Death of Empedocles or ;Workers, Peasants, would be well advised to track down a copy.

1 - Daney, Serge and Narboni, Jean (1979) "Entretien avec Jean Marie Straub et Danieèle Huillet", Cahiers du Cinema, 305 (November) p.18.

Kommunisten (Communists, 2014)

When Danièle Huillet died in 2006 many wondered what would happen to Jean-Marie Straub. Would he carry on without his wife an career-long collaborator? Thirteen years later it's clear that he did, but in limited fashion. Whilst he has directed numerous short films since Huillet's death, at 70 minutes Kommunisten (Communists, 2014) is the only one to last longer than an hour. It's more than just coincidence, then, that this is the most well known of the films from this latter period and it's actually the first of his that I have seen from this era.

All of this explains two key features about the film. Firstly, that this is clearly a work very much in Huillet's memory. One of the film's earliest image is a mid-shot of two of figures filmed from behind while they gaze out of an open window (above) as if on the verge of transitioning from the dark material world into the light. It's closing image is Huillet sat alone, still, but not necessarily peacefully, on a hill and is taken from the pair's Schwarze Sünde (Black Sin, 1988). Eventually she says "new world" as she turns her head away. Small highlights the link between the music accompanying the shot  - Beethoven's String Quartet No. 16 - the composer's "last major work before his death" (Small 2019, emphasis mine). The moment could not be more poignant.

This segues nicely in the second feature of Kommunisten which is that it is largely comprised of excerpts of Huillet and Straub's previous films. Indeed the credits list the five works that are included as follows:

1. Operai, contadini (Workers, Peasants, 2000)
2. Trop tôt/Trop tard (Too Early/Too Late, 1981)
3. Fortini/Cani (1976)
4. Der Tod des Empedokles (The Death of Empedocles, 1986)
5. Schwarze Sünde (Black Sin, 1988)

These lengthy excerpts - the one from Trop tôt/Trop tard is the static, uncut ten minute take outside the factory, for example - are not from the couple's most celebrated works (which I would argue are
Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (1967) and 1973's Moses und Aron), but they are amongst some of the best and most memorable shots from the two's work.

In a way, then, this is an adaptation of their own adaptations, another layer on an historical, multi-layered Schichttorte. Straub essentially takes those previous adaptations, and in typical fashion presents them anew, in a fresh context, but with also a high degree of continuity with his material. It's hard to think of a more appropriate tribute. The  Trop tôt/Trop tard section is the epitome of the pair's, long, static, diagonal takes; the excerpts from Fortini/Cani (1976) typify their slow circular pans. The footage from Der Tod - the "Communist Utopia" passage - embodies Huillet and Straub's politics. The sequence from Operai, contadini is perhaps the strongest example of the unusual, measured style they ask from their actors. In essence, then, it's a summary of their most distinctive traits - their fingerprint distilled down into a single film.

Before this re-cycled footage, however, Straub adds fresh material in the form of an excerpt of André Malraux's 1939 "Days of Wrath" which concerns "how a man and a woman deal with being separated while the man is in prison" (Fendt 2015). Straub himself plays the off-screen representative of authority, interrogating two onscreen communists (one of whom is bedecked in a glorious Aran sweater - neither of the period of the novel, nor of adaptation, incorporating a look that is part timeless, part from the height of Huillet/Straub's career). The other man gets to return home to his wife and it is he who appears by his wife's side in the image above, "reunited, however fleeting this homecoming may prove to be" (Small 2019).

However, this shot gives way to one that is almost identical in every respect except that the camera has now panned down to make the woman (not the male narrator) the focus. It's the kind of subtle yet powerful shot that typified the couple's work. Easy to miss, or to fail to notice the intention of the variation. Those who, somewhat unbelievably, criticised the lack of overt politics in the couple's work, fail to realise that theirs is filmmaking in the most nuanced of fashions. Indeed that cut typifies the entire film, Straub moving the emphasis on his career, or perhaps theirs, to her.

