"Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach" or "The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" is a German 90-minute movie from 1968, so this one will have its 50th anniversary soon. For that time (the days of Winnetou),it was not really too common anymore that films are in black-and-white, but this one still is. If you have an interest in classic music, you will maybe realize the name in the title is the wife of famous composer Johann Sebastian Bach and here she basically tells us the story of her husband, about him as a private character, but also about him as a professional musician. I myself would not call myself a great classical music fan, but here and there I like listening to a piece. Sadly, in terms of a biopic, it did very little for me I must admit. After watching this, I do not a care a single bit more about Bach or his life than I did before watching the film. However, I am not too surprised about this. The two filmmakers here are a very special brand of movie-making and I personally find it difficult to make a connection with them as I have already found out while watching some of their older works. So I only recommend this film to people who have seen and adored some of Huillét's/Straub's other works and maybe they can understand why their film here got some awards recognition. Or you just need to be a fan of Johann Sebastian Bach. I give it a thumbs-down overall.

"Each and every music piece is observed with mostly, a static, single take that framed with a particularly deliberated angle that often overlooks its subject, illustrious musicians - conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt, harpsichordist Gustav Leonhardt and Austrian music ensemble Concentus Musicus Wien, among others, offering full rendering of Bach's baroque éclat, whether it is from a single harpsichord, or an ensemble with chorus. For any classical music connoisseur and Bach votary, the film is an ascetic paean paying deferential homage to one of the most accomplished musicians of all time, and for those less familiar with Bach's works, it constitutes an edifyingly melodious piece to wide our horizons and nourish our sensoria, however unrelieved its modus operandi is."

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.