Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4039 in DVD
• Released on: 2003-10-20
• Rating: Exempt
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Full Screen, PAL
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: German
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 62 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Conceived by the French director Adrian Maben as "an anti-Woodstock film," Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii was shot in October 1971 in the ancient city's vacant, 2,000-year-old amphitheatre--a venue chosen to accentuate the grandeur and spaciousness of the band's Meddle-era music. This disc contains a new, 90-minute director's cut as well as the original 60-minute concert film, whose production and effects feel inescapably dated. Maben's cut goes to great lengths to lend the film a more contemporary feel, but it's the earlier version that makes this disc such a gem, being more focused on the music and more holistic in vision.

The anamorphic, 16:9 director's cut interweaves the Pompeii performances with fascinating but distracting interviews and music snippets filmed later (mostly during the recording of Dark Side of the Moon). The movie was originally prepared in a 4:3 aspect ratio, however, and the widescreen version crops perfectly framed images like the nine-square mosaic of drummer Nick Mason in "One of These Days". The original offers plenty of close-ups of fingers on frets and keys, with shots that are often luxuriously long in duration. And the picture quality from Pompeii is revelatory: outstandingly sharp and clear, rich in subtle grades of light and colour.

Generous extras include everything from original posters, reviews, bootleg album covers and song lyrics, to a 24-minute interview with Maben. But for all the director's talk of the glorious acoustics in Pompeii's amphitheatre, there's little natural ambience to be heard. The Dolby Digital 2.0 sound is clear, dry and two-dimensional, though notably better than any previous video release. --Michael Mikesell

DVD Description
Track Listing:

• Echoes
  
• Careful With That Axe Eugene
  
• A Saucerful Of Secrets
  
• Us And Them
  
• One Of These Days
  
• Mademoiselle Nobs
  
• Brain Damage
  
• Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun
  
• Echoes

Special Features

• Never before seen rare, additional and archive footage
  
• Interview with Director Adrian Maben
  
• Photo Gallery
  
• Album graphics
  
• Lyrics
  
• History of Pompeii
  
• Miscellaneous section including posters, reviews, bootlegs, roughs and previous covers
  
• Original Storm Thorgeson creative on sleeve and menu designs

DVD Technical Information:

• Running times:
  Director’s cut: 91 minutes
  Original feature (concert): 60 minutes
  Interview with Director: 20 minutes

Customer Reviews

Awful third version -- but the original's hidden in here too
At the risk of being scorched by fanboy flames, I think this is a dreadful release. On the plus side, it's just a simple DVD in a pleasant pack with a cheap leaflet. In other words, they haven't gone to town on the presentation. This is actually a good thing, packaging fetishists -- if the band lighten up, they might actually decide to release all their live tapes and bootlegs like Grateful Dead, King Crimson, Tangerine Dream, Frank Zappa etc have done. Squeeze your eyes shut and mutter a few prayers. Might just happen.

But that's damning with REALLY faint praise. The "Director's Cut" of the movie is horrendous. Whatever possessed Maben to do it, he's plastered dumb computer graphics of the solar system all over the movie, completely botching up the famous slow-zoom beginning. For much of the time you have to pay attention to catch a glimpse of the original Pompeii amphitheatre footage. And then -- disbelievingly -- he throws in absurd lapses in judgement. For example, during the first part of "Echoes", the scene suddenly shifts to a tube train entering an empty station, complete with train noise which swamps what the Floyd are playing. I almost switched off at this point. The music is now overlayed by sound effects. Read it and weep.

If this travesty was all the DVD contained, it would be a no-star loser. I love the original 1972 "Live In Pompeii", it's a fabulous concert movie, slow, solemn, stately, exactly befitting the music. It's also the best toker's movie ever. To have lost all that for this pop-video new "Director's Cut" would have been a tragedy. But happily that original 1972 version is there, hidden away in the extras menu alongside all kinds of worthless "Odds and Sods" like the lyrics too small to read and pictures of the film's VHS covers. Trust me: you may play the third cut once, but from then on you'll stick with the original, and you'll curse the menu system you have to negotiate to get there. Incidentally, all sound is in stereo, and it looks to me like the 16:9 of the new cut is simply the old 4:3 picture with the top and bottom chopped off. You do, however, get the lengthy original "2001"-style settle-down introduction with sound effects over a blank screen.

What is not on this DVD -- and therefore does not officially exist anymore -- is the expanded 1973 cut, in which Maben added to the concert footage some interviews, chatter in the EMI canteen, and fake shots of them recording DSOTM in the studio. (Fake because they'd finished the album when Maben came in to shoot them, so they pretended to work on it for the cameras.) I'm pleased to have the original lay-back-and-drift-off film without all that frippery, but if that was the version you liked best (it was the only version available on VHS) you might just feel cheated.

HISTORICAL NOTE FOR FLOYD VIRGINS: "Live In Pompeii" was recorded in October 1971 just after the release of "Meddle" and was an attempt (like "Ummagumma" two years before) to play all their old material one final time. Sadly, they didn't get time to record "Fat Old Sun" and "Embryo", two concert favourites of the time, but at least they never got around to "Atom Heart Mother". For many fans, 1969-71 was the true golden age for Floyd, just before DSOTM lost them their dope-smoking student audience, replaced by kids screaming "Money!" They would never again sound this relaxed and DSOTM's girlie chorus, saxophone and film clips signalled the end of live improvisation. So this is a precious movie, recorded at exactly the right time. Curiously for Floyd, it shows them playing without any of their normal stage lights or effects. Classic moments abound, including Nick Mason losing his drumstick during "One Of These Days", and the movie itself, with its slow zooms and pans past stacks of black speakers, is now a much-imitated icon. At only an hour in length, director Adrian Maben thought more could be done with it and returned to the movie in 1973 to add inter-song snippets of interviews and pretend studio work. The film is very much of its age, with some horrendous camera tricks. Not everything was recorded in the amphitheatre -- some were recorded on a Paris soundstage later -- and there are a couple of glaring segues, most notably during the first half of "Echoes" (which is itself split in two to bookend the movie). On the whole, though, the Floyd give a truly great performance and this is, after all, the only official live document (video or audio) of the band from this entire period.

Old but good .... VERY GOOD!!!!
Floyd at their best. The now classic performance at the Pompeii amphitheater certainly is one of the highlights of Floyd's career. I have had the video for years (becoming pretty worn out) so I was really pleased with a DVD release. The 'directors cuts' is somewhat ... well, let's say surprising, but when listening to the interview it makes more sense.
And for the hard core purists, there's also the original movie included :-)

Very much recommended!!!!

A unique piece of early 70s culture
Looking at this film thirty years after it was made, the first thing that hits you is how much bolder film makers and musicians were then. Even with all the technical advances that have taken place since 1972, no-one would dare to make a film like this now, even if they could get the financial backing.

The original version of the film (which features as an extra on this DVD) is superb. The rather dated cinematography only adds to the period atmosphere and the audacious concept of playing a live concert in the empty amphitheatre at Pompeii with just the film crew there is just perfect for early Pink Floyd music and makes most other "performance" films seem pretty tame by comparison.

The director's cut is a disappointment. The newly created footage is incongruous and irrelevant. The clips of the Abbey Road studios during the recording of Dark Side of the Moon are interesting but only serve to break the flow of the Pompeii performance. They should be available separately.

Other extras are OK but it is the original film that makes this a crucial purchace for all Pink Floyd fans and fans of rock cinema.