Chronicle Of Anna Magdalena Bach

Description

Product Description

Using letters Anna Magdalena Bach wrote to her husband, seminal composer Johann Sebastian, filmmakers Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet created one of the crucial precise, rewarding biopics ever put to screen. CHRONICLE OF ANNA MAGDALENA BACH’s intense emotional pull will also be understood by its status as a musical film in the most thorough sense: its performances staged as extended sequences set within the very spaces once occupied by Bach himself, with trained performers both donning and playing items accurate to the period are immense, bringing us closer to the sound than used to be ever thought conceivable. Immaculately restored on the occasion of its 50th anniversary, this ordinary film invites viewers to experience a bygone age.

SPECIAL FEATURES

– New digital restoration
– Jean-Marie Straub introduces “Chronicle” on the Swiss Film Archive (2013, 34 minutes)
– Interview with actress Christiane Lang Drewanz (2012, 30 minutes)
– The Cinema of Straub & Huillet, an introduction by creator Alicia Malone for FilmStruck (5 minutes)
– “The Bridegroom, The Actress, and The Pimp” (1968, 23 minutes), a short film by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet featuring Rainer Werner Fassbinder
– “The Mother” (2011, 20 minutes), a short film by Jean-Marie Straub
– Theatrical Trailer

Review

“Straub and Huillet revolutionized the musical biography.” –Dave Kehr, The New York Times

“The net effect isn’t having seen a film but having lived a real moment, in the presence of monumental music.” –Michael Atkinson, The Village Voice

“The experience is both transcendent and material… A recording of magnificent music… At once austere and rhapsodic, it evokes the 18th century at the same time as feeling as present as a live concert. A very good new digital restoration.” –J. Hoberman, The New York Times