Jean-Marie Straub (; 8 January 1933 — 20 November 2022) and Danièle Huillet (; 1 May 1936 – 9 October 2006) were a duo of French filmmakers who made two dozen films between 1963 and 2006. Their films are noted for their rigorous, intellectually stimulating style and radical, communist politics. While both were French, they worked mostly in Germany and Italy. '' From the Clouds to the Resistance'' (1979) and '' Sicilia!'' (1999) are among the duo's best regarded works.

Biography

Straub, who was born in

Metz Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand ...

, met Paris-born Huillet as a student in 1954. Straub was involved in the Parisian cinephile community at the time. He was friends with Francois Truffaut and contributed to his publication ''

Cahiers du Cinéma ''Cahiers du Cinéma'' (, ) is a French film magazine co-founded in 1951 by André Bazin, Jacques Doniol-Valcroze, and Joseph-Marie Lo Duca.Itzkoff, Dave (9 February 2009''Cahiers Du Cinéma Will Continue to Publish''The New York TimesMacnab, Ge ...

'', although Truffaut refused to publish Straub's more inflammatory writings. He worked as an assistant to the film director

Jacques Rivette Jacques Rivette (; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and the film magazine '' Cahiers du Cinéma''. He made twenty-nine films, including '' L'amour f ...

on the 1956 film ''A Fool's Mate''. He also worked in Paris as an assistant to

Abel Gance Abel Gance (; born Abel Eugène Alexandre Péréthon; 25 October 188910 November 1981) was a French film director and producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: ''J ...

Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. As a film director and actor, he made more than forty films from the silent film, silent era to the end of the 1960s. ...

Robert Bresson Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson contributed notably to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, ellipses, and sparse use of scoring have l ...

and

Alexandre Astruc Alexandre Astruc (; 13 July 1923 – 19 May 2016) was a French film critic and film director. Biography Before becoming a film director he was a journalist, novelist and film critic. His contribution to the auteur theory centers on his notion ...

. The pair later emigrated to Germany so that Straub could avoid military service in

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. Straub spent his first few years researching

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...

. Huillet had initially planned to make ethnographic films but eventually assisted Straub on his projects. In 1963, they made ''Machorka-Muff'', an 18-minute short based on a

Heinrich Böll Heinrich Theodor Böll (; 21 December 1917 – 16 July 1985) was a German writer. Considered one of Germany's foremost post-World War II writers, Böll is a recipient of the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972). ...

story and their first collaboration. Their next film, the 55-minute '' Not Reconciled'', was also a Böll adaptation. They did not make a full-length feature until 1968's ''

Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach ''The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach'' (german: Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach) is a 1968 film by the French filmmaking duo of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. It was their first full-length feature film, and reportedly took a decade ...

'', after which they made films at a fairly even rate, completing a feature every 2–3 years. The production of the

was very tedious. The struggle for funding lasted for ten years, until 1967. In 1968, they also made a short film starring

Rainer Werner Fassbinder Rainer Werner Fassbinder (; 31 May 1945 – 10 June 1982), sometimes credited as R. W. Fassbinder, was a German filmmaker. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema movement. Fassbinder's main ...

and his theatre troupe called ''The Bridegroom, the Actress and the Pimp''. In the mid 1970s, they began producing films in Italy. Increasingly, they began splitting their time between Germany and Italy, as well as frequently collaborating with French and British producers. Straub and Huillet lived together for most of their lives. They had no children. Huillet died of cancer in Cholet on 9 October 2006, aged 70. Straub died on 20 November 2022, at the age of 89.

Style and content

All of the films of Straub and Huillet are based on other works: novels, operas, plays, and less conventional source materials, such as political writings. Their sources include writings by

Marguerite Duras Marguerite Germaine Marie Donnadieu (, 4 April 1914 – 3 March 1996), known as Marguerite Duras (), was a French novelist, playwright, screenwriter, essayist, and experimental filmmaker. Her script for the film '' Hiroshima mon amour'' (1959) e ...

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a German-speaking Bohemian novelist and short-story writer, widely regarded as one of the major figures of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of realism and the fantastic. It ...

