The day my film professor was going to screen this film in class, he tried his best to prepare us. It's based on Heinrich Böll's novel "Billiards At Half Past Eight," he said; not that if you'd read the novel that'll help you, because whatever plot there is in the film is at best elided, and at most ignored. Straub and Huillet are disdainful, if not contemptuous, of "enjoyment" in narrative, he said: they take Brechtian audience alienation techniques to such an extreme that they very well alienate the audience entirely, or look for an audience of extraterrestials. This is an important and provocative film. Prepare to be challenged, he said, and dimmed the lights and started up the projector.
For twenty minutes we watched images on black and white film. Conversations were verbose and it was difficult to follow what was being said (which, granted, is easy to do in German). The scenes didn't seem to follow any kind of order. I didn't understand a thing.
At the reel change my professor raised the lights. Um, he said. There's been a mistake. I actually just showed you reel two. And they didn't ship us reel one. He threw his hands up in the air and said, But oh well. That's pretty much what watching a Straub and Huillet movie's like!
For twenty minutes we watched images on black and white film. Conversations were verbose and it was difficult to follow what was being said (which, granted, is easy to do in German). The scenes didn't seem to follow any kind of order. I didn't understand a thing.
At the reel change my professor raised the lights. Um, he said. There's been a mistake. I actually just showed you reel two. And they didn't ship us reel one. He threw his hands up in the air and said, But oh well. That's pretty much what watching a Straub and Huillet movie's like!