Sympathy for the Devil

Sympathy for the Devil (originally titled 1 + 1; also One Plus One, by the film director, and distributed under that title in Europe) is a 1968 avant-garde film shot mostly in color by director Jean-Luc Godard, his first British made, English language film. It is a composite film, juxtaposing documentary, fictional scenes and dramatised political readings. It is most notable for its scenes documenting the creative evolution of the song "Sympathy for the Devil" as the Rolling Stones developed it during recording sessions at Olympic Studios in London. Plot Composing the film's main narrative thread are several long, uninterrupted shots of the Rolling Stones in London's Olympic Studios, recording and re-recording various parts to "Sympathy for the Devil". The dissolution of Stone Brian Jones is vividly portrayed, and the chaos of 1968 is made clear when a line referring to the killing of John F. Kennedy is heard changed to the plural after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy in June. Interwoven through the movie are outdoor shots of Black Panthers loitering in a junkyard littered with rusting cars heaped upon each other. They read from revolutionary texts (including Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver) and toss their rifles to each other, from man to man. A group of white women, apparently kidnapped and dressed in white, are brutalized and ultimately shot, off-camera; their bloody bodies are subsequently seen in various tableaus throughout the film. The rest of the film contains a political message in the form of a voiceover about Marxism, the need for revolution and other topics in which Godard was interested. One scene involves a camera crew following a woman about, played by Anne Wiazemsky in a yellow peasant dress, in an outdoor wildlife setting; questions are asked of her, to which she always answers either "yes" or "no". As can be seen from the chapter heading to the scene, she is supposed to be a personification of democracy, a woman named 'Eve Democracy'.