One + One (1968) User Reviews (40)

SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL (Jean-Luc Godard, 1968) **

[Bunuel1976 · 5/10 · 24 August 2006]

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...

To save you time...

[rooprect · 6/10 · 13 December 2013]

To save you time, I'll make some broad generalizations up front. Further down I'll get more into the guts of this film, but if you're just trying to decide if this movie is worth 2hrs of your life, here's what you need to know:

If you're a hardcore Stones fan, then this film will possibly irritate you, maybe even to the point of rioting as Stones fans reportedly did at the premiere of this film in '68. This is not a documentary about the Stones nor is it a documentary at all. It's a film that Godard had been intending to make about counter-culture revolution, and it just happened to coincide with Godard filming the Stones recording "Sympathy for the Devil", so he mashed them together and this is the result.

If you're a Godard fan, you might appreciate what he tried to accomplish here, but all the same, I've never met a Godard fan who considers this among his better efforts.

With a visionary filmmaker like Godard and a very poetic & provocative song like "Sympathy for the Devil", you'd think the marriage of the two would spawn a work of art the likes of which hadn't been seen since Pink Floyd's "The Wall". (Yeah I know The Wall came out in 1982 but bear with me, I'm onna roll).

Instead I feel like the two themes didn't exactly gel. Godard took a markedly different approach which, on its own, could have been a worthy film. Rather than follow the Stones' lead with an intriguing historical narrative that leads us from Biblical times to the assassination of JFK, Godard just throws a bunch of unrelated vignettes full of superfluous political blather (intended to be tiresome) interspersed with Stones recording the song, and we are to accept that they are somehow related?

While both the song & the film make heavy use of irony & sarcasm, and while both the song & the film are about the decline of human society due to human nature ("the devil"), the Stones & Godard are on different ends of the spectrum. What makes the Stones song so memorable is its suave, seductive flair told in 1st person narrative. In the very first line, Mick introduces the devil (the speaker) as "a man of wealth and taste". Essentially, this presents a very revolutionary concept of the devil: not an, ugly, smelly, cartoonish creature with a pitchfork but a charming, hypnotizing, classy character.

It would have been great if the film had followed along this absolutely central theme, but instead it took a very base, unattractive approach that was not enticing at all. There are no classy gents playing the devil here, instead we get the Black Panthers in a squalid junkyard spouting NOT hypnotic words but pulpy rhetoric which we immediately dismiss as pointless ravings as they casually commit base murder before our eyes.

In another example, Godard sets up a comical slapstick scene in a comic book store that also sells porn & Nazi propaganda, where the customers are allowed to take what they want in exchange for a "heil Hitler" and a slap across the face of two kidnapped hippies. I thought that was a hilarious scene, but really it was jarringly incongruous with the Stones song.

Between the half dozen vignettes like the Black Panther scene & the comic book scene & scenes of someone spray painting graffiti slogans across London, we get abruptly shifted back to the studio sessions where the Stones are working out the details of their song. In contrast with the vignettes, the studio scenes are very somber, very respectful and very endearing to watch. I found myself wishing that someone actually *would* make a documentary about the "Sympathy" sessions because so much could have been expounded on. We see the slow evolution of the initial song (a gospel type ballad) to what it ultimately became, an ironically uptempo samba that draws its power from a seductive Afro-Brazilian candomblé beat. Again I'm harping on the seductiveness of the song, both lyrically and instrumentally, because it's a real shame that Godard either didn't pick up on that, or chose to go in the opposite direction with a (deliberately) unappealing visual show.

Like I said, Godard's film would have been worthy on its own. The Stones song is, of course, a great piece of literature in its own right. But sticking them both together like this just didn't stick. I'm glad I saw this film, and I'll probably watch it again. But I wouldn't recommend it to anyone unless they're ready for a very strange and jarring experience.

For a great marriage of movie & music, I would recommend the aforementioned "Pink Floyd The Wall" as well as "Tommy", a sarcastic, carnival-esque satire much like Godard's approach here but with the perfect music in the same vein, and maybe the Monkees movie "Head" which is a nearly-incomprehensible acid trip but with similarly nearly-incomprehensible lyrics that gel perfectly.

