One + One

This "meeting" of two of the finest artists of the 20th Century - Jean-Luc Godard and The Rolling Stones - is truly a missed opportunity. The footage of the band recording their landmark song (probably my favorite Stones track) is certainly fascinating, as we watch the initially slow musical accompaniment for the song taking shape and metamorphose into the energetic, percussion-heavy final version we're familiar with. Sadly, it's also quite apparent here that Brian Jones (who sits in his booth playing his acoustic guitar, rarely communicating with his bandmates except to ask for a cigarette and eventually disappearing altogether in the second half of the film) was slipping away fast.

Unfortunately for us viewers, Godard (in full-blown "political activist" mode) unwisely intersperses the recording sessions with lots of boring stuff featuring militant black people spouting "Black Power" philosophy in a junkyard, white political activists reading their "sacred" texts in a book shop while members of the general public are made to slap two of their comrades and give the Nazi salute and, most embarrassingly of all perhaps, Godard's current wife, Anne Wiazemsky (playing Eve Democracy!) is seen being followed by a camera crew in a field and asked the most obtuse "topical" questions imaginable to which she merely answers in the affirmative or the negative!

As if this wasn't enough, the film has undoubtedly the murkiest soundtrack I've ever had the misfortune to hear (so that I often had to rely on the forced Italian subtitles present on the VHS copy I was watching) and I'd bet that even Robert Altman would have objected to Godard's occasional overlapping on the soundtrack of the Stones recording, the Black Power spoutings, an anonymous narrator reading a (mercifully) hilarious pulp novel, etc. For some inexplicable reason then, the film ends on a beach where an unidentified film crew is filming a battle sequence!!

Godard's original intention was to not include the song "Sympathy For The Devil" in its entirety and when producer Iain Quarrier overruled him, he jumped up on London's National Film Theater stage following a screening of the film and knocked him out! Godard's version, entitled ONE PLUS ONE, is also available on a double-feature R2 DVD including both cuts of the film but it's highly unlikely that I'll be bothering with it any time soon...

Sure, there are lots of reviews that concentrate on the sections that revolve around the African - Euopeans and Americans that interrupt the recroding session or the Rolling Stones' Sympathy for the Devil. But, this is just a small part of an amazing and beautiful record of a process that created a song that will last for generations.

Watching the rhythm section work out the song, Mick working out the lyrics, Keith conducting the whole thing, Brian Jones playing remarkable keyboards, reminds us of the process of production. It took time. It took failures and it became an amazing song.

Besides that, the film is so beautifully shot is looks like it came out of an 21st century design magazine.

And please don't ignore the digressions. It is (in my humble opinion) about the appropreation of black culture by whites and white culture by blacks. An interesting diversion when you think about 1968 and Europe and the Americas. We all switch and use and sometimes it makes beautiful music.

This is an important film that should be seen by anyone going into a studio to record a song that will be remebered forever.

• I Am Media Boy.

In Bergsonian terms, "Sympathy" or "1+1" seems to represent the cinematographical spirit of Becoming; while deconstructing the perfect rock song (though Blood on the Tracks-era Dylan fans may want to disagree), "Sympathy for the Devil" never actually plays at any time in its totality. Mick and friends conceive of the song while sitting in a semi-circle, and perfect it months later via the same seating arrangement amidst acres of sound equipment. Meanwhile, Godard's full synthesis of his cinema of ideological engagement(s) (cinemarx) is projected while we're still wondering why the girls dressed in white are being executed, the bookstore owner makes customers give him him a Third Reich salute or why there aren't any drummers as cool as Charlie Watts anymore.

Jean Luc Goddard's 'Sympathy For The Devil',or as it's known better in Europe as 'One Plus One' is an enigma (of sorts). The film's European title seems to better sum it all up. When Goddard went to England in 1968, he originally wanted to direct a film with a pro abortion angle, at a time when abortion was illegal. As it turns out, before production could begin,abortion became legal in the U.K. Goddard, none the less, decided to hang out & make a film anyway. He ended up as a guest of the Rolling Stones,where he filmed several days of the Stones in the recording studio,working on the sessions for the song 'Sympathy For The Devil', this footage was augmented with Godard's take on revolutionary politics of the era. The results are a mixed bag that some folk will get, others not so. I attended a midnight screening of this film some years ago with a crowd that expected a Rolling Stones concert film, and didn't get it, got downright ugly (a pity,but predictable for those who lack any knowledge of Godard's fragmentary style of narrative). No rating,but contains rough language,brief nudity & verbal descriptions of some graphic sexual situations.

Sympathy for the Devil (1968)

BOMB (out of 4)

Jean-Luc Godard's "documentary" shows The Rolling Stones recording the title track while mixing in footage of the Black Panthers preaching hatred. This is without question one of the worst documentaries I've ever seen and it's the worth Godard film I've seen to date but it's rather amazing how incredibly stupid this legendary director can be at times. The title is going to attract mainly fans of The Rolling Stones but their footage isn't here for fans and I'm still trying to think of why Godard put the footage here. Apparently he's director's cut run eleven minutes longer and features more of the Black Panthers and it's clear that he wanted the spotlight on hate instead of the band so why include the band at all? There's one scene where a couple Black Panthers tell a story of how they want to kill white women and Godard follows this up with a short film of black men gunning down white women. There's non-stop hatred talk coming from this group so I'm really shocked there's not more controversy surrounding this film. There are various short films throughout the movie and there's all sorts of stuff acted out, which makes no sense when put together and you also get constant scenes of men spray painting cars. The Stones footage shows them recording the classic song from the early stages to its complete version but with all the other crap in this film I can't even recommend this to fans of the group.