Chronique d'Anna-Magdanela Bach

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.

"Each and every music piece is observed with mostly, a static, single take that framed with a particularly deliberated angle that often overlooks its subject, illustrious musicians - conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt and Austrian music ensemble Concentus Musicus Wien, among others, offering full rendering of Bach's baroque éclat, whether it is from a single harpsichord, or an ensemble with chorus. For any classical music connoisseur and Bach votary, the film is an ascetic paean paying deferential homage to one of the most accomplished musicians of all time, and for those less familiar with Bach's works, it constitutes an edifyingly melodious piece to wide our horizons and nourish our sensoria, however unrelieved its modus operandi is."

OK, I'll cut this a little slack for being made in 1968, though this does not fully excuse the horrible sound quality. Stereo became common 10 years before, yet this is in mono, with compressed, over-modulated, sometimes severely distorted sound, recorded on an optical film track, with background noise. I saw better-recorded educational films shown on a 16mm projector in class as a kid. Hmmm, maybe this was the audience for this project -- an educational film for European music classes?

On the plus side, videos of musical performances were not as common as now; I wish they were. It is interesting to see a performance, especially keyboard or orchestral, even if the camera is static. But you need first-rate sound... and color. This is filmed in black and white. I love black and white, but this is washed out and fuzzy.

I love classical music, especially Bach. What makes Bach unique is not his use of melody, which was more fully exploited later, but his use of interweaving contrapuntal lines, requiring the listener to follow multiple instruments simultaneously. This is largely lost in mono, especially with this muddled sound. This makes me suspect that the producers didn't really understand the music. However, at least having the visuals of the performers helps a bit to recapture some of that polyphonic interplay.

The performances are adequate. But today with modern sound technology, and the wide variety of performances and interpretations, often on period instruments, these performances seem hopelessly stodgy.

The concept was not entirely off the mark: filming Bach with period instruments, performers dressed in period clothes, with historical settings, is interesting. It would have been more interesting with audiences, for that's how the music would have been performed, but then you would need more costumes. In color with digital sound, this might have been striking, but in black and white, even the costumes are boring.

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.

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.