“The starting point for our Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach,” Straub once noted, “was the idea to make a film in which we used music not as an accompaniment, or as a commentary, but as an aesthetic matter.” Though the film recounts the life of J.S. Bach via fictionalized letters from his wife, and is meticulously staged through period costumes, instruments and locations, the Chronicle is no hagiography. Rather it’s a kind of anti-biopic, resolutely de-romanticized and all the more illuminating for it. As elsewhere in Straub-Huillet’s work, one witnesses the vital import of direct sound: all the featured compositions in the film, a representative selection from Bach’s career, were performed and recorded live before the camera, and almost always as a single take. “In practical terms,” the filmmaker explained, “you could say that we tried to bring music to life on-screen, to show, for once, music to filmgoers.” – Thomas Beard