by Jonathan Rosenbaum

»One thing worth mentioning about Danièle: I've never known anyone who knew her and Jean-Marie well enough to know absolutely for sure whether or not they were literally husband and wife. This might strike some as a mere technicality, but I think it signifies something more. Whether they went through an actual wedding ceremony or wound up living together; whether they considered having children; whether it was inaccurate or precise, impolite or perfectly okay to refer to them as "the Straubs": these are all basically questions about how they defined themselves in relation to society. And the fact that most of us don't know the answers points towards a larger uncertainty about whether they were true bohemians or eccentric traditionalists (not necessarily the same thing), or some combination of the two. (Danièle only began to be credited as coauteur belatedly, after their first few films. But was this because she gradually became more active as a filmmaker or because the two of them began to place a higher value on her participation? Again, I have no idea.) « read more on fipresci.org

Danièle Huillet est décédée le 10 octobre 2006. Hors champ a décidé de consacrer un modeste dossier à l’oeuvre qu’elle a, pendant plus de quarante ans, bâtie avec Jean-Marie Straub. Avec l’espoir que cette oeuvre de résistance se poursuivra, à défaut d’être avec elle, pour elle.

CURIOSITÉ / EXIGENCE
27 février 2007, par Adrian Martin
Lorsque, il y a vingt ans, j’ai eu pour la première fois l’idée d’écrire un article sur les films de Danièle Huillet et Jean-Marie Straub, j’avais pensé lui donner le titre : « Curiosité », ou même : « Enthousiasme ». (...)

LE CHAMP N’EST PAS LIBRE
27 février 2007, par Sébastien Lévesque
"Depuis maintenant quarante-cinq ans, Jean-Marie Straub et Danièle Huillet sévissent avec joie dans le monde en fabriquant un cinéma de l’épurement. Depuis plus de quarante-cinq ans, à chacune de leurs œuvres et avec une courageuse (...)

POLITIQUE/MENACE/MÉTRIQUE
29 avril 2007, par Giulio Bursi
Montage de textes, de citations, de photographies et de documents, en hommage à Danièle Huillet et Jean-Marie-Straub.

LE MATÉRIALISME CINÉMATOGRAPHIQUE DES STRAUB
27 février 2007, par Guillaume Lafleur
Le programme straubien serait plus qu’un cinéma historique (leurs films sont tout sauf des fresques ou des épopées de l’histoire), plutôt des objets de présence, habités d’une conscience du (...)

»Der Tod des Empedokles« oder »Wenn dann der Erde Grün von neuem Euch erglänzt« von Danièle Huillet und Jean-Marie Straub.

Straub/Huillet gehen von Positivitäten aus. Sie haben einen Text, den es nicht gibt, und sie haben Bilder, die es so nie geben wird. Damit lässt sich arbeiten.

Ein Text von Rembert Hüser, Filmwärts 1987.

Text: Jacques Aumont

Comment filmer Cézanne? Ou plutot : comment filmer la peinture de Cézanne? Non seulement filmer certaines de ses toiles, mais filmer Cézanne peintre.

in: Jean-Marie Straub / Danièle Huillet, Editions Antigone, Lasa et Dominque Paini.

Gilles Deleuze: A propos du cinéma de Straub-Huillet

»Le mercredi 17 mai 1989, Jean-Marie Straub et Daniile Huillet étaient au Festival de Cannes pour y présenter leur dernier film "Noir Péché". Le soir, ils étaient les invités de Pierre-André Boutang sur Ie plateau d'Océaniques. La discussion y fut vive, orageuse, passionnante. Beau moment de direct. Le lendemain soir, de ma chambre d'hotel cannoise, j'ai vu et entendu la conférence que Gilles Deleuze avait donné à la FEMIS. Grand moment de télévision....« (Charles Tesson) Ci-joint des extraits de la conférance de Gilles Deleuze.

by Burlin Barr
published in Camera Obscura 18, 2003.

Too Early, Too Late[Trop tot, trop tard] (dir. Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, Germany, 1981) begins with a traveling shot best described as vertiginous. The shot—more than seven minutes in duration—is filmed from an automobile driving around the traffic circle at the Place de la Bastille in Paris. The camera looks outward; the spectator never sees the center around which the activity turns. The shot provides no clearly explicated ideological or narrative context. What it offers, rather, is a constantly transformed articulation of space and a profusion of events, none of which appear to bear more importance than any other. Spectators may take note of the changing architectural setting or will see and hear traffic simultaneously converging and diverging as vehicles enter the frame at different speeds and from different angles. Yet as the shot proceeds, a compelling construct emerges. Not only are speed and direction difficult to discern, not only is spatial orientation a momentary event, but spatial hierarchies are entirely undone and transformed. Here is neither left nor right; north is not above the south. Here the space of the framer will soon be framed. The mobility of the shot undermines even the certainty of a “here” and “there.” In every sense, collisions seem imminent.