Elio Vittorini Elio Vittorini (; 23 July 1908 – 12 February 1966) was an Italian writer and novelist. He was a contemporary of Cesare Pavese and an influential voice in the modernist school of novel writing. His best-known work is the anti-fascist novel '' Co ...

and

Bertolt Brecht Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...

; two operas by Arnold Schoenberg; letters written by

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ,"Engels"
'' Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky (; rus, Василий Васильевич Кандинский, Vasiliy Vasilyevich Kandinskiy, vɐˈsʲilʲɪj vɐˈsʲilʲjɪvʲɪtɕ kɐnʲˈdʲinskʲɪj; – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter a ...

, and

J.S. Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his orchestral music such as the ''Brandenburg Concertos''; instrumental compositions such as the Cello Suites; keyboard wor ...

; and other films, including Rossellini's ''

Europa '51 ''Europe '51'' ( it, Europa '51), also known as ''The Greatest Love'', is a 1952 Italian neorealist film directed by Roberto Rossellini, starring Ingrid Bergman and Alexander Knox. The film follows an industrialist's wife who, after the death ...

''. Many of their films, such as ''

Klassenverhältnisse ', known in English as ''Class Relations'', in French as ', is a 1984 film by the French filmmaking duo of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. It is based on Franz Kafka's unfinished first novel, '' Amerika''. The German filmmaker Harun Faro ...

'', stress the relationship between the original text and the film. Since their first films Machorka-Muff (1962) and Not reconciled (1964) were made in Germany, Huillet and Straub were at the time included in the

New German Film New is an adjective referring to something recently made, discovered, or created. New or NEW may refer to: Music * New, singer of K-pop group The Boyz Albums and EPs * ''New'' (album), by Paul McCartney, 2013 * ''New'' (EP), by Regurgitator, ...

, which was loudly announced in the 1962

Oberhausen Manifesto The Oberhausen Manifesto was a declaration by a group of 26 young German filmmakers at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, North Rhine-Westphalia on 28 February 1962. The manifesto was a call to arms to establish a "new German featu ...

Frieda Grafe ''Frida'' is a 2002 film about artist Frida Kahlo Frida, Frieda, or Freida may also refer to: People *Frida (given name), a feminine given name * Frieda (surname) * Frieda (''Peanuts''), a character from the comic strip ''Peanuts'' * Afroditi ...

and

Enno Patalas Enno Patalas (15 October 1929, in Quakenbrück – 7 August 2018, in Munich) was a German film historian, collector, and expert film preservationist. A former head of the Munich Film Museum (1973–1994), his restorations include films such as ...

wrote about Machorka-Muff: “One should read Böll's book because it has changed through Straub's film. It seems more naked and more serious because now with the last camera movement of the film it always points away from itself to Germany." If the choice of subjects - German post-war themes such as the continuity of fascist-nationalist thought patterns, broken biographies, rearmament - and a certain brittleness in the acting made the first two films typical productions of the time at first glance, the alienating, low-modulation language of the actors, alongside the non-chronological editing technique in Not Reconciled and the unconventional handling of the literary templates by Heinrich Böll, also instilled among colleagues an incomprehension and rejection. At the Oberhausen Short Film Festival in 1963 and the

Berlin International Film Festival The Berlin International Film Festival (german: Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin), usually called the Berlinale (), is a major international film festival held annually in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the fest ...

in 1965, the first two films were rejected by the selection juries and only shown in special events. The third film, Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (1967), was made possible by an unprecedented "crowd funding", which was supported by

Alexander Kluge Alexander Kluge (born 14 February 1932) is a German author, philosopher, academic and film director. Early life, education and early career Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony (now Saxony-Anhalt), Germany. After growing up durin ...

