Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii

Pink Floyd played the ancient amphitheatre at Pompeii in the autumn of 1971. There was no audience. The band was on the ground, the stone tiers around them were empty, and the only people present were the crew, plus a handful of children who got in and were allowed to stay if they watched quietly from a distance. The idea came to the director Adrian Maben by accident. Having lost his passport in Pompeii, he went back to the deserted ruins in the evening to look for it and thought the silence there would make a ground for music. The shoot took four days, the songs were played in sections and assembled afterwards, and after every take the band listened back on headphones. What resulted is not a concert film but a film about a place: the camera keeps leaving the group for the lava stone, the statues and the craters. Its flaw is that the long improvisations ask for patience, and anyone hoping to get close to the band will find it distant. Different versions vary in their studio footage and interviews. Who it is for: Pink Floyd listeners and viewers who like music films built on a location. Who it is not for: anyone after the energy of a normal concert film.