On Nicht Versöhnt and Machorka-Muff
Frans van de Staak, 1966
Translated by Jelte Vangenechten
The following essay was originally published in CineEcri: publikaties over film no. 2 in 1966 on the occasion of the presentation of Jean-Marie Straub’s Nicht versöhnt and Machorka-Muff at the Dutch Film Museum. It has never been compiled or republished until now. CineEcri was a small Amsterdam film journal founded in the late 1960s and edited by Frans van de Staak, a filmmaker whom Straub would later call “the only heir to Dziga Vertov.”
We present this translation in collaboration with Punto de Vista, International Film Festival of Navarra, whose 19th edition features an eleven-film retrospective of Van de Staak’s work, along with the first ever monograph dedicated to the Dutch cineaste, Frans van de Staak. The Word as Archipelago.
With special thanks to Carlos Saldaña, Manuel Asín, Teresa Morales, and Pablo Sotés.
In CineEcri no. 1, someone mentioned the (quite obvious) fact that the reality in front of the camera is transferred to the reality of film, and that the filmmaker, in that “leap,” in that transubstantiation from human (actor) to filmic human, or from experienced “meaning” to filmic “meaning,” must choose from the very beginning, adopt a defined stance, and make the actors behave as latent filmic beings.
…make the actors behave as latent filmic beings? At the very least, one can say that actors should be seen in that way, because no one can escape the transformation into cinematic meaning, the leap into the matière cinématographique.
By definition, latent cinematic behaviour, behaviour in front of the camera, is to a certain extent meaningless, and that is precisely the difficulty. The behaviour of the actors is intended for an ultimate association, for a meaningful film structure that is still unknown to them*. It is most usual to ignore every difficulty, to let the actors behave naturally, to scare them, to let them tremble and cry as if they were really scared, and so on; however, the result of that is also insincere, meaningless, cinematically un-real, non-cinematographic.
Here a distinction must be made between “as if” and “insincere,” even though they are correlated in practice.
a) Cinematically insincere. This arises when actors, in a fictitious situation in front of the camera, behave and (above all) express themselves as a natural, complete person. The expressive meaning of a natural gesture is volatilised in film; hence, a latent gesture can result in a meaningful cinematic gesture (see CineEcri no. 1, pp. 7‒8).
b) The “as if,” the transparency of the play. Purely formal: through the “as if” of both the natural play and the latent cinematic behaviour, a theatricality—or rather transparency—in the final film behaviour arises, i.e. it arises through the unreality of the situation in front of the camera.
Of course, cinéma vérité has nothing to do with this “as if.” The situation in front of the camera is real, but it also entails a limitation which has to do with the above-mentioned “insincerity” (a), and in a certain sense Straub's films could be compared to this. Straub didn't force his actors to portray or play a certain character: he created a situation that, in front of the camera, became real, and he allowed the people in front of the camera to discover themselves (with the help of the texts).
(Sentiments are not performed, and, in that respect, we could make a comparison with Bresson).
The text is not elevated to a natural dialogue but flatly recited, uttered, precisely because that is most genuine when one knows a text by heart, and it also hardly differs from the literary-styled language of Böll's book. Rather than dialogues, the text seems to be a series of monologues.
Of course, one should not take the above too categorically: in this case, there is no cinéma vérité, the situation remains paradoxical, but precisely because of that paradox Nicht versöhnt [Not Reconciled, 1965] and Machorka-Muff [1963] are essential**. Aside from their artistic worth, they illustrate the jump into cinematic personhood.
In Straub’s films, the consequence of the situation's turn to genuineness in front of the camera is (and therein lies the difference to cinéma vérité) that it contains no emotional moments or climaxes, that the behaviour and gestures of the film people are rudimentary, flat, sober and simple. It could even be said that in these films we can hardly speak of (expressive) gestures, only simple behaviour. Straub almost exclusively uses “faces” or characters that are not only defined by their text but, above all, by the cinematic context (correlation, a link).
The character Machorka-Muff from the eponymous film is a prototype of the film people in Nicht versöhnt. The portrait of Machorka-Muff is not only drawn up because of his behaviour, but also because of the scenes around him, even the ones in which he is not present. For example, when we see what the waiter is doing for an unexpectedly long time, that is essential because it pertains to Machorka-Muff’s world or, even better, because it forms the reality, the portrait of Machorka-Muff. It is exactly in this indirect manner, namely on the screen, that Machorka-Muff conquers the city, not by how he behaves.
The way in which people have been moving about in front of the camera (however sober it may have been) could be termed latently cinematic, precisely because cinematic behaviour is equivalent to the “surrounding images,” and because of its spatial function within the film image.
It is this equivalence that makes the so-called horizontal structure (or the fugue character) of the film possible. The images are not the result of previous climaxes or culminations, and in this respect, we might liken it to an important aspect of contemporary music.
In some pieces of music, silence doesn’t imply the “stopping” of the music but is the equivalent of sound (and thus not merely a pause after a climax of sounds), and so images appear in Machorka-Muff and Nicht versöhnt: not the more or less conventional setting sequence, nor the close-ups derived, as a new facet, from a wide shot, nor the editing that builds to a current rhythm or a climax, but a rhythm that runs through the entire work.
All of the foregoing falls rather short. Mostly, they are formal comments that have to do with the structure of the film. I have not tried to reach a conclusion about the content of the films, about their artistic value or about their vision of social and vital human problems.
This text is more of a temporary introduction, and that’s why it is “writing about film in general.” Interpretation of the film based on the content and its possible artistic value is, in my opinion, a more subjective opinion and not (yet) relevant.
Those opinions have already been formulated by others with more background (considering their names alone: Godard, Rivette, Stockhausen, Delahaye, Blokker, etcetera).
However, in all these remarks, references to the content of the film might be found (especially for those who have seen the films already), because Straub’s viewpoint shimmers through in it: “Man soll die Wirklichkeit, meiner Ansicht nach, ganz bescheiden respektieren” [In my opinion, one should respect reality with modesty].
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Translation to English in collaboration with Punto de Vista, International Film Festival of Navarra by Jelte Vangenechten, for the book 'Frans van de Staak. The Word as Archipiélago'.
* I am referring to [René] Daalder and [Samuel (Kees)] Meyering’s theories about the creative integration of actors in the act of filming (see Skoop no. 1, Skoop no. 2, pp. 40‒41).
** Referring to the somewhat paradoxical reactions (including those from the press) to Machorka-Muff and Nicht versöhnt. On the one hand, they talk about a new realism or a sort of cinéma vérité. On the other hand, they point out the “unnaturalness” and “artificiality” of the texts.