, Enno Patalas and the influential magazine Filmkritik. With this film, which had little in common with other German films of its time, Huillet and Straub entered new stylistic and dramaturgical territory. The sensual center of the film, lacking in conventional film plot, is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, which is presented here live in front of the camera and partly in original locations - an uncompromising and elaborate appreciation of music in films that Huillet and Straub in the later films Moses and Aron (1974) and From Today to Tomorrow (1996), both based on operas by Arnold Schoenberg. The style of all Straub and Huillet's films is that they always play with political commitment in different ways ("toute révolution est un coup de dés" - based on Mallarmé's poem about the nature of chance), even in an opera film based on biblical motifs, such as Moses and Aron, whom they dedicated to

Holger Meins Holger Klaus Meins (26 October 1941 – 9 November 1974) was a German cinematography student who joined the Red Army Faction (RAF) in the early 1970s and died on hunger strike in prison. As a revolutionary Meins became an important member of t ...

. Aesthetically, they were particularly oriented towards the dramaturgical ideas of

, for example by saying that the actor should not play his role in an illusionistic way, but that he should identify his activity as what it is: quoting. You have therefore very often worked with amateur actors who put their natural dialects in place of perfectly standardized dialogues. Nevertheless, their films are characterized by an unbelievable aesthetic rigor and formal rigor: every shot is precisely constructed, no cut is a concession to conventions. But Straub sees himself as a traditionalist and has often expressed his affinity for classic filmmakers such as

Kenji Mizoguchi was a Japanese film director and screenwriter, who directed about one hundred films during his career between 1923 and 1956. His most acclaimed works include ''The Story of the Last Chrysanthemums'' (1939), '' The Life of Oharu'' (1952), ''Ugets ...

and

John Ford John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), known professionally as John Ford, was an American film director and naval officer. He is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers of his generation. He ...

Collaboration

Due to his more

extroverted The trait theory, traits of extraversion (also spelled extroversion Retrieved 2018-02-21.) and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality psychology, personality theories. The terms ''introversion'' and ''extraversion'' were ...

nature, Jean-Marie Straub served as the public face of the couple: this has contributed to the widespread assumption that Huillet's role in their filmmaking process was secondary. In reality, the two split their work equally, with Straub responsible for ''mise en scène'', Huillet controlling much of the production design and editing process, and the two being equally responsible for the

pre-production Pre-production is the process of planning some of the elements involved in a film, television show, play, or other performance, as distinct from production and post-production. Pre-production ends when the planning ends and the content start ...

, texts and

rehearsal A rehearsal is an activity in the performing arts that occurs as preparation for a performance in music, theatre, dance and related arts, such as opera, musical theatre and film production. It is undertaken as a form of practising, to ensure t ...

s. This method can be seen in

Pedro Costa Pedro Costa (born 30 December 1958) is a Portuguese film director. He is best known for his sequence of films set in Lisbon, which focuses on the lives of the impoverished residents of a slum in the Fontainhas neighbourhood. Biography After com ...

's documentary ''Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?'', filmed during the editing of '' Sicilia!''. What is special about the work of Huillet and Straub is the often decades-long continuity that they have with many of their employees. They realized most of their work with two cameramen: William Lubtchansky (9 films) and Renato Berta (20 films to date), with whom Jean-Marie Straub still worked. The sound engineer Louis Hochet was responsible for the sound recordings for 15 of her films between 1967 and 1998, including the films Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach (1967), Moses and Aron (1974) and Von heute, which are determined by live recorded music auf Morgen (1996), each of which broke new ground in integrating music into a film. An equally formative connection existed with the Tuscan town of Buti, which was used primarily as a location for the films based on Cesare Pavese's dialogues with Leuko, as well as with the Teatro Francesco di Bartolo located there, whose ensemble has participated in a total of ten films. Huillet and Straub often paid tribute to friends and colleagues, such as the filmmakers

Peter Nestler Peter may refer to: People * List of people named Peter, a list of people and fictional characters with the given name * Peter (given name) ** Saint Peter (died 60s), apostle of Jesus, leader of the early Christian Church * Peter (surname), a su ...

, Frans van de Staak, Holger Meins and Jean-Luc Godard or their long-time cameraman Renato Berta. For their part, Straub and Huillet were more often the subject of films by others. Those who have made films about his and her work include Harun Farocki (Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet working on a film based on Franz Kafka's novel '' Amerika'', 1983), Pedro Costa ('' Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?'', 2001) and Peter Nestler ('' Defense of Time'', 2007).

