Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice

Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice

11 mins | Drama, Comedy | Jan. 1, 1977

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.

Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice

11 mins | Drama, Comedy | Jan. 1, 1977

Every Revolution Is a Throw of the Dice
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.
IMDb rating 6.2
Producers
Original title Toute révolution est un coup de dés
Directors Danièle Huillet, Jean-Marie Straub
Writers Stéphane Mallarmé

Cast

Helmut Färber

as (Re)citer

Michel Delahaye

as (Re)citer

Georges Goldfayn

as (Re)citer

Danièle Huillet

as (Re)citer

Manfred Blank

as (Re)citer

Marilù Parolini

as (Re)citer

Aksar Khaled

as (Re)citer

Andrea Spingler

as (Re)citer

Dominique Villain

as (Re)citer