Themroc (1973)

User Rating:

7.5/10   

Director:

Claude Faraldo

Writer:

Claude Faraldo (writer)

Release Date:

October 1980 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy

Tagline:

The urban caveman.

Plot Keywords:

Time Clock | Social Commentary | Coughing | Aggression | Stairs

Awards:

2 wins

Cast

Michel Piccoli	...	Anonymous worker
Béatrice Romand	...	La soeur de Themroc
Marilù Tolo	...	La secrétaire
Francesca Romana Coluzzi	...	La voisine
Jeanne Herviale	...	La mère de Themroc
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Jean Aron
Paul Barrault
Romain Bouteille	...	Un ouvrier / Le patron hargneux / Le voisin / Le flic
Stéphane Bouy
Coluche	...	Le jeune voisin / Un ouvrier / Un flic
Madeleine Damien
Patrick Dewaere	...	Le maçon
François Dyrek	...	Un policier
Michel Fortin	...	Un ouvrier / Un CRS
Gégé
Henri Guybet	...	Un ouvrier
Jean-Michel Haas
François Joxe
Marie Kéruzoré
Philippe Manesse
Miou-Miou	...	La jeune voisine
Catherine Mitry
Popeck	...	Le tailleur de crayons (as Jean Herbert)
Roger Riffard
Sotha

Runtime:

Germany:110 min | USA:100 min

Country:

France

Language:

None

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.66 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

France:-16 | UK:15 | West Germany:16

Company:

Filmanthrope

Movie Connections:

Referenced in La dialectique peut-elle casser des briques? (1973)

Captures the absurdity of everyday life in a repressive social order, and portrays the infectious poetic revolt ...

This film is hilarious. It is inspiring. It captures the absurdity of everyday life in a repressive social order, and portrays the infectious poetic revolt of one man who "goes mad" against authority in every form.

It's interesting that the strategy of liberation in the film revolves around a very personal and playful attack on the architecture most immediate to our lives. This destruction and transformation of space is accompanied by a kind of sexual revolution, disrupting bourgeois family dynamics in a contagious way. Readers may recognize the resonance of these themes with the theory and agitation of the Situationist International, the revolutionary / avant-garde organization credited with sparking the revolt of May 1968 in France. Five years previous to Themroc's release, millions of people actually did occupy public spaces including universities and factories, creating "passionally superior ambiances" in many cases, armed to a significant extent with Situationist ideas, graffiti slogans from which plastered Paris.

Not that seeing Themroc is any substitute for actively engaging the rigorous revolutionary theory of the S.I. (see www.bopsecrets.org). But the film is in a way a dream-like rendition of the Situationist vision of changing life. And in fact, there is a passing reference to Themroc in "Can Dialectics Break Bricks?", a film by Situationist René Vienet: when the hero of that film is confronting the "bureaucrats", some onlookers comment something to the effect that "wow, that guy must have seen Themroc."