Reception

Their film has received positive responses from leading film critics: in Germany, for example, those of Enno Patalas, Frieda Grafe, Alexander Kluge, Helmut Färber and

Ulrich Gregor Ulrich (), is a German given name, derived from Old High German ''Uodalrich'', ''Odalric''. It is composed of the elements '' uodal-'' meaning "(noble) heritage" and ''-rich'' meaning "rich, powerful". Attested from the 8th century as the name of A ...

, later by

Harun Farocki Harun Farocki (9 January 1944 – 30 July 2014) was a German filmmaker, author, and lecturer in film. Early life and education Farocki was born as Harun El Usman FaroqhiMargalit Fox (3 August 2014)''New York Times''. in Neutitschein, which is n ...

and Hartmut Bitmosky and others. In France, the

, whose authors Michel Delahaye and

Serge Daney Serge Daney (June 4, 1944, Paris – June 12, 1992) was a French movie critic. He was a major figure of ''Cahiers du cinéma'' which he co-edited in the late 1970s. He also wrote extensively about films, television, and society in the newspaper ''Li ...

, later the film critics Bernard Eisenschitz, François Albera and Benoît Turquety; in Italy the Filmcritica and especially its author Adriano Aprá, who also directed the Pesaro film festival for a long time and played the title role in Straub and Huillet's film Othon (1969). The couple's films also found a fan base in the US early on, thanks in large part to the support of arthouse cinema operator Dan Talbot, film critics

Jonathan Rosenbaum Jonathan Rosenbaum (born February 27, 1943) is an American film critic and author. Rosenbaum was the head film critic for ''The Chicago Reader'' from 1987 to 2008, when he retired. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has ...

and

J. Hoberman James Lewis Hoberman (born March 14, 1949) is an American film critic, journalist, author and academic. He began working at ''The Village Voice'' in the 1970s, became a full-time staff writer in 1983, and was the newspaper's senior film critic ...

and curator

Richard Roud Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from Old Frankish and is a compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'strong ...

, who was the long program director of the London and New York film festivals. Filmmakers

Deborah Stratman Deborah Stratman (born 1967) is a Chicago-based artist and filmmaker who explores landscapes and systems. Her body of work spans multiple media, including public sculpture, photography, drawing and audio. Biography Stratman's work has been exhibi ...

Thom Andersen Thom Andersen (born 1943 in Chicago) is an American filmmaker, film critic, and teacher best known for his works of experimental film, including his 1975 film '' Eadweard Muybridge, Zoopraxographer'' and the 2003 essay film '' Los Angeles Plays It ...

, and Ted Fendt have cited them as an influence. Despite some positive criticism, their films were and are often met with incomprehension. Especially in the first decades of Straub-Huillet's filmmaking, the accusation of amateurism was often raised against them from this side. A criticism based on the concept of continuity and the narrative conventions of classical cinema as a set of values finds numerous breaks in the Straub-Huillet cinema. Another point of criticism is the alleged lack of emotion in their films. Lecture as well as gestures and facial expressions of the actors are expressionless, anti-dramatic and deliberately boring. The last joint-film by Straub and Huillet, ''Quei loro incontri'', was part of the competition at the 63rd

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival ( it, Mostra Internazionale d'Arte Cinematografica della Biennale di Venezia, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival he ...

in 2006. At the festival, Straub and Huillet were awarded a special prize "for the invention of cinematic language in their entirety." They received late recognition of the film industry by Jury President

Catherine Deneuve Catherine Fabienne Dorléac (born 22 October 1943), known professionally as Catherine Deneuve (, , ), is a French actress as well as an occasional singer, model, and producer, considered one of the greatest European actresses. She gained recogni ...

