Chronicle Of Anna Magdalena Bach (DVD)
APPROX. 93 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 1968 - MPA RATING: NR
" You get the sense not simply of listening to a movie soundtrack, but to the real performances as they might have sounded to Bach or anyone else listening at the time.
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The films of Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet are so difficult to categorize that it is difficult even to assign them a nationality. Both French nationals, their films are clearly a product of the French New Wave but they are just as properly considered members of the first generation of New German Cinema (they went into exile in Germany after the Algerian War) and, of late, they have been making films in Italian. Often they are simply referred to as Straub-Huillet, but Straub frequently receives solo credit as director as is the case with "Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" (1967).
Many terms can accurately be used to describe the films of Straub-Huillet: austere, rigorous, languorous, politically charged, avant-garde. Above all, their films are part of an ongoing experiment in questioning the traditional role of narrative and the sound-image relationship in cinema. For Straub-Huillet, sound is no bastard child to image but every bit its equal and, on occasion, its superior as is certainly the case in "Chronicle."
"Chronicle" tells the story of Johann Sebastian Bach through the words of his second wife, Anna Magdalena. Both main roles are played by musicians: Dutch harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt as J.S. Bach and Christiane Lang as Anna. Straub/Huillet mix actual historical material with voice-over from Anna´s "diary" to stitch together a narrative which covers the period from Bach´s marriage to Anna to his death (1721-1750).
The film is only nominally a biopic, however. Anna, in a strictly functional voice-over, rattles off the major events of her husband´s life: his prestigious appointment in Leipzig, his growing blindness, and the many tragic deaths of their children (Bach had twelve children with Anna; eight of them died by the age of five). These historical facts, however, serve only as an excuse to propel the film from one performance to another, and it is the music which is always at the center of "Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach."
Straub claimed that he wanted to make a film "in which music was utilized not as an accompaniment… but as esthetic material." Straub-Huillet compress twenty separate Bach performances into their 93 minute film: some are excerpts played by one performer, others extended renditions played by an entire orchestra. Each performance is captured as a real, live occurrence; Straub-Huillet only recorded direct sound and most of the numbers are shot in a single long take. Thus each performance is not just a rendition of a Bach composition, but also a documentary record of Leonhardt, Lang and other musicians playing live on set. You get the sense not simply of listening to a movie soundtrack, but to the real performances as they might have sounded to Bach or anyone else listening at the time.
The bulk of the film´s budget was spent on hiring the most talented classical musicians available, and it pays off. This is one of the most enthralling musical experiences ever captured on film. The film accumulates an extraordinary sense of energy as it races from one song to another, spanning the heart of Bach´s career from his Brandenburg Concertos in the 1720s to the Goldberg Variations in the 1740s. Many of Straub-Huillet´s films can rightly be described as lethargic or even tedious, but "Chronicle" brims over with vitality.
Though the film´s primary focus is the music, Straub-Huillet´s static, painterly compositions are an equal part of the movie´s charm. The camera does move in most of the scenes (usually slow, deliberate dolly shots), but usually only after resting in place for an extended period of time. We get the chance to consider each frame as we would a painting in a museum. Many of Straub-Huillet´s images feature dynamic diagonal lines that draw the eye. In one of the film´s most beautiful shots, young music students sit at a dining table which slices right to left and slightly off the vertical axis while the beams on the ceiling carve left to right and just a tad off the horizontal axis. I hesitate to interpret the meaning of such images, I only know that they are beautiful and point the direction to some of Straub-Huillet´s remarkable films to come such as later, structural films such as the magisterial "Too Early, Too Late" (1982).