Kommunisten, then, is a tribute to Huillet, but also to the dream of a better world, a dream that so many of those (communists) featured in their work have pursued, and a dream which Huillet herself pursued also. Straub's moving tribute seems like an act of adding his departed wife to this noble canon.
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- Fendt, Ted (2015), "The Dream of a Thing: Straub’s "Kommunisten"", mubi.com Notebook Feature, March 17, 
Available online - https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/the-dream-of-a-thing-straubs-kommunisten
- Small, Christopher (2019), "A Straub-Huillet Companion: “Communists", mubi.com Notebook Column, October 8,
Available online - https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/a-straub-huillet-companion-communists

Operai, contadini (Workers,Peasants)

Operai, contadini (Workers, Peasants, 2000) find Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet returning to the work of Italian marxist Elio Vittorini following 1998's Sicilia! their first adaptation of his work. The title alone expresses one of the key themes of twentieth century Italian life, the division between the industrial north and the rural south. Particularly in the 1950s and early 1960s many of the peasant farmers migrated northwards to find work in the upper regions of Italy as the economy in and around Milan boomed. Countries are commonly divided between north and south, or (east and west) or between the lower and middle classes, but divisions between classes, not just in terms of attitudes, but also lifestyle, in this manner are particular to Italy.

Vittorini's novel ("Le donne di Messina") tells the story of a community of workers and peasants in post WWII Italy who come together from all over the nation to form a new community. Rather than locating their film amongst houses and streets, however, Huillet and Straub situate it entirely in the forest. As Tag Gallagher summarises, Straub/Huillet turn the material "into a celebration of a New Eden", most notably a final shot where the action finally pans away from the tight collection of medium and mid-shots to a wide-shot capturing a glint of the horizon in the far distance (2005).

To achieve this however Huillet and Straub have to end their film in the middle of Vittorini's novel where the attempt to build an idealised community is ultimately unsuccessful. Of course, I say "Vittorini's novel" as if a clearly established single work exists, but as those who have read my review of their other films will be aware, things are rarely so straightforward. Indeed, "Le donne di Messina" exists in several versions rewritten over the fifteen year period between 1948 and 1963.

Another unusual aspect of Vittorini's work is the variety of perspectives it is told from. Guido Bonsaver observes how "the persona of the traditional narrator is replaced by a polysemy of voices which 'decentres' the narrative act" (2017: 166). Again this is familiar territory for Huillet and Straub (History Lessons springs to mind). Whilst these include a traditional narrator, a "registro" and a journalist, there are also a range of voices from the workers/peasants themselves. In typical fashion Straub/Huillet adopt and formalise this approach, using twelve characters (again raising religious connotations) who deliver their lines with varying degrees of deadpan, and limited movement or use of gestures. The characters give different perspectives on the same material, most notably in a long section where various performers share their experience of the process of making ricotta cheese. In so doing they reverse one of cinema's oldest adages, "show, don't tell".

For the first time, however, Huillet and Straub's characters hold scripts - though the degree to which they are actually read from varies. Whilst this marks a development for the pair it was interesting to read in Christopher Small's discussion of this film that this is, in fact, an established style in parts of Tuscany. The maggio, is "a dramatic form in which texts are read in a declamatory, highly stylized, and non-psychological style" (Small). Performances are "produced, written, staged, and performed by peasants and for peasants" (Small). It's hard to think of a traditional theatrical style more idealistically wedded to that of Straub/Huillet, and, scripts aside, it is particularly noticeable in the works of their that are either set in Italy, or performed in the language.

What is also quite striking about the film is the unusual style of the shots. As with other films of theirs, the camera-work relies heavily on very long takes, interspersed with the occasional attention-attracting pan. Whilst the film uses a mix of one, two and indeed three-shots, many of the one shots stand out because of the way they frame their subjects. Whilst the camera's distance suggests a mid-shot, from waist up, and the subject faces it in straightforward fashion, they are not framed in typical fashion: only their shoulders and heads appear within the shot, leaving a larger than usual space above their heads.

The manner in which the film concludes with so much of the novel still remaining is perhaps because Straub and Huillet already planned to produce a third adaptation of Vittorini's works in Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo/Umiliati (The Return of the Prodigal Son/Humiliated) which continues some of the themes developed here. Indeed discussion of the Prodigal Son has already occurred partway through this film. I'm yet to see Il Ritorno so perhaps I'll save my discussion of that theme until then.

