Chronik der ...

Upon finally seeing The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach. ... Strangely, it is this film (the first Straub/Huillet I've seen on something other than projected celluloid) when I've finally come around to what I think may be a distinctive quality of their images--namely--that they encompass such a rich tonal range. This b&w maybe-masterpiece is pictorially rich, sometimes like busy tableaux, while keeping a certain clarity: varying degrees of depth in which the composed elements form a broiling combination of very deep blacks (such as actors' costumes) and white lights of sun peering through windows. Strong diagonals (furniture, architecture) abound but not without some definite counterweight in the same frame from horizontals and verticals--I'm thinking, for instance, of various choral shots composed diagonally in terms of the human content, but exhibited against a tall rectangular window. (I'd love to post screengrabs but at the moment I don't have Photoshop.) The composition of the images proves to be almost always asymmetrical.