read full version of the text by Tag Gallagher on sensesofcinema.com

I first met Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub in 1975. They were in New York to present Moses und Aron (Moses and Aaron, 1974) at the New York Film Festival. They came to our apartment, sat on the floor, watched 16mm prints of John Ford's Pilgrimage (1933) and Donovan's Reef (1963), and loved them. Jean-Marie blushed red and said what he was trying to do in cinema was a combination of John Ford and Kenji Mizoguchi.

The Straubs' adoration of Ford perplexed Richard Roud, the New York Film Festival's director, who had published the first book on the Straubs and who execrated Ford as their antithesis. Roud's attitude was normal. Many in New York in those days felt a moral duty to hate Ford, whose movies were said to celebrate racism, militarism, patriarchy, chauvinism, cornball ham and clichéd conventionality. I suspect the Straubs enjoyed Richard Roud's shock as much as I did.

Today things have changed. People in New York, unless they are academics, are apt to admire Ford for his denunciation of evil isms and to admire his movies for their subtle, rich and authentic art. In contrast, the Straubs' movies are still classified as antithesis. Partly this is because their movies have been virtually impossible to see in America, even on pirated video; partly it is because their movies appeal to people who regard “defying Hollywood conventions” as evidence of artistic greatness.

Even in Europe, many (but not all!) of the Straubs' champions talk about isms in their movies more than individuals, non-figurative design more than portraiture, theory more than storybook lyricism, “Bresson-like” impersonableness more than commedia dell'arte, anti-conventionality more than renewed roots in Western tradition, radical posturing more than troubled existentialism, Marxism more than Jesuit sensibility of each moment as sacramental, minimalism romanticism, calculation more than volcanic emotion.