Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.What is the best way to experience Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii? \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of film,\u201d David Gilmour once said of his band\u2019s 1972 concert movie, \u201cthat they should show just once on late night television.\u201d\u00a0The sight of the Floyd playing in Pompeii\u2019s empty amphitheatre, superimposed by images of Roman statues and friezes, and \u2014 shudder \u2014 the petrified bodies of the fallen after Vesuvius\u2019s eruption in 79AD, is a head trip, with a side-helping of Spinal Tap. After a muddled release, it became a staple of post-midnight cinema screenings, attended by wide-eyed, or dozing, viewers who were powered (or poleaxed) by more intoxicating fare than buckets of popcorn and vats of cola.It has now been scrubbed up for the age of widescreen televisions and streaming platforms under the title Pink Floyd at Pompeii \u2014 MCMLXXII, the print given a crisp digital revamp by Lana Topham. Meanwhile, Steven Wilson of the band Porcupine Tree, a modern keeper of the progressive rock flame, has done a new audio mix for the soundtrack, which will be released as a standalone album. Debuted at the BFI\u2019s Imax cinema in London prior to a brief theatrical run, the restored film looks and sounds magnificent.More by luck than design, it shows Pink Floyd at a hinge moment. The idea to have them perform in Pompeii\u2019s deserted amphitheatre in October 1971 came from the film\u2019s director, Adrian Maben. He wanted to make an anti-concert film, without cutaways to ecstatic fans and the usual sense of second-hand spectacle. The style is old-school art house.\u00a0A gong is ceremoniously placed in the amphitheatre\u2019s dusty bowl like Chekhov\u2019s gun. The camera pans black loudspeaker stacks as though in the presence of the towering monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The first number is the sublime space-rocker \u201cEchoes\u201d, from the then soon-to-be released Meddle. According to unsubstantiated Floyd lore, the song was designed to match the final sequence of Kubrick\u2019s masterpiece.A bone-bleaching sun beats down. Gilmour and Richard Wright are initially shirtless. The gong duly goes off when it gets a ferocious pasting from a snarling Roger Waters during the band\u2019s crazed rendition of \u201cA Saucerful of Secrets\u201d. Gilmour plays scorching slide guitar during \u201cOne of These Days\u201d, while Nick Mason is a drumming powerhouse, head swivelling to monitor his bandmates. Wright is diffident, but his keyboard parts are central. The music, at the band\u2019s insistence, was mostly performed live.Daft shots show them walking round Vesuvius\u2019s blasted terrain, puzzled-looking adventurers in search of the molten core of rock. Supposed night scenes in the amphitheatre were actually shot later in Paris. Abrupt switches to Abbey Road Studios, where they were working on The Dark Side of the Moon were added to pad the film out. Cue polite English banter about the food in the canteen. But we also get early run-throughs of songs such as \u201cBrain Damage\u201d: the only allusion to their LSD-damaged former leader Syd Barrett.There are \u201ca lot of things left unsaid\u201d in the band, Wright remarks at one point. Their complex, often fraught, dynamics are largely hidden. But this fascinating mish-mash of a film captures them at a crucial juncture, moving from psych-rock trailblazers in the European underground to prog superstars in US arenas. The head-trip still works. Live rock music in an antique necropolis: wow, dig it, man \u2014 that\u2019s some heavy archaeology.\u00a0\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2605\u2606In UK cinemas from April 24<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Summarize this content to 2000 words in 6 paragraphs in Arabic Stay informed with free updatesSimply sign up to the Film myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.What is the best way to experience Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii? \u201cIt\u2019s the kind of film,\u201d David Gilmour once said of his band\u2019s 1972 concert movie,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":284185,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-284184","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-culture"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=284184"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":284186,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/284184\/revisions\/284186"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/284185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=284184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=284184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globetimeline.com\/ar\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=284184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}