For true fans only

[chrissiburn · 7/10 · 6 March 2000]

This film is for true Rolling Stones or Godard fans only. If you are neither of the above you will probably have trouble sitting through the whole movie. Godard's political ramble becomes tedious at times, but watching the development of the Stones' song is priceless. Seeing the song come together as a blistering whirlwind is reward enough for repressing the urge to fast-forward through the rest of the film.

Cynical, satirical collage of rock documentary and political commentary

[R. J. · 23 January 2003]

One of Nouvelle Vague iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard's most engaging oddities, part music documentary of the Rolling Stones rehearsing and recording "Sympathy for the Devil", part a collage of sketches on modern-day revolution and the struggle of the minorities for freedom, punctuated by a number of double-entendre title cards. Generally ranged alongside Godard's political work of the late sixties, it's in fact a cynical and very twisted meditation on the politics of minorities, since the director equates women's lib, communism, fascism and the Black Panthers' radicalism at the same level, all while the Stones find a way to tell the Devil's take on the history of civilization. Mostly, it's questioning what real impact can theoretical concepts of revolution have in a world where language obscures as much as it shares, as is acutely pointed out in the Black Panther's interview where, once asked how are they going to communicate their aspirations to the white man, the black revolutionary replies he has no idea since black men and white men don't really speak the same language. Is music, then, the universal language that everyone speaks? Godard says nothing. He prefers to film, in very long and beautifully executed tracking one-takes, either the Stones rehearsing in a candid manner, or the various revolutionaries spouting their ideals out loud, while a cynical voiceover reads excerpts of pulp novels with the names replaced by those of post-war politicians. It is, in fact, "one plus one": one half rock documentary of interest to Stones fans, one half political satire and commentary. The beauty lies in mixing them together, but I'll admit that only a hardcore Godard fan can enjoy and make sense of the combination.

Welcome to 1968

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 29 April 2016]

Godard's documentation of late 1960s Western counter-culture, examining the Black Panthers, referring to works by LeRoi Jones and Eldridge Cleaver. Other notable subjects are the role of news media, the mediated image, a growing technocratic society, women's liberation, the May revolt in France and the power of language.

I can't say I'm a huge Godard fan, but this film has to be one of his best pieces. 1968 is arguably the most revolutionary year of the most revolutionary decade of the 1900s. And he captured it, through the changes in the Stones, the Black Panthers, and more. Although not quite a documentary, it isn't quite fiction, either... it's a nice blend of art and a time capsule for when change -- good or bad -- was in the air.

Interesting film

[freudianlove10 · 7/10 · 19 November 2004]

Godard's "Sympathy..." was, as I saw it, true, unaltered vision. Raw, if you will. This film reminded me of a Paul Morrissey film very much, improvisational, unique, rule breaking, smart, interpretive. I am a fan of most of Godard's work, my favorite probably being the light-hearted "Une femme est une femme," and "La petite soldat," which "sympathy" doesn't follow, in terms of conventions. Mick Jagger is stunning, and the scene that stands out most in my memory is, I'm sure like most other viewers, is the fascist bookshop, with the man in the purple suit spouting off his speech, demanding a salute. Worth seeing if you don't like your film spoon fed to you.

Aka "Buy their records"

[fostrhod · 6/10 · 16 November 2018]

The music scenes are stunning and I don't think you can get better . The Stones in the studio creating their masterpiece "Sympathy for the Devil" otherwise all the political stuff boring as hell and so dated .

Pretentious nonsense

[grantss · 1/10 · 1 November 2021]

What a load of pretentious nonsense. I watched this to see the Stones creating a rock classic, Sympathy for the Devil, and got heaps of ravings and musings about politics, power, black liberation, all done in a very smug pretentious sort of way.

The making of Sympathy for the Devil was interesting, but even that was ruined by having some idiot read (fairly low quality) books over the scenes. You do get a sense of the development of the song, but there is no indication of the creative genius that drove the development. Even worse, there is no footage of the ultimate development of the song, the final take that is committed to vinyl.

