The Society of the Spectacle

Director: Guy Debord

1974 / 91min / DCP

Debord’s screen adaptation of his aphoristic 1967 book of the same name consists of intertitles taken from the text and voiceover snippets (courtesy the author himself) lifted from sources ranging from Marx to Machiavelli, these overlaid onto a dense found-footage montage détournement, bringing together moments from the masterpieces of Eisenstein, Welles, and Nicholas Ray alongside clips of world leaders, social unrest in the streets, and television commercials in which models with plasticine smiles pitch plastic junk to the captive consumer. Cinema as scourge and howling lament, decrying the total triumph of spectacle over immediate experience.