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Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii (1971)

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From Time Out Film Guide

Technically excellent, this raises the question whether documentary is the most suitable cinematic form in which to present rock music. Although Pompeii and its geography are used along with split screen and rhythmic editing to evoke atmosphere, the unnecessary interviews with the group - and even the images of the band playing - tend to detract from the pleasure the music arouses, simply because the music is constructed not to conjure images of musicians but to provide scope for the listener's imagination. The film may be a brilliant visual record of the Floyd playing, but sadly the music works on you more if you just close your eyes.

Author: SM

Time Out Film Guide

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Tom Coffee said...

Posted on Jul 18 2009 14:39 Self indulgent for the most part, the best part of the film by far is the music, which amounts to alternative studio and live versions of many favourites. Too much of the film is spent on footage of bubbling mud pots and slow pans of completely static and barren landscape, along with some cuts of the band walking on a windy sand dune (yawn!). Musically, I have the highest regard for the band and always have, but this film threatens to take away from that! We do get to see some brief and somewhat staged glimpses into the personalities here and that is lovely, two of my favourite segments have Roger Waters in one scene fiddling with the knobs on an early synthesiser and very obviously not knowing what he was doing (where is Richard Wright, the real musical genius?) while the voice over track has him (Waters) talking like he is an expert on the subject, the other scene has the band at a cafe, all posing and pontificating in an oh so cool rock star way, with the exception of my hero David Gilmour, who is very heartily and unabashedly tucking into a plate of beans and sausages while looking directly into the camera. From those two scenes you come away with a oh, so poignant glimpse at the inner workings of one of the greatest musical groups in modern music!

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