Film Forum
209 W Houston St
212.727.8110
This event has passed.
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Sympathy for the Devil (1968)
- When
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Tuesday May 27, 2008 (7:35 & 9:40pm)
- Where
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- Price
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$10
- Links
Nothing characterizes the Rolling Stones' playful rebelliousness in the late '60s like their absurdist anthem "Sympathy for the Devil." Before the uproar over the song's "occultist" lyrics (reportedly inspired by Mikhail Bulgakov's Soviet-banned novel The Master and Margarita), Jean-Luc Godard filmed the track's recording during the tumultuous summer of 1968. The director captured plenty of footage from the Stones' London sound studio, but he also inserted an ongoing Marxist narrative, a surrealist parody of the democratic ideal, and footage of gun-wielding Black Panthers. Those elements turn this would-be documentary into a political commentary very much of its time.
