On Loca­tion: The graf­fi­ti wall from Sym­pa­thy for the Devil

Con­sid­er the cin­e­ma of Jean-Luc Godard and it’s like­ly that the first place that comes to mind is Paris, in par­tic­u­lar Paris at the turn of the 1960s when its style was nev­er bet­tered. Yet by the end of the decade, Godard’s pol­i­tics had tak­en a rad­i­cal shift and had led him away from France (as well as his native Switzer­land) to Lon­don to pro­duce one of his stranger films, Sym­pa­thy for the Devil.

Mark­ing a shift away from nar­ra­tive cin­e­ma, the film mix­es a wealth of cul­tur­al keynotes with a col­lage of polit­i­cal dis­course, all the while main­tain­ing the director’s eye for stark imagery. Essen­tial­ly, the film is not mere­ly a time-cap­sule of the atmos­phere and ener­gy from that excit­ed end of the counter-cul­ture but a doc­u­ment of the cap­i­tal before its edges had been smoothed over.

Sym­pa­thy for the Dev­il takes its title from the song by the Rolling Stones. The song acts as a lynch­pin for the film as the slow progress behind its writ­ing and pro­duc­tion evolves in Olympia Stu­dios where the band are record­ing their album, ​‘Beg­gars Banquet’.

Inter­spersed between long takes show­ing the band at work are frag­ments of scenes filmed all around Lon­don. They are often absur­dist, polit­i­cal plays deal­ing with Viet­nam, Black Pan­thers, fas­cism and every­thing in between; all ren­dered the more sur­re­al by the ordi­nary Lon­don loca­tions in which they are filmed. The film is a flick­er book detail­ing the melt­ing pot of cul­tur­al and polit­i­cal extrem­i­ties implod­ing at the end of the ​’60s in all of their vivid colours.

In spite of large chunks of the film unfold­ing in the record­ing stu­dio, Lon­don plays a quin­tes­sen­tial role. Godard had orig­i­nal­ly planned a film about abor­tion rights. With the abor­tion act of 1967, he was iron­i­cal­ly left with­out a sub­ject, though still want­ed to make a Lon­don film, so long as he could col­lab­o­rate with either the Bea­t­les or the Rolling Stones. Along with his equal­ly star­tling film pro­duced with Lon­don Week­end Tele­vi­sion, British Sounds, Godard had found his Lon­don projects.

He caught the atmos­phere at exact­ly the right moment, cap­tur­ing the peri­od just before Bri­an Jones’ death, as well as sev­er­al cul­tur­al moments, includ­ing an appear­ance of James Fox still in char­ac­ter for Don­ald Cam­mell and Nico­las Roeg’s Per­for­mance which Jag­ger was film­ing at the same time, along with Kei­th Richards’ part­ner Ani­ta Pal­len­berg, also seen in the stu­dio with Mar­i­anne Faith­full pro­vid­ing back­ing vocals.

The band mem­bers are not seen out­side of the stu­dio. Instead, Lon­don is pre­sent­ed through the move­ments of Anne Wiazem­sky, play­ing an ambigu­ous char­ac­ter called Eve Democ­ra­cy. Some­times there are ensem­ble moments, the black pow­er group con­duct­ing their ser­mons in a dis­used scrap yard by the Thames in Lom­bard Wharf or the strange mag­a­zine shop that sells a mix­ture of porn, comics and fas­cist mate­r­i­al, for example.

But it is most­ly Wiazem­sky who explores Lon­don for prop­er in what appears to be goril­la film­ing of her paint­ing typ­i­cal­ly Godard-esque graf­fi­ti on walls, cars and oth­er things around the city. The first of these seg­ments shows Wiazem­sky paint­ing the win­dows of a room at the Hilton by Hyde Park, begin­ning a series of inter­ludes where no sur­face is safe from her Sit­u­a­tion­ist scrawling.

Though this occurs a num­ber of times in a range of dif­fer­ent loca­tions, the one that sticks out for me is also one of the short­est. In the mid­dle of the seg­ment at Lom­bard Wharf, Godard cuts to a graf­fi­ti sequence on a white wall some­where in the city. Eve Democ­ra­cy writes ​“cin­e­ma” in black paint before Godard cuts abrupt­ly, almost as if they were dis­cov­ered and had to stop film­ing. It may have been an attempt at writ­ing ​“cin­e­marx­ist” – some­thing suc­cess­ful­ly achieved lat­er on a piece of fence in Hack­ney – but it’s impos­si­ble to say. More intrigu­ing is that it is the only seg­ment and wall that has an address seen on it, 45 Cado­gan Street vis­i­ble on the wall near the door.

Though any num­ber of these loca­tions could have been vis­it­ed from the film, this one was cho­sen because of the obvi­ous like­li­hood in the area hav­ing gone upmar­ket. Per­haps the seg­ment of Eve Democ­ra­cy paint­ing the car in Shal­comb Street in Chelsea or the pub on the King’s Road would have equal­ly suf­ficed, but hav­ing an address made this one more inter­est­ing, essen­tial­ly because the address had in fact changed.

The house stands today at the cor­ner of a lav­ish res­i­den­tial area of Knights­bridge. The road in ques­tion is Hasley Street and the build­ing is as it was except for some new brick­work restruc­tur­ing the win­dow; a prob­a­ble con­ver­sion of the retail prop­er­ty into a lux­u­ry home or flat. As with the oth­er Kens­ing­ton loca­tions, the feel of it being rough and ready has long since passed. The road is now lit­tered with expen­sive cars and builders work­ing on end­less exten­sions and upgrades. Every wall has a white-washed qual­i­ty unde­ni­ably fit­ting for a street that is with­in walk­ing dis­tance of Har­rods. Godard and Wiazem­sky would prob­a­bly be arrest­ed for try­ing the same stunt today.

The loca­tion ulti­mate­ly rais­es ques­tions about the intent of Godard’s film. As with the evo­lu­tion of the song through­out the film, there’s a sense of momen­tum to the polit­i­cal argu­ments too, as if there may be some sort of rev­o­lu­tion about to unfold just after the reel ends. Of course there were mul­ti­ple moments but ulti­mate­ly that decade’s opti­mism crashed out by the 1970s; injus­tice accel­er­at­ed, Nixon beat McGov­ern and Knights­bridge became a realm unique­ly of millionaires.

Where­as the song was fin­ished and plays at the end of the film, revis­it­ing the loca­tion allowed a brief lapse into anoth­er, more rad­i­cal real­i­ty; one which failed to mate­ri­alise with the same for­ti­tude or haste.

With thanks to Polaroid Orig­i­nals.