Sympathy for the Devil

7/31/2018

Has a film ever combined one theme of such wide popular appeal with another that will interest only a small crowd and simply baffle that big popular audience? Jean-Luc Godard's <i>Sympathy for the Devil</i> would delight one set of viewers and infuriate another. How does one even give a star rating to this? In May 1968, Jean-Luc Godard was permitted to film the Rolling Stones over several days in a London studio as they gradually fleshed out their now classic song "Sympathy for the Devil", and so one might expect simply a documentary about a rock band's creative process. However, over the last year Godard had broken ties with conventional cinema (even in its zany French New Wave form) and was now interested in using film to agitate for the Maoist philosophy that he had latched onto as t