Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet's Moses and Aaron is “a faithful version of Schoenberg's opera, and an original film in its own right. In it, (they) succeed in rendering visible not only the philosophical content of the work--the struggle between word (Moses) and image (Aaron)--but also its dramatic potential” (Richard Roud). On the film's premiere at the 1975 New York Film Festival, Soho Weekly News critic Roger Greenspun wrote: “In the opera, composed but never completed in 1930-32, Moses, uneloquent prophet of an invisible, unimaginable God, stands opposed before the Jewish people by his brother Aaron, who...gives shape and voice to the incomprehensibleness Moses proposes. Moses wins, banishing Aaron and thus rendering himself wordless--his role is mainly spoken or chanted rather than sung....”