Eyes Do Not Want to Close at All Times, or Perhaps One Day Rome Will Permit Herself to Choose in Her Turn

Straub-Huillet’s first film after leaving Germany for Rome announced a new approach to staging classical texts, both for the duo and for cinema. Adapting a seventeenth-century play by Pierre Corneille, itself based on imperial Roman power struggles, Straub and Huillet dutifully place their actors in the appropriate togas and forum setting, but then quickly destroy all tropes of the historical movie. Rome’s very contemporary (and ear-splitting) traffic jams are clearly seen and heard, while the Italian cast trips over Corneille’s classic French verse. Historical eras, languages, and adaptations crash together; what remains is the text, and Rome, eternal