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The Bureau of Public Secrets recommends:
RENÉ VIÉNET’S
“Can Dialectics Break Bricks?”
— Pacific Film Archive, Berkeley, 19 March 1992, 7:30
p.m. —
“Imagine a kung fu flick in which the martial artists spout Situationist
aphorisms about conquering alienation while decadent bureaucrats ply the ironies of a
stalled revolution. This is what you’ll encounter in René Viénet’s outrageous
refashioning of a Chinese fisticuff film. An influential Situationist, Viénet stripped
the soundtrack from a run-of-the-mill Hong Kong export and lathered on his own devastating
dialogue. . . . A brilliant, acerbic and riotous critique of the failure of
socialism in which the martial artists counter ideological blows with theoretical thrusts
from Debord, Reich and others. . . . Viénet’s target is also the
mechanism of cinema and how it serves ideology.”
—PFA Program Note
Since Guy Debord has permanently withdrawn all his films from circulation, Can
Dialectics Break Bricks? is virtually the only available example of a situationist
use of cinema. Viénet’s film is a far lesser creation than any of Debord’s, but
still well worth seeing for its consistent use of the situationist technique of détournement
— the diversion of already existing cultural elements to new subversive purposes.
Other filmmakers have used aspects of this technique, but only in confused and
half-conscious ways, or for purely humorous ends à la Woody Allen’s What’s
Up, Tiger Lily?
Viénet’s film is even funnier, but its humor comes not so much from its satire of
an absurd film genre as from its undermining of the spectacle-spectator relation at the
heart of an absurd society. In both its social-critical content and its self-critical
form, it presents a striking contrast to the reformist whining and militant ranting that
constitute most supposedly radical media. By turning the persuasive power of the medium
against itself (characters criticize the plot, their own role in it, and the function of
spectacles in general), it constantly counteracts the viewers’ tendency to identify
with the cinematic action, reminding them that the real adventure — or lack of it
— is in their own lives.
BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS
March 1992
Leaflet circulated at a showing of Vienet's film.
Reprinted from Public Secrets: Collected Skirmishes of Ken Knabb.
No copyright.
To order an English-subtitled videocopy of Can Dialectics Break Bricks? (1973,
90 minutes), see the Situationist Bibliography.
See the new section at this website:
Guy Debord’s
Films.
[Italian translation of this leaflet]
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