If, like me, you are a Stones fan, you will be ready to smash in your TV within a few minutes of the movie starting. The thing to note is that the incredibly crappy direction the movie took was through no doing of the Stones, but through having Jean-Luc Goddard as the director (though with any French director the result would have been the same).

I strongly recommend that you avoid this, or at least have your finger paused above the Fast Foward button at all times. Other than the pieces involving the Stones, there is absolutely nothing worth watching here.

Don't Expect A Rock & Roll Concert Film

[Seamus2829 · 8/10 · 7 December 2008]

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.

Unwatchable, except for the Stones

[pninson · 3/10 · 8 June 2007]

Jean Luc Godard's Marxist polemic is as close to unwatchable a film as you're likely to see from an internationally respected filmmaker. Bits of political theater, mind-numbingly boring and interminable, are interspersed with the making of "Sympathy for the Devil", featuring the Rolling Stones in the studio.

The process of the song's development, from Mick Jagger playing a demo on acoustic guitar, to the backing vocals being recorded towards the end, is fascinating, and it's worth renting this film just to see the bits with the Stones. Almost half the movie is devoted to this, so thanks to the miracle of chapter stops, you can skip all the bizarre political skits and just watch the Stones put a song together.

When I had this on laserdisc, I valiantly attempted to watch it all, but I don't see how anyone could get through it. I finally gave up and just chapter-skipped my way to the Stones segments.

For Godard fans, a good film, for Rolling Stones fans, so-so. The middle ground might find it to be a minor masterpiece

[Quinoa1984 · 8/10 · 14 November 2004]

Sympathy for the Devil is one of the strangest, coolest, though oddly off-putting documentary/satires that I've ever encountered. If anything else, the film is also one of the few true time capsules, along with Easy Rider, Woodstock, and The Graduate among others, of what the political, social, and musical climate was like in the late 60's. On that end Godard gets it right. And being more than a casual observer of the Rolling Stones, I was no less than fascinated in the recording process of their classic cut off of Beggar's Banquet.

On top of this, Godard does continuous, peerless shots back and forth across the studio, never cutting, just seeing through to what Mick and Keith and Charlie and the others are trying to work through in the studio. Godard doesn't just use this, however- using a narrator perhaps reciting from a book of literotica crossbred with classic literature, he puts together scenes of radical pieces of the times. This is where the flaw button might kick in for some viewers.

It took me three times to finally get through all of Sympathy for the Devil- the first two times I turned it off halfway- not because I hated it, per say, but because it gave me a feeling like I was being ambushed by images and messages not of my time. Then the third time it sunk in and I really started to "dig" the feel of the film- Godard, much like his early 60's films, is doing a satire that goes against all the conventions that he got pummeled with as a film critic in the 50's. Like the others in the French new-wave, the attitude was this- either you get us or you don't, and if you don't, we're not sure you ever will. Sympathy for the Devil- or One plus One as its original title- gives a problem for two, or perhaps more, types of audiences.

There will be some who have never heard of or seen Godard's works, and seek this out as being fans of the Rolling Stones. To this I saw be warned- you may be interested, maybe even enveloped, by how these guys work through this one song over a period of weeks and months. But, you may want to fast-forward past all the off-beat, supremely ironic vignettes detailing what a foreigner must think of ours and other's counter-cultures (in other words, if you didn't live through the 60's, most of it will pass over your head). And then for the Godard fans who might not be fans of the Rolling Stones, I don't know what to tell you, except to say that as a piece of creative non-fiction (not documentary- like one of Michael Moore's films it's hard for me to call this one a full-blooded documentary) it displays him at the near top of his game before his pits in the 70's.

It's lucid despite it being crazy, and it's disparaging even though it's funny. Basically, Jean-Luc Godard gets the feel of the song in and of itself, and on that end he was successful.

Pretentious and Boring Mess

[claudio_carvalho · 3/10 · 3 August 2008]

In the 60's, having as the background the rehearsal and recording of "Sympathy for the Devil" in the classic album "Beggar's Banquet" by the revolutionary bad boy Rolling Stones – Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts, Bill Wyman and Brian Jones – plus Marianne Faithful, Godard discloses other contemporary revolutionary and ideological movements – the Black Power through the Black Panthers, the feminism, the communism, the fascism - entwined with the reading of a cheap pulp political novel divided in the chapters: "The Stones Rolling; "Outside Black Novel"; "Sight and Sound"; "All About Eve"; "The Heart of Occident"; "Inside Black Syntax"; and, "Under the Stones the Beach".