. But at the award ceremony there was a scandal: Straub and Huillet were not present, instead the actress Giovanna Daddi read a statement written by Straub. It said that as long as there was American imperialist capitalism, there could never be enough terrorists in the world. The statement caused protests at the festival and in the Italian press. The jury discussed withdrawing the award. Defenders of the Straub-Huillet's cinema point out that Straub's private, polemical statements should not influence the appreciation of the cinematic work. After Danièle Huillet's death in 2006, their work became less controversial. Their work received new international recognition in New York, Paris, Madrid, Berlin, London, Lisbon and Tokyo. The retrospectives were preceded by the successful efforts of BELVA-Film (Jean-Marie Straub, Barbara Ulrich) to restore and digitize their entire work. From January 2019 through September 2020, the streaming service

MUBI Mubi (; stylized as MUBI; The Auteurs before 2010) is a global curated film streaming platform, production company and film distributor. Mubi produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusivel ...

held the first digital Straub-Huillet retrospective, showcasing new restorations of fifteen of their films, including Straub's final feature film '' Kommunisten''.

Filmography

*''Machorka-Muff'' (1963) *'' Nicht versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht'' (1965) *''

Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach ''The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach'' (german: Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach) is a 1968 film by the French filmmaking duo of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. It was their first full-length feature film, and reportedly took a decade to ...

'' (1968) *''Der Bräutigam, die Komödiantin und der Zuhälter'' (1968) *''Les Yeux ne veulent pas en tout temps se fermer, ou Peut-être qu'un jour Rome se permettra de choisir à son tour'' (1970) *'' Geschichtsunterricht'' (1972) *''Einleitung zu Arnold Schoenbergs Begleitmusik zu einer Lichtspielscene'' (1973) *''

Moses und Aron ''Moses und Aron'' (English: ''Moses and Aaron'') is a three-act opera by Arnold Schoenberg with the third act unfinished. The German-language, German libretto is by the composer after the Book of Exodus. Hungarian composer Zoltán Kocsis complet ...

'' (1975) *''Fortini/Cani'' (1976) *''Toute révolution est un coup de dés'' (1977) *'' Dalla nube alla resistenza'' (1979) *'' En rachâchant'' (1982) *'' Trop tot/trop tard'' (1982) *''

'' (also released as ''Class Relations'') (1984) *''

Der Tod des Empedokles ''The Death of Empedocles'' (german: Der Tod des Empedokles) is an unfinished drama by Friedrich Hölderlin. It exists in three versions written from 1797 to 1800, the first of which is the most complete. The third version was published by itself ...

'' (1987) *'' Schwarze Sünde'' (1989) *''Paul Cézanne im Gespräch mit Joachim Gasquet'' (1989) *''Die Antigone des Sophokles nach der Hölderlinschen Übertragung für die Bühne bearbeitet von Brecht 1948 (Suhrkamp Verlag)'' (1992) *''Lothringen!'' (1994) *''

Von heute auf morgen ' (''From Today to Tomorrow'' or ''From One Day to the Next'') is a one act opera composed by Arnold Schoenberg, to a German libretto by "Max Blonda", the pseudonym of Gertrud Schoenberg, the composer's wife. It is the composer's opus 32. The ope ...

'' (1997) *'' Sicilia!'' (1999) *''Operai, contadini'' (2001) *''Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo - Umiliati'' (2003) *''Une visite au Louvre'' (2004) *''Quei loro incontri'' (2006) *''Europa 2005 - 27 octobre'' (2006) (TV) (uncredited) *'' Dialogue d'ombres'' (2013)

References

External links

*
Jean-Marie Straub
at

Filmportal.de filmportal.de is an online database of information related to German film. It includes extensive information on films and filmmakers as well as articles on film issues. The website was released on occasion of the 54th Berlin International Film Fe ...

Danièle Huillet
at Filmportal.de

*''Portrait de groupe avec Straub'' (Jean-Marie Straub, 2009.3.9, Cinematheque française, Paris. 57')

{{DEFAULTSORT:Straub, Jean-Marie 1933 births 1936 births 2006 deaths 2022 deaths Filmmaking duos French people of German descent French expatriates in Germany French expatriates in Italy French experimental filmmakers French film directors French film editors French film producers Huillet, Daniele Married couples French-language film directors German-language film directors French women film editors Women experimental filmmakers