A. Bench title[2]
To inspect and declare satisfactory, by Raspaud:[3]
a) the three plans (quite complex movements) that I have not seen;
b) the dozen plans that I have had to re-draw.
B. Detourned films
--Buy a sequence of Pandora. (See description in annex.)a) Sink the Bismark (which I haven't seen, unexplicably);--New attempt to get The Light Brigade: all of the charge; instead of just the beginning (2'45")!
b) The Red Desert (the development of which would be problematic, at the C.T.M., because of the varnish);
c) Les Enfants du Paradise (no difficulty, in principle; but yesterday the printing wasn't finished at G.T.C.).
C. Editing
With an editor, and an auditorium, reserved for the beginning of December [1977]. Duration: around 10 weeks. (I still prefer G.T.C. to the filthy place on l'avenue du Maine.)
Annex
Pandora. Sequence to obtain.
At the beginning of the film, the Americans in a sea-side village in Spain. An evening unites them. Ava Gardner is at the piano. A young man approaches her, a glass in hand. He again asks her to marry him. She refuses. He drinks from the glass and declares to the assistant that, at the moment of dying, one thing consoles him: never having to see their faces again. He falls dead.
We would like the reception sequence, including the suicide.
[1] At this point, the film was not yet titled In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni.
[2] A device that enables the filming of fixed images that typically function as chapter-heads.
[3] Jean-Jacques Raspaud, an assistant director with Debord since The Society of the Spectacle (1973).
(Written 23 April 1977 by Guy Debord. Published in Autour des Films (Documents), the booklet accompanying Oeuvres Cinematographiques Completes, a three-DVD set released November 2005. Translated from the French and footnoted by NOT BORED! January 2006.)