In 1994, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet adapted the novel Colette Baudoche – Story of a Young Girl of Metz by Maurice Barrès as a film they titled Lothringren!. In 2010, Jean-Marie Straub returned to the eastern provinces of France, this time to Alsace, to film the second half of a diptych based on Barrès’s work. The text is derived from In the Service of Germany, a book about the mountain of Saint-Odile, which Barrès wrote in 1903. With Joseph Rottner in the principal role, Straub traces the path of a young country doctor as he tours Mont Saint-Odile, following the routes that Barrès himself took to the chateau of Ratsamhausen and around the ruins of the ancient fortification known as the "Pagan Wall,” which are unique in the area. Straub, himself born in Metz, plays the role of a resident of Lorraine whom the young Alsatian engages in conversation.
Direction
Straub's static camera as moral stance.
Sound
Silence and footsteps become dialogue.
Production
Real locations as contested history.
Director
Jean-Marie Straub
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Straub and Huillet were cinema's most stubborn couple, famously rejecting conventional editing for 'direct sound' purity.
The diptych structure mirrors Barrès's own divided loyalties—Straub completed this alone after Huillet's death in 2006.
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