Can Dialectics...? Poster 20191003

Download this photo Edit with GIMP online editor

Poster for La Dialectique peut-elle casser des briques ? a cult film repurposed / hijacked (détourné) by René Viénet in year 1973 : the first hijacked film in motion-picture history.

Viénet, short of money to produce his own films, opted for a shortcut : he changed the script and dialogue to draft the saga of brave prolétaires fighting against stalinist bureaucrats. The repurposed film is very much a Groucho-Marxist manifesto which thrilled Parisian audience immediately, and then travelled worlwide, on the web, though not always well translated, nor with satisfactory digital files. As year 2020, this is now being corrected.

The victim of the hijacking was \u5510\u624b\u8dc6\u62f3\u9053 The Crush, a GongFu film (rather well) directed by Tu KuangChi and produced by Yangtze Boss Yeo BanYee, a friend of Viénet (together they exported to France, Africa and the West Indies, the first HK films).

The American title Can Dialectis Break Bricks ? was added on the original poster when Keith Samborn, in 2019, refreshed his long ago English subtitles.

The original détournement had been completed - as French subtitles - and soon after translated in English by Donald Nicholson-Smith - in two afternoons by Viénet. But the film fate lasted much longer : Months after, in 1973, a dubbing specialist, Gerard Cohen, retaining Viénet sub-titles' full content, with a team of smart young actors (incl. Patrick Dewaere, Michèle Grelier, etc.) went one step further with a French repurposed soundtrack, which ever since has been the basis of many languages subtitlings -- based on Keith Sanborn SRT, supported by his active kind coaching of the foreign translators.