Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times

Director: Jean-Marie Straub, Danièle Huillet

1970 / 88min / DCP

Straub and Huillet’s first film shot in Italy, amidst the ruins of Rome’s Palatine Hill with a toga-clad cast, and their first in color, adapts Pierre Corneille’s Othon, a lesser-known 1664 drama describing the machinations and scheming that followed the death of Emperor Nero, as pretenders to the throne angle to fill the sudden power vacuum. Of the plain, affectless performance of the text, Straub would write: “If at every moment one can keep one’s eyes and ears open to all of this, it’s possible to even find the film thrilling and note that everything here is information—even the purely sensual reality of the space which the actors leave empty at the end of each act.”

The subtitles on this film was overseen and approved by Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub. The subtitles follow two unorthodox principles: they are as literal as possible and certain sections are left un-translated. This represents a break within the film with the notion that the meaning of a text is in the words and their interpretation alone. Furthermore, the passages without subtitles allow audiences a chance to hear and see the film without reading.