Amazon.com video review:
This version of Jean-Luc Godard's 1968 One Plus One caused a
legendary confrontation at a film festival when the director became
infuriated at his producer's decision to attach the Rolling Stones'
completed song "Sympathy for the Devil" at the film's end. Godard's own
original plan had been to make a film of the Stones' construction of the
tune in rehearsal, and intercut that with a story line about a white
revolutionary who becomes suicidal when her lover embraces black
separatism. Production problems caused Godard to give up that idea and just
allow scenes to fall where they would, allowing viewers to construct the
film in their own minds. Be that as it may, this slightly shorter and more
commercial producer's cut does not lack in satisfaction by closing things
out with the song as Stones fans know it. Overall, the film is a
bewildering affair, and that's not at all a bad thing: one's orientation is
whatever one makes of Godard's enthralling mess here. Even if a viewer is
just interested in seeing the Stones at their peak and at work on their
brilliant 1968 album Beggars
Banquet, this is a highly rewarding
experience. Astute watchers and listeners will note that in an early take
of the song, Mick Jagger sings the lyric, "I shouted out, 'Who killed
Kennedy?'/When after all, it was you and me." Later, with no mention of a
particularly tragic 1968 event in American politics, Jagger has revised the
line to "I shouted out, 'Who killed the Kennedys?'" Talk about a startling
moment. --Tom Keogh
