"One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil)" Part of the Sarkis Film Series

In conjunction with the exhibition, Sarkis: Alive and After, SFAI will host a series of free public film screenings in the Lecture Hall. The films, selected by Sarkis as those that have influenced his practice, include Wang Bing's rarely screened 10-hour film Tie Xi Qu: West of Tracks. The film screening dates are as follows, all screenings take place at 7:30pm unless otherwise noted: The Chronicle of Anna Magdalena Bach, Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet (October 3); The Color of Pomegranates, Sergei Paradjanov (October 10); Ice, Robert Kramer (October 17); Stalker, Andreï Tarkovski (October 24); 1+1 (Sympathy for the Devil), Jean-Luc Godard (October 31); Tie Xi Qu: West of Tracks (Saturday & Sunday, November 4 & 5, 11am-2pm, 2:30pm-5:30pm, 7pm-10pm); The Seasons, Artavazd Pelechian (TBA).

“One Plus One (Sympathy for the Devil)”
1968
Richard Roud describes One Plus One: "True, the sequences in which The Rolling Stones slowly and painfully elaborate 'Sympathy for the Devil' are both interesting and compellingly shot. True, the scenes of Eve Democracy in the forest, dissolved into a green shade, are lyrical and touching. The Black Power sequences in the junkyard, which at first viewing seem contrived almost to the point of embarrassment, have a way of sticking in the mind like some play from the Theatre of the Ridiculous. Perhaps the point Godard is making is that in our society, in the kind of cinema we have, such sequences must appear ridiculous in order to make clearer the narrowness of our notions of the cinema, its incapacity to picture the contradictions and absurdities of our society. Yet regardless of the effectiveness of certain scenes and sequences, one is left with the feeling that the film as a whole doesn't add up. But this is falling into the trap Godard has set for us: it is not meant to add up, and it won't. The original title was One Plus One and, as Godard said when the producers insisted on dubbing, complete with colour washes, the integral version of the song 'Sympathy for the Devil' over the stretched final image of the film, 'One plus one does not mean one plus one equals two. It means just what it says: one plus one....'" --in Monthly Film Bulletin

Directed and Written by Jean-Luc Godard. Photographed by Tony Richmond. Music by the Rolling Stones. With the Rolling Stones, Anne Wiazemsky, Ian Quarrier, Frank Dymon. (1968, 99 mins, color)

Film Notes Courtesy of Pacific Film Archive