============
- Bonsaver, Guido (2017), Elio Vittorini: The Writer and the Written, London and New York: Routledge.
- Gallagher, Tag (2005), "Lacrimae Rerum Materialized", Senses of Cinema, (37) October. Available online - http://sensesofcinema.com/2005/feature-articles/straubs/.
 - Small, Christopher (2019), "A Straub-Huillet Companion: “Workers, Peasants", mubi.com Notebook Column, September 24, Available online - https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/a-straub-huillet-companion-workers-peasants.

Der Tod des Empedokles (1986)

On the surface the similarities between Der Tod des Empedokles (The Death of Empedocles, 1986) and Moses und Aron are plain: it's another pre-Christian era adaptation of a revered, unfinished German work. Throughout both works a mountain looms in the background, remote, yet nevertheless seemingly the source of a spiritual force exerting itself on the characters. Of all the films about Moses, Straub and Huillet's take is the one that focuses most squarely on his philosophical side. Here they deal with a philosopher-leader, Empedocles of Akragas, a city in the then-Greek city of Sicily.

The film's full title is Der Tod des Empedokles, Trauserspiel in Zwei Akten von Freidrich Hölderlin 1978 Oder: Wenn dann der Erde Grün von Neuem Erglänzt (The Death of Empedocles, in Two Acts by Freidrich Hölderlin 1798 or: When the Green of the Earth will Glisten for you Anew), but hidden away amongst those twenty words is a year, 1798. This is significant because Hölderlin's play is not only unfinished but exists in three incomplete manuscripts: The first version from 1798 that Huillet/Straub cover here, the following year he wrote two other attempts, the last of which Straub/Huillet also adapted two years after Der Tod as the rather more snappily titled Schwarze Sünde (Black Sin, 1988). Then in 1991 they completed their final adaptation of Hölderlin's work Die Antigone des Sophokles nach der Hölderlinschen Übertragung für die Bühne bearbeitet von Brecht 1948 (The Antigone After Sophocles' Translation Adapted for the Stage by Brecht 1948).

But the "Hölderlin films" as they are often referred to are not three works, but seven, because Huillet and Straub created two adaptations of Antigone and four different prints of Der Tod, and not just four different cuts of the same material, but four concurrent versions. The version which has been screening at MUBI is officially known as the Berlin version (as it fist screen at the film festival there) and is distinguished by a lizard which scurries across a step halfway through the film. The version originally intended for a wider (subtitled) distribution is the Paris version which according to Leslie Hill "began more gloomily, before brightening up as the sun came out" (Hill 2012: 143). A third, known as the rooster version, was "completed with a class of students" at Hamburg's Filmhaus and is distinguished by a cock crowing after around twenty minutes (Hill 2012: 143). This is the version that Pummer considers "the most beautiful version, because it has the most contrast and strongest color saturation" (2016: 69). Finally there is the version seemingly not connected with a particular geographic location, but marked by the occasional chirps of crickets on the soundtrack.

Straub and Huillet's intention here seems to be to ensure that no version "could be considered as more or less authoritative than any of the others" and to avoid having a "privileged master text" (Hill 2012: 143). The different prints do not exists as longer or shorter cuts - each consists of the same 147 shots, each shot from the same position and with the same settings on the camera as the others and the actors perform in the same, typically deadpan, style. The difference, then, is down to what happens in front of the camera, that is outside of their control. Their repeated reliance on natural sound, and on this occasion natural light, means that these elements remain outside of their control, animals can intrude into the material text of the film, lighting can change the mood, the wind can blow or be still. The four variations, then, highlight these more material elements of cinema itself, the sheer variability of the options available to filmmakers. It also emphasises the differences between film and reality. What is recorded by the camera can be reproduced, but is never an accurate reproduction of how things really were.

Furthermore it also prevents the three versions of Hölderlin's unfinished mourning play from being reduced down into one definitive version. Film adaptations compared to their literary works, particularly unfinished works, are not unlike the comparison between jam and the original. The jamming process involves cutting out the work's most widely appreciated parts and boils it down bringing out certain essentials meaning something is lost, but it is also preserving process which makes the fruit accessible for a far wider audience. Huillet/Straub attempt to highlight the nature of this process - their differing products retain a far stronger connection to the original, as well as highlight the essentially false nature of a film adaptation.

