Film Details

Champions of Straub-Huillet regard this two-part film as one of the duo’s greatest works. Based on writings by Cesare Pavese, the movie begins with a series of dialogues between mythological gods and ancient heroes. Part two, set in the aftermath of WWII, finds a man returning to an Italian village where many anti-Fascist resistance fighters were murdered. Straub-Huillet thus illustrate that man’s fate has passed from the hands of the gods to the hands of man. “Straub and Huillet expand their concerns with dazzling scope and beauty: the struggle between gods and men, the eruption of the past into the present... The film constantly startles by its imaginative and historical leaps…A work of provocation which strips ornament and leaves essences, and whose integrity gives it a distinct sense of the sublime.” –Time Out Film Guide. Subtitles. DCP. 105 min. Preceded at 6:30 by Straub-Huillet’s 7-min. En rachâchant (France, 1982, 35mm), from a story by Marguerite Duras.