One of my favorite Stones songs sounding very different than I remember it. Another very cool offering from Open Culture.

Jean-Luc Godard Films The Rolling Stones Recording “Sympathy for the Devil” (1968)

February 25th, 2012

For anyone who enjoyed yesterday’s post, Jefferson Airplane Wakes Up New York; Jean-Luc Godard Captures It (1968), we’re resurrecting a golden oldie from the archive. Read on and you’ll see why . . .

In 2008, Martin Scorsese brought the Rolling Stones to film with Shine a Light. (Watch the trailer here.) But a good 40 years before that, another giant of modern cinema had a similar notion.

Jean-Luc Godard, one of the founders of New Wave French cinema, directed Sympathy for the Devil during the tumultuous summer of 1968. The film is part rockumentary, part advertisement for left-wing ideals that were alive at the time. (There’s no real way to sugarcoat that.) Above, Godard takes you inside the recording sessions of the Rolling Stones’ classic, “Sympathy for the Devil.” As the clip goes on, you can see the song unfold.

One of our readers adds some more details:

There are two versions of this Jean-Luc Godard movie. The original version (director’s cut) is called “One Plus One”. In this first version Godard didn’t put the whole song in the editing because he wanted to make something reflexive and not an advertisement for the Rolling Stones. The producers were very angry and made another editing; their version is called “Sympathy for the Devil.”