In particular, making these four variations is also a way of reflecting the tragedy's unfinished nature, just as Hölderlin never made a definitive, official version of his play, so too, in an appropriately manner there is no single authoritative version of this film. Ironically, then, in some ways the mass-circulation of one particular version of the film, as happens when a company like MUBI makes it available for streaming worldwide works against this intention, as does writing about the films on the basis of a viewing of just one version as I have done here. The french Editions Montparnasse are a superb resource for fans of Straub/Huillet, not least because they provide a practically exhaustive collection of all of Straub's work, but they too only include a single version. It's understandable, and my citing of MUBI and Editions Montparnasse is not criticism as such - without them I would not have seen the film - but it does work some way against Huillet and Straub's clear intention to resist a definitive version of the film. Perhaps this is why the pair also adapted Hölderlin's third attempt at the subject just two years later, and in a different but related fashion.

Hill also highlights the theological links between Moses und Aron and Der Tod, noting how Hölderlin was writing amidst the mental upheaval of the French Revolution - something the author was initially in favour of, and certainly something which appealed to Straub and Huillet's Marxist nature:

Both took place at a time of upheaval, as one theological edifice, legal framework, political power, or conception of the artwork gave way to another, resulting in an interregnum in which what was at stake was the promise or threat of the future. Both texts, moreover, were stories of sacrifice, (Hill 2012: 148)

The nature of that sacrifice, however, varies significantly between the two stories. It is unclear in Moses und Aron to what extent those being sacrificed are willing participants. However, in "Der Tod...", the sacrifice is an act of suicide from which his friend Pausanias tries to dissuade him. In Hölderlin's original version, Empedokles' death occurs at the end of the play when he hurls himself into Mount Etna's crater, though it is never explicitly confirmed that this is what has actually happened. This ambiguity is even more pronounced in the film, as it ends on a shot of the top of the mountain which begins with Empedokles speaking. Viewed apart from the rest of the film the natural assumption would be at this point he is still alive, gazing up at the top of Etna as he readies himself for his death. In other words, the "death" mentioned in the film's title never actually occurs during the duration of the film. That said, the discontinuity of the cutting that has been so prevalent throughout the film also questions this.

The meaning of Empedocles death is no less ambiguous. For Small, "Empedocles dives into the fire in order to vanish into thin air"in order that his fellow citizens would believe by his death "he had been set...on the path to reincarnation" (2019). On the other hand, for Hill Empedocles' death is "in order to reconcile the epoch with itself by way of a spectacular fusion of the finite with the infinite, history with eternity, man with nature." (Hill 2012: 144).

Two years later Huillet and Straub would return to Hölderlin and Empedocles in Schwarze Sünde (Black Sin, 1988), based on the third version of the play. At only 40 minutes in length and featuring a largely, but not entirely, different cast, the very static camerawork of Der Tod made way for a more varied style. Of particular note are a number of panning shots which, based on their descriptions sound not dissimilar to those in Moses und Aron. Sadly that film is not part of the MUBI retrospective, so it may be a while until I can write about it.
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- Hill, Leslie (2012), “O Himmlisch Licht!”, Angelaki (Journal of the Theoretical Humanities) 17:4, 139-155.
- Pummer, Claudia (2016), "(Not Only) for Children and Caveman: The Films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet", in Ted Fendt (ed.), Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Vienna: Synema Publikationen, pp.7-95.
- Small, Christopher (2019), "A Straub-Huillet Companion: The Death of Empedocles", mubi.com Notebook Column, September 11, Available online:
https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/a-straub-huillet-companion-the-death-of-empedocles

Trop tôt/Trop tard Too Early/Too Late

Trop tôt/Trop tard (Too Early/Too Late, 1981) is Huillet and Straub's other film set in Egypt, only here it is documentary rather than drama. Before getting to Egypt though the film begins in France. The film's opening shot is one of its two most memorable - a six and a half minute rotational pan, (presumably shot from the side of a vehicle) going round and round the Place de la Bastille in France. It's a clear signifier of what is to follow - an exploration of the cycle of revolutions in France and Egypt. There's no doubt a pun here, revolutions of the camera in a film about revolutions. Most of the rest of the film, both the French and the Egyptian segments comprise of a series of long takes, either static, or panning, often in complete circles.

