One + One

ABKCO, not exactly a cultural or artistic enterprise obtained the rights to Godard's original film & cut titled 'One Pus One' , as well a large part of the Stones song catalog in a management dispute & subsequent separation between the two.

The 'Sympathy' release is significantly different than the original 'One Plus One', with much of the Stones studio material edited out for reasons unknown.

Huge clips of the development of the song have simply vanished, while the political scenes, rhetoric and narration remain intact.

What a shame, as I doubt very much we will ever see the 'One Plus One' Godard cut anywhere, ever.

Godard made this film during his ultra-loopy "Marxist polemics" period, although before he stopped being so individualistic as to credit himself, rather than a "collective," as the director. It is a rare English-language Godard film, made in the UK. SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL alternates documentary scenes of the Rolling Stones developing and rehearsing the title track (a chilling examination of the seductiveness of evil behavior, and one of the Stones's best songs) with what are basically political skits, plus quick bits showing characters spray-painting political slogans on various surfaces, always cutting away before the character finishes the message.

The Stones scenes in themselves make the film worth seeing (for fans of the song, at least). The process of creating and refining an instantly classic song makes for truly fascinating viewing for those interested in making music and seeing how a song evolves. The viewer initially sees Mick Jagger demonstrating the song on acoustic guitar for the other band members. Gradually (in between political interruptions!), the band fleshes out the song's arrangement, adding keyboards, electric guitar, and multiple layers of percussion, developing this work into the rumbling tempest Stones fans know and love. At one point famous Stones hangers-on Anita Pallenberg and Marianne Faithfull appear to help with the "whoo-whoo" backing vocals. Near the end, Godard himself materializes to pass out cigarettes to the band members, an oddly post-coital gesture.

The film's other scenes? Amusingly absurd at times, the skits usually involve the characters reading various texts for the viewer. Black militants read from Eldridge Cleaver and the like, while the owner of a porno shop reads from what sounds like Nazi texts, while customers present their selections to him, give a Nazi salute, take their purchase and leave. (The equation of pornography with National Socialism here must have warmed Andrea Dworkin's heart.) The black militant scenes feel rather disturbing, as the viewer sees white women in white gowns led at gunpoint into a junkyard, underscored by Cleaver's thoughts on white women. Later the viewer sees the bloodied corpses of a couple of the women, and the film ends with a dead white woman draped over a crane adorned with red and black flags. Godard seems to be endorsing the vengeful Leftist by-any-means-necessary morality, the kind of thing the Stones's song warns against.

The completed version of "Sympathy of the Devil" plays under the film's ending; allegedly Godard was incensed by the producers' inserting the finished song here. Godard probably wanted the rehearsal scenes to symbolize the development of "the revolution" ("you'll get yours, bourgeoisie!"), and, since "the revolution" hadn't come yet, using the _complete_ song would ruin the parallel. That must also be why the vandals never get to complete their spray-painted slogans. I would be quite interested to see ONE PLUS ONE, Godard's director's cut of this film.

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.

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...

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.