Intimate Bach Piece Finds the Primal Essence of Cinema  Bach in
black (and white) photo: Snowbound Bach in black (and white)
The European art film may have never come this close to being a
non-movie—and to summoning the nascent force of cinema as a
primal concentration of experience. Jean-Marie Straub and
Daniéle Huillet's famous, hard-to-see meta-thing, their first
feature, is now on DVD, and it's a living demonstration of less-
as-more. Period-dressed performances of J.S. Bach's music—in
their entireties—are interpolated against a handful of static
dramatic exchanges and glimpses of Bach's manuscripts and
publications. All of it is contextualized by narration spoken
out of the eponymous diary. That's it: But the restrictive form
of the film liberates rather than limits, and, as in the movies
of Warhol, Snow, and Sokurov (among others), our demands for
distractive progression are slapped down and we're given pure
sensual intimacy instead. Marital love is not expressed but is
inherent in every word and note;