Sympathy for the Devil

Title: Sympathy for the Devil
Country: UK
Year: 1968
Directed by: Jean-Luc Godard
Cast: The Rolling Stones, Sean Lynch, Anne Wiazemsky
Duration: 100 min.
Language: English
Plot: Godard’s documentation of late 1960’s western counter-culture, examining the Black Panthers, referring to works by LeRoi Jones and Eldridge Cleaver. Other notable subjects are the role of the media, the mediated image, a growing technocratic society, Womens Liberation, the Mai 68 revolt in France and the power of language. Cutting between 3 major scenes, including the Rolling Stones in the studio, the film is visually intercut with Eve Democracy (Wiazemsky) using graffiti which amalgamates organisations, corporations and ideologies. Godard also examines the role of the revolutionary within western culture. Although he believes western culture needs to be destroyed, it can only be done so by the rejection of intellectualisation. ‘There is only one way to be an intellectual revolutionary, and that is to give up being an intellectual’.

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