Machorka-Muff. 1962. West Germany. Written and directed by Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet. Based on “Bonn Diary,” by Heinrich Böll. With Erich Kuby, Renate Langsdorff. 35mm. In German; English subtitles. 18 min.
Relishing his political and sexual prospects in postwar Germany, a former Nazi colonel muses on the stupidity of the bourgeoisie, who can be easily duped in the voting booth and in the bedroom. Straub-Huillet’s first released film is a powerful, almost surreal, distillation of Heinrich Böll’s story, skewering the German soul though gallows humor, an interior monologue of calculation and cynicism, and a montage of jingoistic newspaper headlines. Straub would observe that the film is “built on the equation M [military] = M3 [murder].” 35mm. In German; English subtitles. 18 min. Relishing his political and sexual prospects in postwar Germany, a former Nazi colonel muses on the stupidity of the bourgeoisie, who can be easily duped in the voting booth and in the bedroom. Straub-Huillet’s first released film is a powerful, almost surreal, distillation of Heinrich Böll’s story, skewering the German soul though gallows humor, an interior monologue of calculation and cynicism, and a montage of jingoistic newspaper headlines. Straub would observe that the film is “built on the equation M [military] = M3 [murder].”
Nicht Versöhnt oder Es hilft nur Gewalt, wo Gewalt herrscht (Not Reconciled, or Only Violence Helps Where Violence Rules). 1964–65. West Germany. Written and directed by Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet. Based on Billiards at Half-Past Nine, by Heinrich Böll. With Henning Harmssen, Ernst Kutzinski, Ulrich von Thüna. 35mm. In German; English subtitles. 55 min.
“Long live dynamite!” Straub-Huillet attempt to unmoor their audience by denying them the soothing reassurances of conventional storytelling, spatial continuity, or psychological explanation as they hopscotch across the chronologies of Heinrich Böll’s novel, moving freely between the Kaiser autocracy of the 1910s and the Adenauer economic miracle of the 1950s. In doing so, they chart the origins and legacy of Nazism, and the moral demands of obedience and sacrifice within the German bourgeois family.