Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach

Very stark, very drab, no real drama. Why not just make a documentary? This isn't exactly The Passion of Joan of Arc. The only reason for seeing Chronicles is to hear the performances. I love Bach's music and even I found it hard to sit through this misery of a film. The great Gustav Leonhardt plays (in two senses of the word) Bach. We don't get much of a sense of him as an actor, since he's given so little to do dramatically. Mostly, he gets to walk purposefully or angrily out of various rooms. Bach's life, of course, was not an Errol Flynn movie. It was indeed fairly drab and more than a little hard. This probably means that the life isn't a terrific candidate for a film. The music, of course, is another story. I recommend The Stations of Bach. Far more information, for one thing, and some insight into the music, which is, after all, why Bach interests us in the first place.

This was intended, I guess, as a totally straight "chronicle" of J. S. Bach and of his second wife Anna Magdalena. When the project was conceived this must have seemed like a good idea, motivated by love and respect for Bach's music. But I found the end result to be slow-moving, uncinematic, unsympathetic to its characters, wooden, and (after about an hour) unwatchable.

It would in principle have been enjoyable to listen to the extensive musical performances included in this film. But the sound quality unfortunately is quite poor. I also found that the cheesy costumes and wigs distracted my attention from the music.

This isn't available on video, unfortunately, so you'll probably have to see it at some retrospective. As any film biography of a composer should be, it is saturated with Bach's music, and much of the film is little more than a filmed recital, in costume. But it contains much significant biographical material so that we get an insight into the difficulties of life in Bach's time. It seems that one of his children is always dying. This is quite factual: of Bach's 20 children that were born of his 2 wives, only 6 survived to adulthood. This is a masterpiece that should be seen if at all possible.

I'd like to offer a rebuttal to some of the negative comments about this movie. I, too, noticed the same things that turned off the others - the lack of typical plot, dialog, and drama. In fact, halfway through the movie, i was having a hard time staying focused. But then I started to get it. After the movie was over, I watched the "Making of..." documentary that was on the DVD. It was only then that I truly understood. The director Straub, a refugee from Algeria, living in Germany. A 10 year quest to make the movie. Everything was dogmatically intentional. He wanted the performances to be shown statically. He believed if one was to listen to a 7 minute piece of music, all the drama should be derived from the music, not the cinematic arts. All sound was location, the musicians are the highest caliber - everything played on screen. What movies today could boast of that? Also, he said he wanted it to be as much a documentary about the virtuoso Leonhardt who plays Bach, as it was about Bach. To him, a long shot on the face of the performer was all one needed to experience the ecstasy of Bach. Remember, too, this is 1967 Germany. He was trying to avoid all nationalism, and was glad to have a Dutchman play Bach. I think looking at this movie through the eyes of today's short attention-spanned, explosion thirsty movie-going POV is ignorant. I doubt many of those people could even sit through a 7 minute piece of music. Straub was 30 years ahead of his time. Anyone who appreciates the Dogma95 should understand. Finally, I see that he and his wife had been making movies together for over 40 years, until Danièle died last fall. My condolences, Mr. Straub. This is one person you have reached.

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, directed by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet, is a chef-d'oeuvre that transcends traditional categorizations of cinema. This film is a unique blend of period feature film, biopic, documentary/experimental film-making, and TV movies, offering viewers a new horizon to the future of media productions. Despite receiving bitter criticism from the majority of film critics, the film's formalistic approach, inspired by the musical forms of Bach's music presented in the film (such as the exemplary fugue-like structure of a scene), redefines all clichéd definitions of film categories, making it a timeless classic that has left a lasting impression on many progressive filmmakers of the next generation.

One of the most striking aspects of the film is its release date, which coincided with the political turmoil of 1968. This timing links the apolitical facade of the film to its contemporaneous political context and transforms it into a reactionary political artwork, making it an emblematic example of German post-war cinema. However, the film's significant presentation of every "documented" document in the film, including Bach's manuscripts, and the portrayal of Gustav Leonhard, a legendary harpsichordist of his own right, as the lead character who personifies Bach, turn the film into a magnificent "musical document" of all times, even if it is historically inaccurate.

In The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, Straub and Huillet have pushed the boundaries of period feature film, biopic, docufiction, and educational TV programs (like that of Rossellini's) into an integrated, multifaceted arthouse film. They have masterfully managed to offer a new horizon to the future of media productions and paved the way for more complex intellectual free- forms, bringing different cinematic principles together. This achievement is perhaps reminiscent of the Nietzschean idea of compositum mixtum, which suggests the unification of incongruent elements to create a new and harmonious whole.

In conclusion, The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach is a film that is not only a masterpiece of its time but also an example of how different forms of art can be seamlessly blended together to create a new artistic form. Its impact on the future of media productions is undeniable, and it remains a timeless classic that should be appreciated for years to come.