read full version of the text by Tag Gallagher on sensesofcinema.com

I first met Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub in 1975. They were in New York to present Moses und Aron (Moses and Aaron, 1974) at the New York Film Festival. They came to our apartment, sat on the floor, watched 16mm prints of John Ford's Pilgrimage (1933) and Donovan's Reef (1963), and loved them. Jean-Marie blushed red and said what he was trying to do in cinema was a combination of John Ford and Kenji Mizoguchi.

The Straubs' adoration of Ford perplexed Richard Roud, the New York Film Festival's director, who had published the first book on the Straubs and who execrated Ford as their antithesis. Roud's attitude was normal. Many in New York in those days felt a moral duty to hate Ford, whose movies were said to celebrate racism, militarism, patriarchy, chauvinism, cornball ham and clichéd conventionality. I suspect the Straubs enjoyed Richard Roud's shock as much as I did.

Today things have changed. People in New York, unless they are academics, are apt to admire Ford for his denunciation of evil isms and to admire his movies for their subtle, rich and authentic art. In contrast, the Straubs' movies are still classified as antithesis. Partly this is because their movies have been virtually impossible to see in America, even on pirated video; partly it is because their movies appeal to people who regard “defying Hollywood conventions” as evidence of artistic greatness.

Even in Europe, many (but not all!) of the Straubs' champions talk about isms in their movies more than individuals, non-figurative design more than portraiture, theory more than storybook lyricism, “Bresson-like” impersonableness more than commedia dell'arte, anti-conventionality more than renewed roots in Western tradition, radical posturing more than troubled existentialism, Marxism more than Jesuit sensibility of each moment as sacramental, minimalism romanticism, calculation more than volcanic emotion.

There are more important things to write about than films. This alone is a good reason for writing about films by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet. In their art they have taken to heart Kafka's advice: "In the battle between yourself and the world, second the world." In films that are simple in their visual construction, restrained in their camera movement, and precise in their editing, there are always brief points at which the reality of the world outside the film explodes with a violent, utopian force. In Not Reconciled , for instance, a tragic love affair is summed up in a single two-second shot of a young woman turning her head as she says, "They're going to kill you." An old woman shoots a Nazi sympathizer at the end of the same film, and another avenging woman shoots a gangster at the end of The Bridegroom, the Comedienne, and the Pimp , yet in each case the camera looks away. The "action" is always elsewhere, spilling out of the film. And in most Straub/Huillet films, sound separates itself from the image for the first time at the end of the final reel, impelling us out of the dream of the cinema and into the world again: Bach's organ music, the air horn of an Amtrak train, the thunder of an approaching storm, the Carabinieri's helicopter.

Landscapes of Resistance
The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub
by Barton Byg, University of California Press, 1995

Machorka Muff arrive tard le soir à son hôtel de Bonn. Il hésite à téléphoner à Inn. Il a un cauchemar : il voit la stèle d'une statue qui lui est consacrée et du drap qui tombe surgir des militaires se moquant de lui. "Ici se cachent des énergies qui ne sont pas toutes libérées " complut-il. Colonel, il est en charge d'établir un état major. Il rencontre un ami qu'il méprise un peu songeant à savoir s'il aimerait séduire son épouse provinciale. Il reçoit un officiel dans le hall de l'hôtel, s'inquiète de savoir si son projet passera. L'opinion populaire accepte tout.

Coffret Straub-Huillet vol1 // Ciné-Club de Caen

Nicht Versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt wo Gewalt herrscht, ein avantgardistischer Neuer Deutscher Film aus dem Jahr 1965 von dem Regisseuerpaar Jean-Marie Straub und Danièle Huillet, wird in dieser Arbeit auf die Darstellung von Kontinuität der NS-Vergangenheit in die frühe Bundesrepublik hin untersucht. Auch dieser Film wird mit der Technik der Filmanalyse betrachtet, mit der andere Autoren diesen Film interpretiert haben. Nicht Versöhnt wird zudem auf der inhaltlichen Ebene genauer betrachtet, es wird aber nicht auf den Aspekt eingegangen, daß es eine Literaturverfilmung ist (dies hatte eine Mitreferentin getan), außerdem gibt es auch keine Inhaltsangabe.

Ein Referat zum Neuen Deutschen Film von Straub/Huillet von B. Reifschneider, gehalten am 13. Januar 1998