"Sympathy for the Devil" is another pretentious and boring mess of the uneven director Jean-Luc Godard. The narrative and the footages are awful, but fortunately I love the Stones and "Sympathy for the Devil" and it is nice to see them in the beginning of their careers; otherwise this documentary would be unbearable. My vote is three.

Title (Brazil): "Sympathy for the Devil"

Political blather and the process of creation

[Maldoror-2 · 16 June 2002]

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.

No Sympathy for the Viewer

[spowell69 · 1/10 · 16 November 2004]

The film-school intellects can drool all they want about the important (imagined) meaning of this film, but it's just that: intellectual drool. This film is creatively bankrupt, and some mistake it's endless self-indulgent wanking as substance. Yeah.

Obviously Godard wasn't a Stones fan. Too bad, because this could have been great. He's capturing the birth of this timeless song and he chooses instead to cover the music with some guy reading out of a True Detective mag or some such crap.

Then there's the endless shots of what looks like 60's librarians spray-painting words on people's cars. And then there's the seemingly neverending "interview" where the actress was brilliantly instructed to answer only yes or no to all the really deep and intellectual questions. There's some dude in a purple suit is reading more crap from a book, which goes on for, oh, only about 20 minutes. And black panthers or something in a junkyard.

It almost sounds intriguing? Well, it's not.

But for unwashed film-school hipsters who don't care squat about the lost opportunities of having full access to the Stones bringing Sympathy for the Devil into the world and would rather hear some English guy reading instead whilst gazing at the covers of nudie mag's, this film's a real winner!

More accurately...maybe Godard just blows.

The devil you should maybe want or need to know

[Chris_Docker · 9/10 · 13 April 2008]

In the late 60s, rebellion against establishment was the order of the day. Paris saw students rioting. They eventually help to bring down the conservative values of De Gaulle's government. Around the world, youth protests against the war in Vietnam. In cinema, Godard and the French New Wave seek new ways of expression. New freedoms from the conventional shackles.

At this movie's London opening, Godard was incensed at his producer's unauthorised changes. Godard suggests the audience ask for their money back. Donate it to Cleaver's defense fund, he says. (Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver had just gone underground.) The London audience dissents. Godard calls them fascists. A melee ensues. Godard punches the offending producer who, ironically enough, played a fascist porno bookseller in the film.

Sympathy for the Devil is experimental cinema and agitprop at its finest or most incomprehensible. The main thread is a documentary of the Rolling Stones as they create and record the eponymous song. Then, without warning, the camera will cut back and forth to abstract, fictional scenarios. Quasi-documentary style diatribes. Godard in full-flow polemic.

Much of Sympathy for the Devil can appear chaotic to casual audiences. The answer is maybe to let it wash over you. The montage, the barrage of ideas, will evoke responses from a diligent and intelligent viewer. But what you make of it may have a lot to do with your own psychological make-up.

Apart from the Rolling Stones, the other main sequences are these: A scrapyard. Black revolutionaries. White women wearing only simple white smocks. At one point, the 'Panthers' lay their guns on the women's prone bodies, angled, as if about to fire from a trench.

A rural scene. A woman called Eve Democracy gives yes/no answers to a filmmaker's reflections on revolution and the role of culture. Statements are offered as questions. "There is only one way to be an intellectual revolutionary and that is to give up being an intellectual." "Orgasm is the only moment when you can't cheat life." "The tragic irony is that in fighting communism we are creating the absolute equivalent of communism in our own society." A seedy bookshop. A man reads from Mein Kampf. The scene explores fascism, imperialism, art and exploitation.

A graffiti artist sprays compound neologisms / word-games on cars and billboards. 'Cinema' becomes 'Cinemarxism.' A man is interviewed on black power and Marxism by two young black girls. Fighter planes are heard overhead.

