Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach

Certainly not 'a biopic', either of the composer or of his wife, who narrates most of it, Huillet and Straub's film "Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" concentrates almost entirely on Bach's music, of which we hear a great deal, and is told in what really amounts to a series of tableaux of said music being performed, interspersed with stills of journal pages, sheet music, drawings etc. It takes around forty minutes for Bach himself to speak and for 'the actors' to appear. It is, in other words, not so much a film as an illustrated album of some of Bach's greatest hits and is either a source of great pleasure to lovers of his work or the most boring film ever made, (you might prefer simply to listen to the recordings). Of course, lacking in 'dramatic' structure it may also be the greatest film 'about' a classical composer ever made since the directors let nothing stand in the way of the music. In some quarters, I have seen it described as a masterpiece.