When i was coming out of the press screening of "Don't Look Back", ran into Ronnie Scheib, who was coming out of the final press screening of Pere Portabello's "The Silence Before Bach". And we talked about "The Silence Before Bach" (which we both liked). I mentioned how surprised i was by the film, because my idea of a film "about" Bach has been so colored by the Straubs' "The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach" (which i adore, it remains one of my favorite music films of all time) that i anticipated an austere film. But Portabello is not a rigidly intellectual director: he's someone prone to sudden surreal inspirations, and "The Silence Before Bach" is a series of vignettes which often use Bach's music as a pretext. It's a collage, and there are a few inexplicable moments, which seem to suggest a subconscious intent.

So i went in expecting something like "The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach", and i came out with something more like Francois Girard's "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould".

(Just as an aside: it seems as if people have really rigidly preconceived ideas about what is proper in relation to biography, etc. I bring this up because so many people who didn't like "I'm Not There" always refer to the fact that it doesn't seem to be "about" Bob Dylan, but then it seems that the "Bob Dylan" that these detractors want is some very specific figment of their own imagination. I can sympathize with that sentiment, i remember feeling a little that way about "32 Short Films About Glenn Gould", but i also remember feeling quite delighted with the smoothness with which the disparate vignettes - straight documentary, dramatized moments, flights of fancy - were put together by Girard. And i feel the same delight with "The Silence Before Bach".)