Sympathy for the Devil (film)
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Sympathy for the Devil (titled One Plus One in its European release) was a 1968 film shot mostly in color by director Jean-Luc Godard.
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[edit] First, Some Scenes in a Sound Studio
Out of the very first scenes in this movie come washed-out full-color shots of The Rolling Stones in a sound studio. The members of the band are spread out, and not grouped together. A casual affair, there are some shots of some friends with them. Although there are no shots of anybody manning a mixing board, it is clear that they have been recording and rerecording various parts to their song, "Sympathy for the Devil." The sound studio is certainly over thirty by thirty feet, and parts have been separated here and there into cubicles with the erection of various 4 foot panels or partitions, but this doesn't stop the camera from coming up around them, panning the room and approaching them from different directions.
[edit] Next, Some Outdoor Shots
Otherwise, interwoven or intercut through the movie are outdoor shots of Black Panthers mulling about in a junkyard littered with the rusting bodies of Chryslers and Oldsmobiles heaped upon each other. Intended to inspire no small amount of alarm in an expected white audience is a prolonged scene of Black Panthers withdrawing from the backs of their vans or station wagons captive white women wrapped in white sheets, apparently prisoners captured in the course of a race war. There are also scenes of Black Panthers tossing their rifles to each other, from man to man, as if in an assembly line, readying for an impending battle.
The rest of the film is riddled with political diatribe in the form of a voiceover about the need for revolution, Marxism, and other topics that Godard took a fancy to.
[edit] A Woman being interviewed
A peculiar scene involves a camera crew following a woman about in an outdoor wildlife setting. She's dressed in a flowing white gown, but no matter what she is asked, she always answers yes or no. As can be seen from the chapter heading to this scene, she is supposed to be a personification of democracy, a woman named Eve Democracy. Some viewers take her for a parodical archetype, or comical exemplar, instead. In light of the last scene to this film, with a woman lying on a crane being lifted up above a beach, her prostrate form reminiscent of a war casualty, it is possible that her presence was inspired by Barry McGuire's protest song "Eve of Destruction" from 1965.
[edit] Then, Back in the Sound Studio
The Rolling Stones portions of the film are generally held of high regard, since "Sympathy for the Devil" is one of their classic songs. Different arrangements are seen, the dissolution of Stone Brian Jones is vividly portrayed, and the tragic chaos of 1968 is made clear when a line referring to the killing of (John F.) Kennedy is next heard changed to the plural after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June.
[edit] A Scene in a Bookstore
At least one quarter of the film is devoted to indoor shots of a bookstore that catered to the adult or intellectual crowd of the 1960s, purveying forms of literature as diverse as Marvel's Doctor Strange, DC's The Atom, and The Flash comic books, Marxist pamphlets for propaganda, and various men's magazines famous for their scantily clad pinup centerfolds.
As the camera pans the room, a man walks about reading aloud from Mein Kampf.
To punctuate this bizarre combination of comic books, pinup magazines, and Marxist pamphlets, consumers casually enter the bookstore, approach a bookshelf, pick up books or magazines, exchange them for a sheet of paper (containing fascist propaganda?), and then slap the faces of two Maoist hostages sitting patiently next to a book display. Toward the end of the scene, even a small child is admitted for the principal purpose of buying a pamphlet and discharging the duty of slapping the faces of the hostages. After exchanging their purchases and receiving their document, each customer raises his/her right arm in a Nazi salute, and leaves the store.
[edit] Last Scene is on the Beach
Mimicking the bizarre scene earlier, of the camera crew following a woman in a park (Eve Democracy), is the last scene to the movie, where the camera crew mulls about on the beach, and from afar, one man asks another, what are they doing over there? To which the other man answers, I think they are shooting a movie. A large winch or crane is positioned on the beach, and a woman in white is laid down upon the end of the crane, and elevated on the platform until she is well above the beach. She doesn't rise up, she just remains motionless, half-hanging off the crane, one leg dangling. Perhaps the woman is lying there exhausted, or perhaps she is dead, but either way she appears to personify Eve Democracy.
It may also be of some significance that the seemingly lifeless woman, who is perhaps representing democracy, is in fact raised between two flags, one red and the other black, the colours that represent communism and black power.
[edit] Monotonous Ranting
The other parts of the film are usually considered to be Godard at his worst, full of tedious, comical, cartoonish philosophy and artless didacticism.
In his 1970 review, New York Times critic Roger Greenspun explains the following:
"Sympathy for the Devil," exactly resembles "1 + 1" except that in the latter part of the last reel a complete version of the song "Sympathy for the Devil," which the Rolling Stones have been rehearsing and recording in cuts throughout the film, is played on the soundtrack.
[...] For "1 + 1" is a heavily didactic, even instructional, film, like much recent Godard, and it builds upon repetition, or, if you will, addition. The Rolling Stones' repeated assays upon "Sympathy for the Devil" in their recording studio, the rote repetitions of passages and slogans passed back and forth among black-power revolutionaries in their river-side automobile junkyard, the mere adding up of questions and answers in the interview sequences, juxtaposing words to make new combinations (such as "So-Viet Cong") and finding new words in old combinations (such as SDS in "Sight and Sound"; LOVE in "All About Eve")—all suggest a concern with ways of putting things together, to the film seems determined to be the prospective text of some ultimate, infinitely complex collectivism.
Whatever its intentions, "1 + 1" contemplates rather than advocates revolution. It collects evidence and examines texts — including a by now famous pornographic political novel read on the sound track ("'You're my kind of girl, Pepita', said Pope Paul as he lay down on the grass . . .," etc.)—records interviews ("The Occident is fighting communism because the Occident is Faustian?" "Yes."), and observes the forces preparing the apocalypse.
Greenpun, Roger. "Sympathy for the Devil' ('1+1')", New York Times, April 27, 1970.
[edit] The Movie was Retitled
To increase the commercial value of the film, the U.S. release was re-titled after the Stones song and the end of the film's soundtrack was altered to include a full take of the song in its final form. This angered Godard and caused a dust-up between him and the producer responsible. To resist this kind of censorship, it makes sense to use the title ONE PLUS ONE for Godard's version of the film, and keep SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL for the producer's version. The different titles relate to two importantly different films.
During filming of The Rolling Stones' recording, a fire broke out in the sound studio. While footage of the studio on fire was not included on the film, it does exist and has been used in other films.
