
Jean Straub Obituary, Uncompromising Filmmaker Has Passed Away
- by Alex Danvers
Jean Straub Obituary, Death -Swiss author Jean-Marie Straub died Sunday. 89-year-old He died. “The Straubs” (they preferred Straub-Huillet) were French filmmakers like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who died in September. New Wave filmmakers turned cinephilia into auteur-driven works reflecting postwar France’s antiauthoritarianism. Straub and Huillet made ideologically driven, entertaining films. In “Too Early, Too Late,” Ms. Huillet reads Friedrich Engels’ letter to Karl Kautsky over contemporary French footage.
Used operas by Brecht, Vittorini, and Schoenberg.
Their work was called poetic and tedious. “Class Relations” requires a “a mood so receptive it borders on brainwashing.” said Vincent Canby of The New York Times.Mr. Canby said the actors’ impassive line delivery sounded like “like they were giving instructions on how to put on one’s life jacket in case of an unscheduled landing at sea.” Some critics praised consistency. J. Hoberman covered MoMA’s 2016 Straub-Huillet retrospective. Some want respect. Straub and Huillet made honest movies.
Favorites Nutcrackers Thanksgiving Digestion? False Swiss film festival Locarno 2017 honored Mr. Straub. Died (2006). (2006). Richard Brody of The New Yorker called Straub “one of the least known great filmmakers” Fidgeting helped. Straub changed moviemaking. “If we hadn’t learned filmmaking, I would have planted bombs,” he said. Metz, France, Jan. 8, 1933. Favorites included Renoir, Bresson, and GrĂ©millon. Nancy University and Fustel-de-Coulanges. He invited Truffaut and Bazin to his Metz film club in the 1950s. Straub contributed.
He met Ms. Huillet in 1954 and moved to Paris to write “A Man Escaped” (1956). After avoiding conscription, he fled to West Germany. They married in 1959 and made films in Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. “Not Reconciled” (1965) investigates Nazism. Sontag kissed TV. The 1968 hit “The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach” The film is set in Bach’s Germany and includes her diary entries. Performed by period musicians.
Some critics called it “repetitive and static screen fare” but others saw it as a masterpiece whose “visual austerity, resolute slowness, and refusal of the conventional narrative was meant to advance a ruthless critique of capitalist aesthetics,” advanced a ruthless critique of capitalist aesthetics, A.O. Scott wrote in 2018.
As their reputation grew, Straub and Huillet pushed boundaries. From the Clouds to the Resistance (1979) and Sicilia! (1999).
“Othon,” was based on Pierre Corneille’s 17th-century play “Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, or, Perhaps One Day Rome Will Choose in Her Turn.” In Rome’s Palatine Hill ruins, amateur actors dressed as ancient Romans. Straub considered the “Othon’saudience ” audience the modern proletariat. 1975: “I want ‘Othon’ seen by Paris workers.” Corneille baffles them. His film “threatens a power clique,” Half the 1970 NYFF press left. Possibly. “We make films so audiences can walk out.” Straub:
Jean Straub Obituary, Death -Swiss author Jean-Marie Straub died Sunday. 89-year-old He died. “The Straubs” (they preferred Straub-Huillet) were French filmmakers like Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard, who died in September. New Wave filmmakers turned cinephilia into auteur-driven works reflecting postwar France’s antiauthoritarianism. Straub and Huillet made ideologically driven, entertaining films. In “Too Early, Too…