Danièle Huillet, 1936 - 2006.

Danièle Huillet, one of the world's greatest, most sensitive and demanding filmmakers died [Monday] night. She was 70 years old, born on May Day, 1936.

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For me, at this moment, there's no point in trying to delineate what was Huillet and what was Straub in their films. They worked together on every film, including the early ones where only Straub is credited. One look at Pedro Costa's film on Huillet/Straub's work ethic Ou git votre sourire enfoui? (Where Lies Your Hidden Smile?) will show you that while Jean-Marie is a raging current, Danièle also drives the turbines and maintains the power station.

Andy Rector.

See also: Doug Cummings; Huillet and Straub in conversation at theory kit; Barton Byg: Landscapes of Resistance: The German Films of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub; an obituary in today's Libération.

Updates, 10/12: Mubarak Ali has a clip from Where Does Your Hidden Smile Lie?

Dave Kehr writes in the New York Times that the Straub-Huillet "aesthetic, grounded in the philosophical materialism of Marx and Engels, was one of extreme realism that resisted superfluous embellishments and editing effects.... Even as they became institutions on the festival and museum circuit, they projected the brash, provocative aspect of eternal Young Turks, always willing to upset any and all apple carts in the immediate vicinity. In a tribute published yesterday in the French newspaper Libération, the critic Olivier Seguret expressed the fears of many admirers of Straub-Huillet: 'Dead, Danièle Huillet kills us twice, because her passing probably means that Straub will never film again.'"

Posted by dwhudson at October 11, 2006 6:05 AM