Watch the Rolling Stones Write “Sympathy for the Devil”: Scenes from Jean-Luc Godard’s ’68 Film One Plus One

After the Rolling Stones’ part­ly mis­guid­ed, part­ly inspired attempt at psy­che­delia, Their Satan­ic Majesties Request, the band found its foot­ing again in the famil­iar ter­ri­to­ry of the Delta Blues. But with the 1968 record­ing of Beggar’s Ban­quet, they also retained some of the pre­vi­ous album’s exper­i­men­ta­tion, tak­en in a more sin­is­ter direc­tion on the infa­mous “Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il.” In the stu­dio, with the band dur­ing those record­ing ses­sions, was none oth­er than rad­i­cal French New Wave direc­tor Jean-Luc Godard, who brought his own exper­i­men­tal sen­si­bil­i­ties to a project he would call One Plus One, a doc­u­ment of the Stones’ late six­ties incarnation—including an increas­ing­ly reclu­sive Bri­an Jones. Godard punc­tu­ates the fas­ci­nat­ing stu­dio scenes of the Stones with what Andrew Hussey of The Guardian calls “a series of set pieces—an inco­her­ent stew of Sit­u­a­tion­ism and oth­er Six­ties stuff”:

Black Pan­thers in a dis­used car park exe­cute white vir­gins; a book­seller reads aloud from Mein Kampf to Maoist hip­pies; in the final scene the blood­ied corpse of a female urban guer­ril­la is raised to the Stones’ sound­track as Godard him­self darts about like a dement­ed Jacques Tati wav­ing Red and Black flags. You just don’t find this sort of thing at the local mul­ti­plex any­more.

For all of its heavy use of left­ist Six­ties iconog­ra­phy, its anar­chic attempt to fuse “art, pow­er and rev­o­lu­tion,” and its fas­ci­nat­ing por­trai­ture of rock and roll genius at work, the film crash land­ed in France, earn­ing the con­tempt of arch Sit­u­a­tion­ist the­o­rist Guy Debord, who called it “the work of cretins.”

Crit­ics and audi­ences appar­ent­ly expect­ed more from Godard in the wake of the abortive May ‘68 stu­dent upris­ing in Paris, and the gen­er­al neglect of the film meant that Godard missed his chance to, as he put it, “sub­vert, ruin and destroy all civilised val­ues.”

The film’s pro­duc­er, Iain Quar­ri­er, also found it dis­ap­point­ing. With­out the director’s per­mis­sion, Quar­ri­er decid­ed to reti­tle One Plus One with the more com­mer­cial­ly-mind­ed Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il and tack a com­plet­ed ver­sion of that song to the last reel, a move that pro­voked Godard to punch Quar­ri­er in the face. But not every­one found Godard’s effort off-putting. In a 1970 review, the New York Times’ Roger Green­spun called it “heav­i­ly didac­tic, even instruc­tion­al…. [T]he prospec­tive text of some ulti­mate, infi­nite­ly com­plex col­lec­tivism.” Green­spun also decried Quarrier’s unau­tho­rized inter­ven­tions.

In his ret­ro­spec­tive take, Andrew Hussey admits that Godard­’s polit­i­cal pos­tur­ing is “bol­locks,” but then con­cludes that One Plus One is “great stuff: a snap­shot of a far-off, lost world where rock music is still a redemp­tive and rev­o­lu­tion­ary force.” And it’s both—ridiculous and sub­lime, a pow­er­ful crys­tal­liza­tion of a moment in time when all the West­ern world seemed poised to crack open and release some­thing strange and new. Watch the trail­er and scenes from Godard’s film above. You can also pick up a copy of the 2018 restora­tion of the film here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Meetin’ WA: Jean-Luc Godard Meets Woody Allen in 26 Minute Film

Jean-Luc Godard’s After-Shave Com­mer­cial for Schick

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness