詳細介紹：The subti tle of Jean -Marie Straub a nd Danièle Huillet’s first feature, fro m 1965, “Only Viol ence Hel ps Where Vi olence Reigns , ” suggests t he fierce p olitical progr am evoke d by their rigorous aes thetic. The pr etext of the fi lm, set in C ologne, is Heinric h B?ll’s novel “Billiard s at Half Past Nine, ” which they strip down to a handful of stark eve nts and film w ith a confront ational angul arity a kin to Bartó k’s mus ic that adorns the soundtrac k. The s ubtlest of cues accom pany the st ory’s c omplex fl ashbacks. The m iddle-a ged Robert F?hmel t ells a youn g hotel bellh op of perse cutions under the Third Rei ch; his elde rly father, Heinrich, an archite ct famed f or a local a bbey, recal ls the milit arism of th e First W orld War, when his wife, J ohanna, in curred trouble for insulti ng the Kais er. A th ird-generati on F?hmel is consideri ng architectur e, just as the exil ed brother of Robert’ s late wife, r eturns, only to be m et by their former tortu rer, now a West German official t aking part in a celebratory parade of wa r veterans. Straub and Hu illet make the layer s of history live in the pres ent ten se, which t hey judge severely. The tamped-down act ing and the spare, t ense visual rhe toric sugges t a sta te of moral crisis as well as the response —as muc h in style as in substance—t hat it dema nds.詳情