Whilst this is happening two monologues are read out. Firstly there is a letter by Freidrich Engels detailing the extent of poverty in various villages and towns in pre-Revolution France. Then there are longer sections from the Cahiers de Doléances. These are read out by Huillet herself and is accompanied by images of the relevant locations today. Usually they are peaceful, places where people largely are not and the calmness of the imagery and (as ever, direct) sound belies the grim statistics that are being recited. One notable example is a shot of the side of a rural building upon which someone has graffitied "Les paysons se revolteront 1976" (the countries will revolt 1976) in big red letters. It is at this point that Huillet reaches the passage that includes the film's title, the point being that "the peasants always start the revolt too early and, then when it comes to seizing power, they arrive too late" (Pummer, 2016: 60). Engels was writing on the eve of the 1789 revolution in France.

In the Egyptian segment, the reading is more recent, the author Bahgat Elnadi reads from the book he wrote with Adel Riffat under the pseudonym Mahmoud Hussein about the overthrow of British colonial powers. The film's most famous shot, is a ten minute static diagonal shot of workers leaving a factory in Egypt. The nature of the shot recalls the Lumière Brothers Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895). The section is considerably longer here, but the parallels between the two segments are apparent. That said there is one stark contrast: whilst the French footage is deserted, the Egyptian footage is peppered with human activity. The camera maintains a discreet distance, in an attempt not to interfere with the world they wish to document; "their respectful distance allows for the anonymous Egyptian peasants and workers to...occupy and traverse the space entirely on their own terms" (Small 2019).This is documentary filmmaking at the opposite end of the spectrum to the vox pop heavy style of our own era.

There are various similarities with Straub and Huillet's other work here, in particular Fortini/Cani (1978) which similarly accompanies a writer's work with images of the described locations today, but also the long tracking shots of History Lessons (1972) and The Bridegroom, the Actress and the Pimp (1968). And of course, the handful of shots in Moses und Aron (1974) taken in Egypt.

It's a film that has the ability to create startling reactions. At one point Jonathan Rosenbaum put it on his all-time top ten list for "Sight and Sound". "The extraordinary result of this technique is that one almost feels able to taste these places, to contemplate them – to observe and think about them" (Rosenbaum 1983). Many have looked at Huillet and Straub's films and conclude that nothing really happens. But in fact, the second half of the film is teeming with activity if you observe closely enough, it is just that they keep a respectful distance from us just as they do to the characters who move across the screen. No matter where people are in relation to their camera and their screen, they do not tell us how to act and react.

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Pummer, Claudia (2016), "(Not Only) for Children and Caveman: The Films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet", in Ted Fendt (ed.), Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Vienna: Synema Publikationen.

Rosenbaum, Joanthan (1983), Film: The Front Line, Denver: Arden Press.

Small, Christopher (2019), "A Straub-Huillet Companion: Too Early, Too Late", mubi.com Notebook Column, August 6, Available online: https://mubi.com/notebook/posts/a-straub-huillet-companion-too-early-too-late.

Klassenverhältnisse (1984)

Klassenverhältnisse (Class Relations 1984) is Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's only adaptation of the works of Franz Kafka, which is itself a little surprising. It's based on Kafka's unfinished novel "Amerika", also known as "Der Verschollene" or, in English, "The Man who Disappeared". I'm sorely tempted to say that simply navigating one's way through those various titles feels a little Kafkaesque, but I'm aware that doing do is no doubt will prove too irritating for many. Nevertheless various commentators have discussed Huillet and Straub's change of title, which aligns with the Marxist nature of their cinema, yet for Straub "the title is good because this is precisely what the film does not do" (cited in Bösler 2004: 116). As Bösler herself observes "rather than telling us what we will be shown and told, the title Klassenverhältnisse encourages us to look and listen for what there is to see and hear" (Bösler 2004: 117).