Godard uses right and left wing propaganda for dialogue. Many detractors have lost interest over this, accusing him of failing to make coherent arguments. But to my mind, the outpourings of revolution, like the testosterone charge of youth, are never fully formed. They combine brute force with an intellectual striving. For good or ill, they invoke change. Another intercut soundtrack has a prim Englishman reading from a pornographic text.

The film's intertitles use different highlighted letters for tangential meanings. For instance, one section is called 'Outside Black Novel'. Four of the red letters are highlighted with black paint to make the word 'love'. We see a black man sitting in a wheelbarrow. He's on a jetty next to scrap cars and reads out loud from a book (probably by Eldridge Cleaver). He speaks of the blues of the black man, leading us into the idea of how their music was exploited by white men. The camera pans into the junkyard (a metaphorical human or technological scrap heap). Black revolutionaries arm themselves and make speeches. The white women prisoners arrive in a red mini van.

The creative process, minutely observed in the recording studio, parallels themes of revolutionary spirit and sexuality. In a dramatic scene, Eve Democracy falls. Her body is borne sacrificially aloft, caught between the red/black flags of communist and anarchist. It recalls a striking image of guns laid over the prostrate and scantily clad bodies of two white women. The guns angled as if firing over a trench.

To Godard, the dilemmas of the film were open-ended. Providing a 'conclusion' would have been against the sense of primal revolution that was the film's core. Which is why he was so incensed that, for commercial reasons, the 'completed' song had been tacked on the end.

Godard's first English movie was originally to be about abortion, but the new abortion law in England spoilt his plans. He then visualised a dialectic between creation (the recording of a song) and destruction (the political climate that leads to uprisings). He would intercut the recording session with a triangular love story about a white revolutionary seduced by a Nazi Texan. She becomes suicidal when her real lover embraces the black separatist movement. But Godard decided on the more abstract formula. Still, such traces of the original story provide insights to Sympathy for the Devil. Godard's title (his 'Director's Cut') was One + One – which he pointed out didn't necessarily mean two.

Although not really a film for any but the most dedicated of Stones fans, it provides intimate insights into their workings as a band. We see Jagger's sober and patient leadership. Brian Jones fairly off his face. The dogged persistence of the band until a good version is achieved. (The film is in not critical of the Stones, in spite of the minor 'theft of black music' theme.) They are here enshrined with one of the most creative filmmakers of the generation. It has an honesty and depth conspicuously absent from the same song performed forty years later in Scorsese's glossy concert operation, Shine a Light. The guilelessness here would then be gone. The 'meaning' of the song, appropriated so beautifully by Godard, probably lost in bright lights and presidential approval.

Sympathy for the Devil is overtly political and not the easiest of Godard's films. But as a shock to a cinema grown fat on saccharined sweetness, it is a breath of intellectual fresh air. I watched it twice straight through.

I love the Stones but HATE this movie

[preppy-3 · 1/10 · 28 January 2011]

Here we see the Rolling Stones creating the song "Symapthy for the Devil" in the studio. That footage is entertaining and fascinating. If they had just stuck to that this could have been a fascinating documentary. Naturally director Jean-Luc Godard (who I despise) single-handedly screws it up. He has somebody talking over the footage--some philosophical garbage which (as far as I could tell) had nothing to do with the movie or the song! To make matters worse he cuts to skits done by the Black Panthers in a junkyard (?????) Godard is trying to make some point but damned if I know what it is. I saw this with a roommate of mine (who idolizes the Stones) and he was ready to kick the TV screen in by the end. He was sick of all the endless talking and pointless politics. This may have meant something in 1968 but it doesn't now! Mick Jagger was once asked in an interview if he had any idea himself what those skits were doing in the film. He made it clear that he didn't have a clue and the director added them without telling the Stones. He didn't like it at all. Next to "Let's Spend The Night Together" this is the worst Stones film ever. Avoid---or watch it for the Stones and skip over the parts without them.

Jean-Luc Godard's rantings...

[tim-764-291856 · 1/10 · 5 April 2012]

Like many, I'm sure, I was under a distinct impression that this had a lot to do with and thus featured a lot of the Rolling Stones. When it came up on Sky Arts, I thought this was a must!

