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 Communism () is a sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology within the socialist movement, whose goal is the creation of a communist society, a socioeconomic order centered on common ownership of the means of production, di ...

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 ( , , , then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle (river), Moselle and the Seille (Moselle), Seille rivers. Metz is the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Moselle (department), Moselle Departments ...

, met Paris-born Huillet as a student in 1954. Straub was involved in the Parisian

cinephile Cinephilia ( ; also cinemaphilia or filmophilia) is the term used to refer to a passionate interest in films, film theory, and film criticism. The term is a portmanteau of the words '' cinema'' and ''philia'', one of the four ancient Greek words ...

community at the time. He was friends with Francois Truffaut and contributed to his publication , 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 fo ...

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, producer, writer and actor. A pioneer in the theory and practice of montage, he is best known for three major silent films: ''J'ac ...

Jean Renoir Jean Renoir (; 15 September 1894 – 12 February 1979) was a French film director, screenwriter, actor, producer and author. His '' La Grande Illusion'' (1937) and '' The Rules of the Game'' (1939) are often cited by critics as among the greate ...

Robert Bresson Robert Bresson (; 25 September 1901 – 18 December 1999) was a French film director. Known for his ascetic approach, Bresson made a notable contribution to the art of cinema; his non-professional actors, Ellipsis (narrative device), ellipses, an ...

and

Alexandre Astruc Alexandre Astruc (; 13July 192319May 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 of th ...

. The pair later emigrated to

West Germany West Germany was the common English name for the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) from its formation on 23 May 1949 until German reunification, its reunification with East Germany on 3 October 1990. It is sometimes known as the Bonn Republi ...

so that Straub could avoid military service in

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

. Straub spent his first few years researching

Bach Johann Sebastian Bach (German: �joːhan zeˈbasti̯an baχ ( – 28 July 1750) was a German composer and musician of the late Baroque period. He is known for his prolific output across a variety of instruments and forms, including the or ...

. 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 received the Georg Büchner Prize (1967) and the Nobel Prize for Literature (1972). Bio ...

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'', after which they made films at a fairly even rate, completing a feature every 2–3 years. The production of the '' Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach'' 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, dramatist and actor. He is widely regarded as one of the major figures and catalysts of the New German Cinema moveme ...

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 West 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) ea ...

Franz Kafka Franz Kafka (3 July 1883 – 3 June 1924) was a novelist and writer from Prague who was Jewish, Austrian, and Czech and wrote in German. He is widely regarded as a major figure of 20th-century literature. His work fuses elements of Litera ...

, Elio Vittorini and

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

; two operas by

Arnold Schoenberg Arnold Schoenberg or Schönberg (13 September 187413 July 1951) was an Austrian and American composer, music theorist, teacher and writer. He was among the first Modernism (music), modernists who transformed the practice of harmony in 20th-centu ...

; letters written by

Friedrich Engels Friedrich Engels ( ;"Engels"
''Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary''.Wassily Kandinsky Wassily Wassilyevich Kandinsky ( – 13 December 1944) was a Russian painter and art theorist. Kandinsky is generally credited as one of the pioneers of abstract art, abstraction in western art. Born in Moscow, he spent his childhood in ...

, and J.S. Bach; and other films, including Rossellini's '' Europa '51''. 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 Straub–Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. It is based on Franz Kafka's unfinished first novel, ''Amerika (novel), Amerika''. ...

'', stress the relationship between the original text and the film. Since their first films ''Machorka-Muff'' (1962) and ''Not Reconciled'' (1964) were made in West Germany, Huillet and Straub were at the time included in the New German Film, which was loudly announced in the 1962

Oberhausen Manifesto The Oberhausen Manifesto was a declaration by a group of 26 young West 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 estGerm ...

. Frieda Grafe and Enno Patalas 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 (), usually called the Berlinale (), is an annual film festival held in Berlin, Germany. Founded in 1951 and originally run in June, the festival has been held every February since 1978 and is one of Europ ...

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.(editor) Early life, education and early career Kluge was born in Halberstadt, Province of Saxony (now Saxony-Anhalt), Germany. After growing ...

, Enno Patalas and the influential magazine Filmkritik. With this film, which had little in common with other West 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

. 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. 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 filmmaker who directed roughly 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), '' Ugetsu'' (1953), and ' ...

and

John Ford John Martin Feeney (February 1, 1894 – August 31, 1973), better known as John Ford, was an American film director and producer. He is regarded as one of the most important and influential filmmakers during the Golden Age of Hollywood, and w ...

Collaboration

Due to his more extroverted 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, video game, or other performance, as distinct from production and post-production. Pre-production ends when the planning ends and the co ...

, 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 Practice (learning metho ...

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 comp ...

'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). 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 , Frans van de Staak, Holger Meins and

Jean-Luc Godard Jean-Luc Godard ( , ; ; 3 December 193013 September 2022) was a French and Swiss film director, screenwriter, and film critic. He rose to prominence as a pioneer of the French New Wave film movement of the 1960s, alongside such filmmakers as ...

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),

('' Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?'', 2001) and Peter Nestler ('' Defense of Time'', 2007).

Reception

Their films have received positive responses from leading film critics: in Germany, for example, those of Enno Patalas, Frieda Grafe, Alexander Kluge, Helmut Färber and Ulrich Gregor, later by Harun Farocki and Hartmut Bitmosky and others. In France, the Cahiers du Cinéma, whose authors Michel Delahaye and Serge Daney, 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. He has published and edited numerous books about cinema and has contributed to ...

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 f ...

and curator

Richard Roud Richard Stanley Roud (July 6, 1929 – February 13, 1989) was an American writer on film and co-founder, with Amos Vogel, of the New York Film Festival (NYFF).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 comp ...

, Deborah Stratman, Thom Andersen, 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, '' These Encounters of Theirs'', was part of the competition at the 63rd

Venice Film Festival The Venice Film Festival or Venice International Film Festival (, "International Exhibition of Cinematographic Art of the Venice Biennale") is an annual film festival held in Venice, Italy. It is the world's oldest film festival and one of the ...

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. She is considered one of the greatest European actresses on film. In 2020, ''The New York Times'' ranked her as one of th ...

. Straub and Huillet were not present during the ceremony. Actress Giovanna Daddi read a statement written by Straub, saying that as long as there was American imperialist capitalism, there could never be enough terrorists in the world. The statement caused some controversy. 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 streaming platform, production company and film distributor. MUBI produces and theatrically distributes films by emerging and established filmmakers, which are exclusively available ...

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) *''

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach ''The Chronicle of 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 finance. The film stars renowned ha ...

'' (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 music to the third act unfinished. The German libretto is by the composer. It is based on selected incidents from the Book of Exodus (chapters 3 ...

'' (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'' (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'' (1997) *'' Sicilia!'' (1999) *''Operai, contadini'' (2001) *''Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo - Umiliati'' (2003) *''Une visite au Louvre'' (2004) *'' These Encounters of Theirs'' (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 ...

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