Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet: The Bridegroom, the Actress, and the Pimp

Jean-Marie Straub (1933–2022) was a French-born filmmaker. Along with Danièle Huillet (1936–2006), he made two dozen films known for their rigorous style and radical politics.

Danièle Huillet (1936–2006) was a French-born filmmaker. Along with Jean-Marie Straub (1933–2022), she made two dozen films known for their rigorous style and radical politics.

For over four decades, the films of Danièle Huillet (1936–2006) and Jean-Marie Straub (1933-2022) have been woven into the history of modern cinema as a continuous thread. While both were French, they worked mostly in Germany and Italy, and made two dozen films between 1963 and 2006. Their films, often adapted from theatrical or literary works, are distinguished by their deliberate use of Brechtian distancing techniques and strong Marxist political overtones. Aesthetically their work has been described as austere with minimal camera movements, long takes, simple, stark settings and restrained acting performances. Rare documents of aesthetic and political resistance to the world’s conditions, their works are characteristic of a great lyrical beauty and radical social formulas. when regarded today, Huillet and Straub’s oeuvre is an always fresh, exciting, and inimitable succession of films on history, painting, nature, politics, music, language, bodies, rhythms, and forms.