Frankly, I only watched all of it as I wanted to write a review. I like the Stones, a bit before my time and I only have their Forty Licks 'Best Of' plus a Live In Concert DVD. Thus, the studio bits of them rehearsing are therefore interesting but hardly essential to me.

As it went on, I checked a couple of reviews and started to dread the next 90 mins... I've seen, unfortunately a couple of later Godard's and whilst he used to make amazing films (his 1960's Breathless is one of my all-time favourites) some of his stuff since, including the awful 'Weekend' has been just selfish, incoherent claptrap. He's a prolific fellow, according to IMDb he's directed 98 films! So far...

I'm sure there's subliminal messages in amongst the hogwash and it must have been "fun" for stoners and dope-heads to try and extract them. But, for the rest of us, putting one's head in a spinning washing machine is much more fun.

the ABKCO cut & re-release of Godard's original film..

[weatherman-3 · 20 January 2003]

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.

What Fast Forward Was Invented For

[axfordra · 5/10 · 21 March 2009]

I approach the film as a musician and Stones fan. My main interest is that it documents the creation of the version of SFTD that was released on Beggars Banquet. (The other scenes, in my opinion, are too dated to be worthy of further comment. You had to live through them to understand those times - there's really no explaining that wide and silly infatuation with Marxism today. But I do greatly enjoy the period book and magazine covers.) The song starts as a shadow of its subsequent self and at times it seems like the grind of the recording session will snuff it out altogether. The incorporation of the "samba" beat brings it to life and propels the session to a successful conclusion. I wish the final edit (of the film) more precisely captured this transition in the song's development. You can't really tell who's inspiration it was. Mick mentions that "other beat" at one point, but it's not clear (to me) if he's talking to Charlie or someone else. The segment documenting the recording of the "woo woo" backing vocals is a kick. It's great to see the studio, the vintage equipment including Vox amps, the clothes, and the interaction (or lack of it) between the band members. Bill Wyman often appears to be just along for the ride and at one point seems to resign himself to just using Keith's bass part recorded on the first day. Mick, Keith, and Charlie are clearly the most engaged in the session. The sad decline of Brian Jones, losing his health, creativity, and any position of influence in the band is painfully evident. In the beginning of the film, Mick is teaching the song to Brian as if he's teaching it to a child. Keith joins them and plays along, but doesn't even look at Brian. Subsequently, Brian sits by himself in a "recording cubicle" and is largely ignored except when Keith throws him a cigarette. The film is a gem of a time capsule for Stones fans, but I used fast forward to get through roughly half of it.

A great blend of revolutionary politics and rock 'n' roll

[peter-mcluskie · 9/10 · 27 July 2003]

Saw this movie back in '72 while at high school. One of the early rock documentaries to make it to New Zealand, it was unfortunately brutally cut by the censor (with over 20 minutes excised as it might corrupt public morality). The images in this film are still so clear in my mind - powerful images that raised political issues such as the environment and revolution long before they had reached mass public recognition. The linking of pornography and fascist ideology was likewise prophetic.

However this film has one thing above all others to recommend it - it is without a doubt the most interesting footage ever captured of the Rolling Stones, providing illuminating insights into their creative processes as Sympathy for the Devil evolves for a few chords on an acoustic guitar to the version we all know and love (and along the way the most amazing percussive version (unreleased) comes into existence). Normally I find the Rolling Stones a little boring - indeed nothing recorded post Exile on Main Street has ever held my interest. However, with this film, the Stones demonstrated conclusively that they were the cutting edge of Rock 'n' Roll at the end of the '60s. A forgotten gem well worthy of revival.

