Pink Floyd at Pompeii MCMLXXII review – mesmerically peculiar portrait of band on cusp of greatness

Gilmour, Waters, Wright and Mason are space rock whippets in the burning Italian sun in this outrageously indulgent yet vivid and beguiling music documentaryHere they are: Pink Floyd in 1971, amazingly young, amazingly thin, like four space-rock whippets standing mysteriously on their hind legs in the burning Italian sun. Dave Gilmour, Roger Waters, Richard Wright and Nick Mason are performing “live at Pompeii” in this mesmerically peculiar and outrageously indulgent music documentary from film-maker Adrian Maben, now on rerelease over half a century later, available on freakily large Imax screens undreamt of in the 70s. The music and the atmosphere are an irresistible fan-madeleine for those who can remember referring to them solemnly as “the Floyd” (ahem).The band are shown performing live in Pompeii’s ancient Roman amphitheatre in the late afternoon, but not to an audience as you might assume, but weirdly and almost haughtily alone. The banks of amplifiers are pounding out the music just to the ancient stones and pillars and to the film crew facing them (and to the crew filming them from behind), who like most of the band are shown shirtless in the sweating heat. (No one worried about sunscreen in 1971.) Maben’s vision was avowedly inspired by his experience as a young traveller searching frantically for a lost passport in this very amphitheatre, as well as by Wilhelm Jensen’s novella Gradiva, much admired by Freud, in which a German archaeologist in Pompeii has a sunstricken hallucinatory glimpse of a woman who lived thousands of years before. Continue reading...

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