Invocation of My Demon Brother and more

Invocation of My Demon Brother

1969. USA. Directed by Kenneth Anger. Sound by Mick Jagger. Using a then-novel Moog synthesizer, Jagger composed a hypnotic, droning soundtrack for Anger’s masterful Invocation, a film whose satanic majesty lies in its hallucinatory concatenation of still-frightening images, sounds, and ecstatic pagan rituals involving an albino seer, a helicopter of Marines landing in Vietnam, and a cat funeral; naked boys wrestling and tarot cards, swastikas, and spider tattoos; Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Marianne Faithfull at the Hyde Park memorial concert for Brian Jones; Manson Family member and convicted murderer Bobby Beausoleil presiding as Lucifer over his psychedelic band, the Magick Powerhouse of Oz; and Hells Angels and hippies superimposed with Anton LaVey, the founder of the Church of Satan in San Francisco. 11 min.

Sympathy for the Devil

1968. Great Britain. Written and directed by Jean-Luc Godard. Martin Scorsese, in an interview: “Sympathy for the Devil: now that's quintessential. That movie, with the vignettes that Godard intercuts with the rehearsal sessions…[a] still powerful and disturbing movie. It makes you rethink; it redefines your way of looking at life and reality and politics.” Keith Richards, in his memoir Life: “Politics came for us whether we liked it or not, once in the odd personage of Jean-Luc Godard, the great French cinematic innovator….Sympathy for the Devil is by chance a record of the song by us of that name being born in the studio. The song turned after many takes from a Dylanesque, rather turgid folk song into a rocking samba—from a turkey into a hit—by a shift of rhythm, all recorded in stages by Jean-Luc….I’m glad he filmed that, but Godard!....The film was a total load of crap—the maidens on the Thames barge, the blood, the feeble scene of some brothers, aka Black Panthers, awkwardly handling weapons to one another in a Battersea scrap yard….I mean, why of all people, would Jean-Luc Godard be interested in a minor hippie revolution in England and try to translate it into something else?” Print lent by the BFI; courtesy ABKCO Music & Records. 100 min.