Danièle Huillet (1936-2006), Materialist Filmmaker
by The Editors of Cahiers du cinéma

Où gît votre sourire enfoui?

How to speak, here, of Danièle Huillet alone? It will have taken her death to notice that she was born on May 1, 1936, which suits her well. After that, since the anecdote of her refusal to discuss a film with which she had nothing to do (Yves Allégret's Manèges), hardly anything more of visible existence except the... except the what? The couple, the tandem, the duo, the pair: no word really applies. The companionship, rather. With Jean-Marie Straub, from the Voltaire School, then, and since the latter's disobedience at the moment of the Algerian War, the exile in Germany together, together the first short, Machorka Muff, in 1962, the first feature, Not Reconciled, in 1965. Already the Straubs' history is intimately linked to that of Cahiers, by friendship and by engagement (Straub "carried boxes" on the set of Coup du berger, Jacques Rivette's first short, in 1956): here is their home, and from here one looks more, and as much as possible better, at what they work on, what they invent. This will not cease.

What they work on, what they invent: the translation into shots, and into a montage of shots, of an evident hypothesis that has not been accomplished before, nor in such an intensive and demanding manner since. This hypothesis is that of a point of convergence between the thinking of cinema founded by André Bazin and deployed by the critical and theoretical work of Cahiers — a thought of the real world where spirit is incarnated, thanks to recording — and Marxist materialism.

Bazin + Marx >/= Straub + Huillet. That's how it is.

The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach in 1967, Othon in 1969, Moses and Aaron in 1974 will translate into art works the resources of this hypothesis, with enough rigor and pertinence, in those times of radicalization, to seem to be able to incarnate everything that the cinema can and should do. Cahiers will accompany that road, all the way into its solitude. It's known how, at the end of the 1970s, Serge Daney taught Cahiers to remain faithful to itself, and thus especially to remain faithful to the Straubs, even in returning also toward other areas, to turn away no longer from the infinitely more vast and disparate real of the Planet Cinema.

Of the Straubs' cinema, this is neither the time nor the place to draw up a balance sheet — without making any premature conclusions about the future, the Editions des Cahiers du cinéma will soon publish an updated edition of the beautiful book dedicated to their work by Louis Seguin, Aux distraitement désespérés que nous sommes (To the Distractedly Desperate that We Are), previously published by Editions Ombres. Of what was, throughout the length of a work by two, the particular contribution of Danièle Huillet, it's possible only to point out what was most salient: silence, documents, sounds, languages, editing.

In public or during conversations in a small group, a division of roles: Jean-Marie spoke, Danièle, most often, was silent. Her silence worked with his speech, his moves, his swerves. We fully expect that Jean-Marie will continue to speak, and to film if he finds a way to do it; it's impossible not to recognize that he will miss this public silence, in going on. This striking and fruitful silence was rich with numerous disturbances. First it was a relative silence, pierced with clarifications, with appeals to the facts, with an imperious sense of the point of contact between the exact and the just (we'll leave it to imbeciles to see in this a detail-grubbing small-mindedness; materialism nourishes itself first with that, in order to think very high and very far).

That concerned the work of cinema, of course, but also the gestures of existence, and the idea that everything incessantly engages — the Straubs' "politics of animals," in which Danièle Huillet played a great role, is somewhat known; not necessarily known is the politics of each gesture, the sharp, visceral sensation, as much as the ripened reflection, of that which in each instant brings oppression, or refusal of oppression. With Danièle Huillet, this knowledge and this instinct belonged to the order of the evident. And provided much of the light that radiated from her face.

Next, a corollary of this speech buttressed on facts: the work of documentation, the research of texts, references of costumes, of decors. Once again, nothing secondary in these tasks, the certainty shared by the couple that in them are engaged, in all exigency with respect to history and the present, an ethics and a politics.

On the set, she will have been, not exclusively, but more than Straub, the one who directed with sound — he assuming more what we will call for convenience the direction of actors. The sound of voices, that of the wind if there is wind, that of cars if there are any, in that place and at that moment which are those of the filming, are the firmest imprint of the real world as it is, there where cinema is made. Near to and far from this labor of sound: the work, this time entirely assumed by Danièle Huillet, of the dialogues in their diverse languages. The Straubs filmed in German, in French, in Italian: Danièle Huillet knew all the nuances and requirements of these three languages. She will also have, well beyond "translation for subtitles," worked to approach as well as possible the presence of words of another language inscribed at the bottom of images in which a certain language is spoken. And who else, in the history of world cinema, has done such a work, which is first respect for the languages that humans speak, respect for the voices of actors, for the meanings of words, and for the identify of spectators? The answer is simple: no one.

A clear line links this relation to words, to their arrangement and their enunciation, to the "operational" role played by Danìele Huillet at the editing table. Its process is known, at least as Pedro Costa recorded it in Où gît votre sourire enfoui? (2001), on the editing of Sicilia! (1999) — neither she nor he ever made it known that what was seen of it was different from their practice before or after. Straub, his voice ample, his body heavy, digresses widely, even reduced to an editing room; immobile at the table, Danièle H. cuts, measures, specifies. And argues there, holding her own. Of course the result is theirs, the division of labor also is theirs, and in the service of no one, it's not economic or even intellectual; it's a matter of sensibility. For at the end of what it will have been possible to say, with prudence, of what la Huillet did in the cinema Straub-Huillet, it's necessary to return, and with what sadness, to the ineffable unity of what, on the screens, was born from this companionship. A slightly ridiculous, slightly old-fashioned slogan comes to mind, "Unity at the base and in action." What could be seen of the Straubs' life — the films, the affirmed choices of existence, in the Roman suburbs or in the 18th arrondissement in Paris — will have been its translation, uncompromising. Let's add one more adjective: generous, immensely generous. With her time, with her work, with her energy, with her listening, with her knowledge. What Jean-Luc Godard called one day an art of living, and that made films.

Translated by Chris Fujiwara

Cahiers du cinéma
© FIPRESCI 2006

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