One Plus One

Sympathy for the Devil

Jean-Luc Godard

Features both cuts of Godard's film shot in June 1968 - the commercially released SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL the title cashing in on the Stones' popularity, and Godard's own ONE PLUS ONE with a different, and necessarily unresolved ending. The footage of the Stones rehearsing, turning the track from a rough outline into something fully-formed, is fascinating. Musical discourse meets political discourse.

June 1968 found Godard in London, attempting to ‘match musical discourse with political discourse’ and tell parallel stories of creation and destruction for his film ONE PLUS ONE. In practice this means that his film features some prime footage of the Rolling Stones at their peak – Jagger, Richards, Wyman, Jones and Watts – turning the song ‘Sympathy for the Devil’ from a rough outline into a fully-formed work in the studio, intercut with an assault of primary colours and sloganeering, as black power activists stage agit-prop theatre in a junkyard (one man reads about the blues from a wheelbarrow, two white women are shot while a man talks of ‘love, patience, brotherhood and community’) and Anne Wiazemsky sprays topical slogans (CINEMARXISM, SOVIETCONG) over the walls, billboards and cars of London. There’s also plenty of gnomic sloganeering that should be taken too seriously at your peril: ‘The only way to be an intellectual revolutionary is to give up being an intellectual’; ‘A man of culture is as far from an artist as a historian is from a man of action’; ‘When sex becomes problematic, in walks a totalitarian’. Discuss.

The DVD includes both cuts of the film. There’s producer Iain Quarrier’s cut, entitled SYPMATHY FOR THE DEVIL to cash in on the Stones’ popularity, and which has a completed version of their song playing out at the end (over footage of them playing something different). This is the cut that caused Godard to walk out its NFT showing, hitting the producer for good measure on the way and telling the audience to collect their admission money and give it to the Eldridge Cleaver Foundation before calling them all fascists. Quarrier, ironically enough, plays the purple-clad, Mein Kampf-declaiming owner of the sex, comics and pulp fiction bookshop in the film. Godard’s cut, ONE PLUS ONE, has an unresolved ending, in which the Stones simply continue to jam and chat. As Godard said, 1+1 shouldn’t be taken to add up to 2, it’s just a statement of a situation. It’s not meant to be ‘a nice piece of art’ he said, ‘it’s just enough to know where it’s coming from and going to’. Nearly four decades on, this is a fascinating historical artefact twice over – a musical one and a political one.

Graeme Hobs, Moviemail

Jean-Luc Godard

Born in 1930 in Paris, France. Spent his childhood in Switzerland. Studied Ethnology in Paris. Critic for “Cahiers du Cinéma”. One of the founding members of “Nouvelle Vague”.

2010 FILM SOCIALISME
2004 NOTRE MUSIQUE
2000 ELOGE DE L'AMOUR
1999 THE OLD PLACE
1988-98 HISTOIRE(S) DU CINEMA
1996 FOR EVER MOZART
1995 2 x 50 ANS DE CINEMA FRANÇAIS
1994 JLG/JLG
1993 HELAS POUR MOI
1993 LES ENFANTS JOUENT A LA RUSSIE
1991 ALLEMAGNE NEUF ZERO
1990 NOUVELLE VAGUE
1987 KING LEAR
1987 SOIGNE TA DROITE
1986 DETECTIVE
1985 JE VOUS SALUE MARIE
1983 PRENOM CARMEN
1982 PASSION
1981 LETTRE A FREDDY BUACHE
1980 SAUVE QUI PEUT (LA VIE)
1978 FRANC-TOUR-DETOUR-DEUX ENFANTS
1976 SIX FOIS DEUX
1975 NUMERO DEUX
1975 ICI ET AILLEURS
1971 TOUT VA BIEN
1969 LE VENT D'EST
1967 WEEK-END
1967 ONE PLUS ONE / SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL
1966 MASCULIN - FEMININ (D)
1966 DEUX OU TROIS CHOSES QUE JE SAIS D'ELLE (Livre)
1966 MADE IN USA
1965 ALPHAVILLE
1965 PIERROT LE FOU
1964 BANDE A PART
1964 UNE FEMME MARIEE
1963 LE PETIT SOLDAT
1963 LES CARABINIERS
1963 LE MEPRIS (DIE VERACHTUNG)
1962 VIVRE SA VIE
1961 UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME
1959 HISTOIRE D'EAU
1960 CHARLOTTE ET SON JULES
1959 TOUS LES GARÇONS S'APPELLENT PATRICK
1959 A BOUT DE SOUFFLE (AUSSER ATEM)

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