Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (1972)

Director:

Adrian Maben

Release Date:

4 May 1973 (West Germany)

Genre:

Documentary | Music

Tagline:

More Than a Movie! An Explosive Cinema Concert!

Plot:

Live versions of the songs, filmed in an old Pompeii amphitheater. Songs included are Echoes (split into 2 parts)...

Plot Keywords:

Band | Pompeii | Pink Floyd | Amphitheater | Cult

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

David Gilmour	...	Himself (guitar, vocals) (as Pink Floyd)
Nick Mason	...	Himself (drums) (as Pink Floyd)
Roger Waters	...	Himself (bass, vocals, percussion) (as Pink Floyd)
Richard Wright	...	Himself (keyboards, vocals) (as Pink Floyd)

Also Known As:

Echoes: Pink Floyd (USA)
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd à Pompéi (France)
Pink Floyd in Pompeii (Belgium: Flemish title)

Runtime:

62 min (shortened version) (25 fps) | 92 min (director's cut) | 85 min (theatrical version)

Country:

Belgium | West Germany | France

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

4-Track Stereo | Dolby (remix for video release) | Dolby Digital

Certification:

Australia:G | UK:E | USA:G | West Germany:6

Filming Locations:

London, England, UK

Company:

Bayerischer Rundfunk (BR)

Trivia:

Only the songs "Echoes pt. 1 and 2", "A Saucerful of Secrets" and "One of These Days" were actually filmed in Pompeii. The songs "Careful With That Axe Eugene", "Set the Controls For the Heart of the Sun", and "Mademoiselle Nobs" were actually filmed in a studio in Paris, where extra shooting took place for the blue-screen shots in the Pompeii performances. This explains the extra lighting rig and disappearance of Richard Wright's beard in the Paris-shot songs.

Goofs:

Continuity: In both parts of the song "Echoes", Nick Mason's sunglasses disappear and reappear a couple of times, indicating that the performance in Pompeii was filmed in sections rather than just one take. Or that there were two takes of the song and footage was used from both.

Quotes:

Nick Mason: I'll have eggs, sausage, chips and beans, and a tea.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Abbey Road Story (1998) (TV)

Soundtrack:

Careful with that Axe Eugene

a concert not like the other ones...

An ancient city nowadays wiped out: Pompei, a major British band from the seventies, Pink Floyd. Apparently, there's none link between the two quoted names. You can barely imagine, the "dark side of the moon"'s creator to give a concert in this magic and sole scenerie. However, this is what happened in october 1971 and the result is astonishing. There's no spectators but the music impresses, is at its full swing. Moreover, you are under the impression that the members of the band surpass themselves musically and they give the best they can. Adrian Maben succeeds skilfully the marriage between the sound and the picture and it creates an entrancing climate. I think about the static shots of different places in Pompei with "Echoes" (probable the best song Pink Floyd has ever written) in the background. However, his making appears to be paradoxical: it can be both creative and ingenious: Waters' scream in "careful with that axe Eugene is compared with a volcano erupting. On the other hand, it's a pity that he favours a bit too often slow travelings and the same precise shots of the band's members during their performance. It can give birth to weariness. Nevertheless, "Pink Floyd: live at Pompei" is also a well-regulated movie thanks to the sequences that take place in the Abbey Road Studios. You see interviews of the band and this one at work, recording their masterpiece "dark side of the moon", THE album that will reveal them to the general public and probably their last collective album before Roger Waters' seizure of power. If you wish to know how your favourite album was recorded, the movie will deliver it to you... The movie isn't without humor (Nick Mason's preference for an apple pie without crust) and a dog is baying at the moon during "Mademoiselle nobs". In short, "Pink Floyd: live at Pompei" will delight any Pink Floyd fan.