Class Relations (1984) by Jean-Marie Straub & Daniele Huillet
Thursday, October 22, 1987, 8:00 pm
Class Relations (Kafka’s Amerika)
By Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet
“The title of Huillet and Straub’s 1984 adaptation of Kafka’s last novel points to their sympathy with recent re-readings of Kafka which concentrate more on his acute social observation rather than the familiar anguish. The resulting film is a combination of the formal, austere qualities of their best work and the minimalist beauty that often results from such a discipline. Class Relations is almost like seeing the novel unfold before one’s eyes, with Huillet and Straub encouraging the use of one’s imagination as well as making use of Kafka’s and their own. Once again, as Richard Roud has said, they have applied an almost cinema-verite approach towards a writer’s raw material. Yet, like Bresson, while apparently negating the cinema by subordinating it to literature, they renew and enrich it.” (Derek Malcolm)