The Concert for Bangladesh (1972)

User Rating:

7.9/10   

Director:

Saul Swimmer

Release Date:

7 June 1972 (Sweden)

Genre:

Documentary | History | Music

Tagline:

The Greatest Concert of the Decade! Now you can see it and hear it...as if you were there !

Plot:

A film about the first benefit rock concert when major musicians performed to raise relief funds for the poor of Bangladesh.

Plot Keywords:

Concert | Bangladesh | Musician | Unicef | Benefit

Awards:

1 nomination

Cast

George Harrison	...	Himself
Bob Dylan	...	Himself
Ravi Shankar	...	Himself
Ringo Starr	...	Himself
Eric Clapton	...	Himself
Leon Russell	...	Himself
Billy Preston	...	Himself
Klaus Voormann	...	Himself
Jim Keltner	...	Himself
Pete Ham	...	Himself
Tom Evans	...	Himself
Mike Gibbins	...	Himself
Joey Molland	...	Himself
Jesse Ed Davis	...	Himself
Jim Horn	...	Himself
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Mal Evans	...	Himself (uncredited)
Allen Klein	...	Himself (uncredited)
Phil Spector	...	Himself (uncredited)

Directed by
Saul Swimmer

Produced by
George Harrison	....	producer
Allen Klein	....	producer

Cinematography by
Richard E. Brooks

Sound Department
C. Robert Fine	....	sound mixer

Production Companies

• Apple Corps
• Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
• U.S. Committee for UNICEF

Distributors

• Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation
• Warner Home Video

Runtime:

USA:103 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track

Certification:

Australia:G | Finland:S | Sweden:Btl | USA:G

Filming Locations:

Felt Forum, Madison Square Garden - 4 Pennsylvania Plaza, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Company:

Apple Corps

Trivia:

The show marked one of Bob Dylan's first concert appearances since the mid-1960s, when he was injured in a motorcycle accident. He later toured extensively. Capitol Records made a special deal with Columbia Records (Dylan's label) to include Dylan's portion of the show in the soundtrack album: while the LP (and later CD) version was issued on Apple Records (the Beatles's label), Columbia Records issued the cassette (and 8-track tape) version.

Goofs:

Continuity: In between 'Blowin' in the Wind' and 'Just Like a Woman', Bob Dylan attaches his capo to the second fret of his guitar. George Harrison then leans over to speak to Leon Russell, but immediately in the next shot, Dylan's guitar is capoed on the fourth fret and George is back in his regular position. (This is most likely due to the deletion of another Dylan song, 'Mr. Tambourine Man', which was played with a capo on the 2nd fret and is included on the film's soundtrack album.)

Movie Connections:

Referenced in "Saturday Night Live: Buck Henry/Leon Redbone (#3.6)" (1977)

The grand daddy of relief concerts captured by mediocre film making

Two concerts were held at Madison Square Gardens in New York on the afternoon and evening of August 1, 1971 to raise money and awareness for the plight of war refugees in Bangladest as organized by George Harrison and Ravi Shankar. 40,000 attended the two shows. The album of the event won the highly coveted Grammy Award Album of the Year for 1972. Eric Clapton would be on three album's of the year in his career, Bangladesh, his own Unplugged in 1992 and Santana's Supernatural in 1999. Clapton is on two of the only four live albums to win album of the year. He almost didn't make Bangladesh however due to his heroin problem. As a last minute replacement Taj Mahall guitarist Jesse Ed Davis was chosen but Clapton did show up and Davis remained in the stage lineup. Clapton is pretty much a sideman here and does no singing and only one guitar solo. Ravi Shankar starts out the concert with his band of Indian musicians, Ustad All Akbar Khan, Alla Rakah and Kamala Chak Ravarty in a long, long set. The concert also features Harrison's former Beatle band mate Ringo Starr. Fellow former Beatles John Lennon and Paul McCartney were invited to take part. McCartney declined but Lennon accepted and just two days before the concert when Harrison informed Lennon that it was he who was to perform and not Yoko Ono, Lennon dropped out. Also from the Beatles days, Billy Preston is here and Klaus Voorman. Apple recording stars Badfinger, are part of the ensemble stage band. Leon Russell and special guest Bob Dylan round out the big name stars. Also here are Jim Horn and The Hollywood Horns as well as Carl Radle, Jim Keltner, Don Preston, and backup singers Don Nix, Jo Green, Jeanie Greene, Marlin Grenne, Dolores Hall and Claudia Linnear. Saul Swimmer directed this documentary. He would go on to do the acclaimed Queen We Will Rock You documentary 10 years later. His attempts at directing feature films were forgettable. He was credited also as being a co-producer of the Beatle documentary Let It Be. Harrison was concerned that larger 32MM film cameras would be too imposing so he opted for the use of smaller 16MM film cameras. Richard E. Brooks and Fred Hoffman were the principal cinematographers of the eight man film crew that also included Sol Negrin and Tohru Nakamura. Brooks was like the Ed Wood of cinematography whose career consisted of filming low budget obscure bad feature films. When this film premiered in March of 1972 it was 140 minutes in length but somehow got chopped down by 45 minutes to a 95 minute run-time. I saw this during it's initial theatrical release and have seen it maybe one since and I have not seen it's new DVD version. It's a low budget film with no imaginative camera work and the Ravi Shankar segment is to long but it captures some great performances by a great cast of stars and recording and touring musicians. I would give this a 7.5 out of 10.