After The Situationist International
In 1972, Debord disbanded the Situationist International due to the fact that he had either expelled or lost all of the original members, including Asger Jorn and, in 1972, Raoul Vaneigem, who wrote a biting criticism of Debord and the International. Debord then focused on filmmaking with financial backing from the movie mogul and publisher Gérard Lebovici (éditions Champ Libre) until Lebovici's mysterious death. Debord was suspected of Lebovici's murder. Distraught by these accusations and his friend's death, Debord took his films and writings out of production until after his death, when he agreed to have his films released at the request of the American researcher, Thomas Y Levin. Debord's two most recognized films date from this period: a film version of Society of the Spectacle (1973) and "In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni" (1978). After the dissolution of the Situationist International, Debord spent his time reading, and occasionally writing, in relative isolation in a cottage at Champot with Alice Becker-Ho, his second wife. He continued to correspond on political and other issues, notably with Lebovici and the Italian situationist Gianfranco Sanguinetti He focused on reading material relating to war strategies, e.g. Clausewitz and Sun Tzu, and he designed a war game with Alice Becker-Ho.
Debord was married twice, to Michele Bernstein and Alice Becker-Ho. However, these were open relationships. Debord had noted relationships with other women, including Michèle Mochot, the daughter of a surrealist. Bernstein produced a vaguely fictional account of the intimate details of her and Mochot's open relationships with Debord in her novel, All The King's Horses.
Debord's alcohol consumption became problematic for his health, giving him a form of polyneuritis brought on by his excessive drinking. Apparently, in order to end the suffering induced by this condition, he committed suicide, shooting himself in the heart at his property in Champot, near Bellevue-la-Montagne, Haute-Loire, on November 30, 1994. Just before his death, he filmed (though did not publish) a documentary called "Son art et son temps" (His Art and his Time), an "autobiography" that focused primarily on social issues in Paris in the 1990s. It has been suggested that this dark depiction of Debord's "time" was a suicide note of sorts.
On January 29, 2009, 15 years after his death, Christine Albanel, Minister of Culture, classified the archive of his works as a "national treasure" in response to a sale request by Yale University. The Ministry declared that "he has been one of the most important contemporary thinkers, with a capital place in history of ideas from the second half of the 20th century." Debord similarly once called his book, The Society of the Spectacle, "the most important book of the twentieth century". He continues to be a canonical and controversial figure particularly among European scholars of radical politics and modern art.
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