Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice

6.1 / 10

(9 votes)

A tribute to Mallarmé that not only asserts the continuing relevance of his work but also confronts its literary ambiguities with political and cinematic ambiguities of its own. In outline, the film could not be more straightforward: it offers a recitation of one of Mallarmé’s most celebrated and complex poems (it was his last published work in his own lifetime, appearing in 1897, a year before his death) and proposes a cinematic equivalent for the author’s original experiment with typography and layout by assigning the words to nine different speakers, separating each speaker from the other as she or he speaks, and using slight pauses to correspond with white spaces on the original page.

Country:

France

Genre:

Drama,

Comedy

Duration:

11 minutes

Year:

1977

Director:

Danièle Huillet

Cast:
Helmut Färber

(Re)citer

Michel Delahaye

(Re)citer

Georges Goldfayn

(Re)citer

Danièle Huillet

(Re)citer

Manfred Blank

(Re)citer

Crew:
Danièle Huillet

Director

Jean-Marie Straub

Director

William Lubtchansky

Director of Photography

Stéphane Mallarmé

Author

Alain Donavy

Sound Recordist