Straub-Huillet : Sicilia

Exerpt from an interview with Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub from the Jean-Charles Fitoussi's documentary : Sicilia! Si gira (2001/Fitoussi)

• Interviewer : After Kafka; Amerika; Sicila; The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach; are you conscious to make a more difficult movie [Operai, contadini]?
• Jean-Marie Straub: "More difficult" it's not pure hardline, it's something else. The one we are about to film [Il Ritorno del figlio prodigo - Umiliati ?] will be extremely easy and will please the audience.
• Danièle Huillet : it's obviously easier because it's scripted
• Interviewer : So why is this one easier than the others?
• JMS : I tried to say it, a film with a rhythm going 4 times slower ...
• DH : ... and that deals with boring people with a boring speech is a little difficult to pay attention to...
• JMS: even if it is color and in a forest ... hum...
• DH: ... sublime
• JMS: sublime, is not enough. Moreover a film without dialogue, whereas the previous one had lots of dialogue, like the Kafka, like in Not Reconciled...
• DH: ...and where there is not one but many protagonists...
• JMS: Yes, one of the main reason Sicilia worked, is that the bourgeoisie likes to have a protagonist with an initatic journey, and preferably to find back his/her mother, etc. That's why Bach worked. One can't change the vices of the bourgeoisie...
• Int: So Bourgeoise needs a hero?
• JMS: A hero, I don't know, but they need to hook up on something...
• DH: they abhor liberty, for themselves and for others...
• JMS: if bourgeoisie needs a hero, it needs Berlusconi!