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Sympathy for The Devil was made at a time when the
Rolling Stones were at the peak of their creative powers and
Jean-Luc Godard, who after making some of the great French
New Wave films, had taken a revolutionary political direction
with his filmmaking. Rock and roll superstars The Rolling
Stones rehearse their latest song Sympathy for The Devil
in a London studio as they compose material for the forthcoming
Beggar's Banquet album. This is followed by a series
of abstract fictional vignettes, Godard probes topics as diverse
as race, pornography and the irony of interviewing celebrities,
which feature a unique demonstration by Black Power revolutionaries
and a TV interview with one Eve Democracy about the relationship
between culture and revolution...
This 1968 film by controversial French New Wave director Jean-Luc
Godard is often described as 'two movies in one' - the first
being footage of The Rolling Stones in studio, and the second
being a series of 'abstract fictional vignettes' documenting
1960's western counterculture, and examining the relationship
between culture and revolution.
That
would be a polite way of describing it, though. A more accurate
summing-up would be 'a turgid, pretentious mess of a non-film'
which will ultimately be of only very minor interest to the
most blindly devoted of Rolling Stones fans.
The
obvious main attraction of the film is the footage of the
Stones themselves, going through the process of creating an
all-time classic track, from Mick Jagger's initial demonstration
of the song on acoustic guitar to the rest of the band, through
to the fully-fleshed performance of the finished masterpiece.
These scenes are beautifully filmed by Godard, but in truth
offer very little insight into one of the greatest bands in
the world, who at this point were at their very peak of their
creative powers. Whilst there may be some initial interest
in watching and hearing the song slowly but surely evolve,
even the most hardened Stones fan will eventually begin to
find this material at best repetitive, at worst simply annoying
- mainly because for some reason, Godard chose in his infinite
wisdom to have a narrator regularly recite explicit erotic
text over much of the footage. Nice.
Meanwhile,
the 'abstract fictional vignettes', interspersed with the
Stones footage, consist largely of meandering and often indecipherable
political ramblings. We are 'treated' to lengthy sequences
of black militants in a junkyard reading the text of political
activist Eldridge Cleaver. The owner of an adult store reads
aloud from Nazi texts whilst his customers wander in and out
giving him the Nazi salute as they buy their pornography.
A character named 'Eve Democracy' is interviewed and answers
each long-winded cultural question with the words 'yes' or
'no'. These mind-numbingly tedious sequences drag on for what
seems like several millennia, and appear to be the half-finished
work of an art student with far, far too much time on his
hands rather than an acclaimed director who was supposed to
be making a film with The Rolling Stones but forgot.
In fairness, Fabulous Films have done their utmost to present
the definitive Sympathy For The Devil package. As well
as the original theatrical release, the disc also features
a very rare chance to view One Plus One, Godard's original
Director's Cut of the film. This is spirit-crushingly
similar to the theatrical version but manages to raise the
bizarre stakes even higher by cutting out the final finished
performance of The Rolling Stones track (you know, that thing
the film was supposed to be all about) and replacing it with
extra footage of the black militants dragging women in bloodied
white gowns to their execution. Nice.
Also featured in the package is Voices, an award-winning
1968 documentary on Godard - it's not tremendously interesting
but is by far the most watchable thing on the whole disc.
Danny
Salter
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