Introduction to Arnold Schoenberg s Accompaniment to a Cinematic Scene, Jean Marie Straub, 1973

In 1923, sensing the gathering storm of fear, danger, and catastrophe in Germany, the composer Arnold Schoenberg wrote a devastatingly prescient and heartbreaking letter to his former friend, the painter Wassily Kandinsky. Schoenberg aligned his fate with that of all Jews, knowing they were soon to face exile or violent death. StraubHuillets film, a recitation both of Schoenbergs letter and Bertolt Brechts 1935 speech to the International Congress in Defense of Culture, is a fierce condemnation of antiSemitism, German crimes against humanity, and the barbaric war machine of capitalism.