Sympathy for the Devil
Godard’s controversial, key film of the 1968 counterculture era tracks the creation of the classic Rolling Stones song Sympathy for the Devil in the studio, intercutting extraordinary fictional scenes packed with radical political and cultural statements.
Festival IDFA
Location Rabozaal
Run time 130 minutes
Genre Film
Dutch premiere
Sympathy for the Devil
In 1968, Jean-Luc Godard was regarded as an audacious and brilliant filmmaker who was turning cinema upside down. In the turbulent days of May that year he was a Maoist oracle mounting the barricades. Then he moved to swinging London to shoot his first English-language film: 1 + 1. His 1967 film Weekend, which ends provocatively with the words “FIN DE CINEMA,” was highly acclaimed, but 1 + 1 got a critical reception, with philosopher Guy Debord describing it as “a film from an idiot”. Audiences stayed away in droves, both from that version and the one released by the British producers as Sympathy for the Devil, which took its title from the classic Rolling Stones track whose fascinating genesis this film captures.
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The Stones rehearsals are intercut with Black Power texts, footage of Anne Wiazemsky roaming the streets with a graffiti spray can, and fictional scenes in which sex shop customers pay for porn magazines by hitting Maoists and doing a Hitler salute. “1 + 1 isn’t 2, it’s just one plus one,” asserted the film’s creator, as if to clarify his standpoint on this blistering cocktail of aphorisms, political statements and rock mythology.
ABOUT IDFA
IDFA strives to strengthen the international documentary climate by focusing more than ever on documentary film as an art form. This focus includes documentary films with an original visual language or structure, films that show lesser-known cultures or are filmed from a non-Western perspective, and interactive or immersive documentaries that innovate the field.
