×
Release Date: 13 Wed, Jan 1971
Straub-Huillet’s first color film, adapts a lesser-known Corneille tragedy from 1664, which in turn was based on an episode of imperial court intrigue chronicled in Tacitus’s Histories. The costuming is classical, and the toga-clad, nonprofessional cast performs the drama’s original French text amid the ruins of Rome’s Palatine Hill while the noise of contemporary urban life hums in the background. Their lines are executed with a terrific flatness and frequently through heavy accents; the language in Othon becomes not merely an expression but a thing itself, an element whose plainness here alerts us to qualities of the work that might otherwise be subordinated.
as Othon
as Plautine
as Galba
as Camille
as Vinius
as Lucus
as Martianus
as Flavie
as Atticus
as Rutile
1991
2008
2001
2026
2013
2009
2025
2026
2021
1962
2019
2025
2012
2014
2014
2023
2016
2022
