From Today Until Tomorrow
(Von heute auf morgen)
With Christine Whittlesey, Richard Salter, Claudia Barainsky.
France/Germany, 1996, 35mm, color, 62 min.
German with English subtitles.
For the third time in their career, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet deal with the work of Arnold Schönberg. This short, almost forgotten opera was composed in 1929, based on a libretto by Schönberg's wife Gertrud. From Today Until Tomorrow explores one night in a not-quite loveless marriage. A husband and wife return from a party where she has flirted with another man, while he has cast an appraising eye toward an attractive, fashionably dressed acquaintance of his wife's. Though each dreams, briefly, of leaving the marriage for the excitement and mystery of a new lover, in the end they decide stability and comfort are more important than the fleeting thrill of a new romance. Relying on long, fixed shots in austere black and white, directors Straub and Huillet maintain their focus on the musical brilliance of Schönberg's atonal score, performed here by seventy musicians.