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.
(English overdub) The Society of the Spectacle (Final sound edit) from konrad steiner on Vimeo.
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