The Society of the Spectacle

A Latin palindrome is the title of Guy Debord's last film, in which he, as narrator, explains that he will make neither concessions to the tastes of his viewers nor to the dominant ideas of his day. After extensively insulting the audience that goes to the cinema to forget its heteronomous life, the film becomes autobiographical, using images from the world of spectacle: advertising brochures, clips from feature films (Les enfants du paradis), comics, aerial footage of Paris, tracking shots through Venice, photographs of friends – all commented on by Debord, with an at times melancholy undertone: "This Paris no longer exists." His assessment is that one of the great pleasures of his life has been the sensation of the passage of time, and as a witness to the disintegration of social order, he has loved his epoch.

Debord’s eighteen-minute Critique of Separation directs its experimental attentions to “the documentary.” Debord draws from a catalogue of newsreel footage and book covers, rephotographed photographs, views of Paris and its neighborhoods, and a catalogue of disabused, seemingly offhand footage of him and his friends in the porous zone comprising the cafe and the street.

Refutation of All the Judgements, Pro or Con, Thus Far Rendered on the Film "The Society of the Spectacle"

This short film can be considered as notes on the origins of the situationist movement; notes which thus naturally include a reflection on their own language.

Debord directed his first film, "Hurlements en faveur de Sade" in 1952 with the voices of Michele Bernstein and Gil Holman. The film has no actual images; instead, it shows bright white when there is speaking and black when there is not. Long silences separate speaking parts. The film ends with 24 minutes of black silence.