Critique of Separation
Critique de la séparation
FRANCE / 1961 / French and others / B&W / 35mm (1:1.37) / 19 min
Director, Script: Guy Debord
Photography: André Mrugalski
Editing: Chantal Delattre
Continuity: Claude Brabant
Production Company: Dansk-Fransk Experimentalfilmskompagni
Music: François Couperin, Bodin de Boismortier
Voices: Caroline Rittener, Guy Debord
Appearance: Caroline Rittener
International Distribution: Love Streams Production agnès b.
Source: Carlotta Films
This film consists almost entirely of quotations from comic strips, newspaper or magazine clippings, ID photos, and newsreel footage, as well as Debord’s voice-over. Yet there is no expository or complementary relationship among the images, narration, and text frames. Instead, what he intends in this film is to differentiate rather than equate language, film, and reality, and by examining each on its own terms, to criticize our passive reception of film imagery in daily life. For the situationists, Critique of Separation is therefore an anti-film, as opposed to feature films supported by narrative or commercial films simply meant for consumption. As Debord has written, “The function of the cinema, whether dramatic or documentary, is to present a false and isolated coherence as a substitute for a communication and activity that are absent. I found myself in a dark forest . . . where the right way was lost. To demystify documentary cinema it is necessary to dissolve its ‘subject matter.’”