The novel, for those who are unfamiliar with it, focuses on a young German migrant, Karl Rossmann, who is essentially a stand in for Kafka himself. Aside from sharing a mother tongue, age and status in life and the prominent 'Ka' sound at the start of their names, Kafka and Karl also shared difficult relations with their parents. Karl has been sent away to America by his parents and finds himself being shunted around from place to place in search of employment. He is a largely passive figure seemingly unable to control his destiny, instead being manipulated  and oppressed by the vast majority of the figures he encounters.

Whilst I've written about various of Huillet/Straub's adaptations from novels, this is the first I have actually read and it's interesting watching their always notable adaptation process more closely. As is typical most of the story and the dialogue makes it into the screenplay, but little of the text's elaboration, though the details are largely their to be observed. This contrasts markedly with Welles' adaption of The Trial (1962). Where he tries to capture all the details described so meticulously in Kafka's prose, Straub/Huillet try and limit it to the character's perspective.

The shots are largely either static diagonal mid shots, or long panning shots, such as when Karl first observes the buildings housing his Uncle's business. Delivery is not-quite deadpan, but certainly muted. This is a development from Moses und Aron (1974) when Schoenberg's use of Sprechstimme (a form of speech halfway between singing and speech) formed something of a launching point. Speech delivery had always interested them and from there on they began to experiment more with language as an 'object' rather than merely a 'vehicle'. In an interview with Hans Hurch around the film's original release, the pair liken their use of language to the works of Bach, or an oratorio. They layer different styles of delivery and even get actors to pause on occasion in the middle of a word.

The stilted nature of both the delivery and the acting serves to highlight  the handful of moments where sudden violence is done to Karl. This happens three times in particular where someone strikes or grabs part of Karl's head or neck. Each time it's a medium close-up of Karl against a solid object. Each time an arm thrusts suddenly towards him from the edge of the frame and then the pose is held for long enough to observe Karl's discomfort. The owner of the arm remains out of shot. It is not that Karl is necessarily hurt by these 'attacks', but they are nevertheless a shocking intrusion, not least because he offers no resistance as we are trained to expect. These moments are particularly striking because so many of the film's "gestures and actions are performed with a denaturalizing, and at times almost mechanical deliberation, [which] heightens the impact of even the minutest action which does occur" (Bösler 2004, 122). The attacks silence or oppress Karl, a summation of the story's overall oppression of its lead. There is at least one counter shot when Karl is talking to Theresa, one of only two characters who are sympathetic towards him. The framing is similar but her arm only touches his arm and the contact is gentle rather than forceful.

The film is also deeply concerned about spaces, with the physical blocking expressing the awkwardness of Karl in this oddly ill-fitting and harsh world. It's a world where a young man might find himself sent to the other end of the world for getting a servant girl pregnant, or might loses face with his uncle for accepting a dinner invitation, or even might lose his job simply for stepping away from this post for a minute or to. These little injustices follow Karl around, while the behaviours of those around him get odder and odder. The sequence of shots breaks the Hollywood rules of continuity editing - there are few establishing shots, or master shots summarising the geography of the scenes. Even attempting to place how the scenes relate to each other by cross referencing eye lines, sources of light and so forth is frustrated by Straub/Huillet's shot selection. "Each new shot, however, introduces a variation in camera angle and distance" so that "the viewer's understanding of its spatial parameters" advances as the scene progresses (Plummer 2016: 66).

A friend of mine, who knows Kafka better than me, says adaptations of his work are always somewhat odd, largely because the quirky nature of the source material attracts unusual filmmakers and inspires then to make bold and creative efforts to justice to the material. For Huillet and Straub it was the only other one of their films to be shot outside of Europe aside from Too Early, Too Late (1981) and sections of Moses und Aron. These include a tracking shot capturing New York's Statue of Liberty. In the book Kafka, famously, gets a detail wrong, (perhaps purposefully) replacing her flame with a sword. It's the kind of detail which adds to the confused dreamy nature of the book, which Straub and Huillet capture so well with their odd and semi-disengaging film.

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Bösler, Ursula (2004), The Art of Seeing, the Art of Listening: The Politics of Representation in the Work of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet", Frankfurt / Berlin / Bern / Bruxelles / NewYork / Oxford / Wien: Peter Lang.

Pummer, Claudia (2016), "(Not Only) for Children and Caveman: The Films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet", in Ted Fendt (ed.), Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Vienna: Synema Publikationen.