Guy
Debord (1931-1994) was the most influential figure in
the
Situationist
International, the notorious subversive group that
played
a
key role in provoking the May 1968 revolt in France. "The Society
of
the
Spectacle" (1973, 90 minutes) is Debord's film adaptation of
his
own
1967 book of the same name. As passages from the book are
read
in voiceover the text is illuminated, via direct illustration or
various
types of ironic contrast, by clips from Russian and Hollywood
features
("Potemkin," "Ten Days That Shook the World," "For Whom the Bell
Tolls,"
"Shanghai Gesture," "Johnny Guitar," "Mr. Arkadin," etc.), TV
commercials,
softcore porn, and news and documentary footage, including
glimpses of
Spain 1936, Hungary '56, Watts '65, France '68, and other revolts
of the
past.
Inter-title
quotes from Marx, Machiavelli, Clausewitz,
Tocqueville,
and
Debord himself
occasionally break the flow, challenging the
viewers
to
question their
own relation to the film -- and to the society as a
whole.
San
Francisco filmmaker Konrad Steiner has produced a dubbed
version
of
this film using Ken Knabb’s English translation as read by
artist/scholar
Dore
Bowen. Konrad
also located and reinserted the original
English-language
clips
from
the many quoted
films (which in Debord's film were mostly dubbed
in
French). This
enables English-speaking viewers to pay full attention
to
the
images instead of
trying to follow subtitles, and thus better perceive
the
complex interplay
between montage, image, and language through which
Debord presents his
theses.
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inACTUALIDAD cotidiana (polítika, arte y poesía)