From the Clouds to the Resistance

This 1979 film by Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet is adapted from two books by Cesare Pavese. It consists of two parts: the first is dialogue drawn from mythology, the second a return to a village after the war. In the first part gods and mortals speak to one another; the performers deliver the text from memory in a flat register. In the second an emigrant returns to find no one left and learns what happened during the war. It was shot in real locations in Italy and the sound was never corrected. The directors keep the playing deliberately plain; the narrative produces no emotion and puts the text itself first. Who it's for: those who follow the cinema of Straub and Huillet and literary adaptation. Who it's not for: viewers expecting narrative; the film proceeds as a reading of texts and its two parts do not join.