Sympathy for the Devil
Screening on Film
Directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
With Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones.
UK, 1968, 35mm, color, 109 min.
With Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones.
UK, 1968, 35mm, color, 109 min.
Re-cut and renamed by a producer (the original title is One Plus One), Sympathy features exhaustive footage of the Rolling Stones rehearsing and recording "Sympathy for the Devil," capturing the song’s transformation from bluesy slow number into now-iconic samba. The studio scenes are intercut with vignettes of an armed Black Power group hanging out in a junkyard, a bookstore whose customers slap its Maoist prisoners on their way out, and "Eve Democracy" giving a cryptic interview while wandering in the woods.