Novelle Vague iconoclast Jean-Luc Godard relocated briefly to London post the May '68 riots in Paris and set about making a film to "subvert all civilised values" (The Observer). The result is a countercultural mash-up of music and politics as Godard cuts between takes of the Rolling Stones recording the classic track (in which Jagger-as-Lucifer surveys the spoils of history) and staged scenes of young revolutionaries (who are intent on making their own).

In scripted set pieces, Godard explores the limits of language as a revolutionary force. Militant black activists spout ideological rhetoric while a winsome neophyte feminist, Eve Democracy (Godard's then wife, Anne Wiazemsky) provides yes/no answers to a film crew interviewing her in a bucolic setting.

The director's long, luxuriant tracking shots inside the Stones' recording studio observe the band reworking and recording the now-classic Beggars Banquet track, Sympathy for the Devil. These scenes are political in their own way, tellingly revealing the pecking order within the Stones' own power structure. As Erich Kuersten wrote in his 2009 essay, Postcards from Hell, Jagger and Keith Richards "rule like roosters".