Jarring as its juxtaposition of rock music and Maoist agitprop may be, this is still an enjoyable portrait of the Stones and 1960s fashion and strident politics

[crculver · 5/10 · 3 April 2017]

Has a film ever combined one theme of such wide popular appeal with another that will interest only a small crowd and simply baffle that big popular audience? Jean-Luc Godard's SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL would delight one set of viewers and infuriate another. How does one even give a star rating to this? In May 1968, Jean-Luc Godard was permitted to film the Rolling Stones over several days in a London studio as they gradually fleshed out their now classic song "Sympathy for the Devil", and so one might expect simply a documentary about a rock band's creative process. However, over the last year Godard had broken ties with conventional cinema (even in its zany French New Wave form) and was now interested in using film to agitate for the Maoist philosophy that he had latched onto as the Zeitgeist for this era. Consequently, hardly have we seen the Stones at work before Godard cuts to completely different footage centered around the reading of strident political texts. Over the course of the film we repeatedly go back and forth between the Rolling Stones in the studio and political shots: Black Panthers sitting around a junkyard and advocating revolution, a woman spraypainting Maoist slogans over London walls, a comic book shop as a metaphor for American imperialism, etc.

Even if the juxtaposition is jarring and indeed rather silly, the Rolling Stones portion of the film is satisfying for fans of this music. The viewer gets a sense of how the song "Sympathy for the Devil" went from merely a product of Jagger's imagination that he has to teach Keith Richards to ultimately the ample rendition with conga and backing-vocals that was finally released. Probably unbeknownst to Godard himself at the time, the film also serves as a portrait of Brian Jones' breakdown only about a year before his death: he's sometimes present in the studio, but he just sits in the corner, neglected by his bandmates and strumming a guitar that isn't even miked.

The rest of the Stones, however, are clearly enjoying themselves. It's amusing how Jagger's English working-class accent, itself quite fake, immediately shifts to an imitation of some old American bluesman as soon as the recording of each take starts; rarely have I got such a vivid sense of how much blues meant to this generation of English youth. The last shot of the band in the film, presumably after recording wrapped on "Sympathy of the Devil", is a longish jam session. Another delight of this film for music lovers is that we can see in full colour how recording studios looked in the 1960s with the technology and sound insulation strategies of that era. (Everyone's smoking constantly, too. The place must have smelled like an ashtray).

What, then, of the political bits? These would weird out anyone not familiar with Godard's earlier work of the late 1960s, but if one watches his films chronologically, then there is a clear progression from WEEKEND, his last relatively conventional film: again we see a breakdown of 1960s consumerist society depicted through militants holding guns versus prostrate figures red with (intentionally very fake) blood. Anne Wiazemsky, who had acted in Godard's immediately preceding films as a symbol of rebellious youth and now the director's second wife, appears as the personification "Eve Democracy". Unable to answer anything to her interlocutor's questions but "Yes" or "No", she mocks what Godard saw as the impotency of bourgeois representative democracy, where the people have no other way to effect political change except to vote for or against a candidate, a process that happens only every few years even as the nation is confronted by pressing challenges.

Godard's politics during this time were wonky and it's hard to tell just how seriously he believed in Maoism, or whether the 38-year-old director was just trying on a fad to be closer to the youth. And yet, for viewers interested in history and especially this turbulent decade, the political scenes too hold a lot of interest. In the comic book shop segment, the camera pans slowly across the shelves, presenting a variety of pulp literature and pornography that is utterly forgotten today. Didactic as the scenes of the Black Panthers and Eve Democracy might be, even they can be appreciated as a time capsule of 1960s fashion thanks to their colourfully dressed characters.

Rock Dijon on congas, more....

[newsphoto · 8/10 · 11 October 2006]

Rocky Dijon plays congas. Also engineer Andy Johns is seen and my father, producer Jimmy Miller can be seen through the studio window and heard talking to Mick. The band was working at Olympic studios in London. I spent my childhood in England and many weekends and holidays at Olympic Studios while my father recorded the Stones and Traffic. I made tea or brought soda for everyone while they worked. I sometimes sat on the drums and played around. Charlie said he would give me his kit from his home and I am still waiting for the drums to arrive. The memories will last forever. Now if there was a way to return to the 1960s I would in a heart beat. Steve Miller

It Sucks

[arfdawg-1 · 2/10 · 10 October 2020]

Except for the Stones' rehearsals, this movie is unwatchable.

It's just dismally boring.

I could not wait until it ended.

cinemarx

[jrlandsverk · 23 November 2003]

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.