Stop Making Sense

To state the obvious, there are two ingredients to a good live rock concert film - the quality of the performance and the way in which it is filmed. Jonathan Demme's Stop Making Sense which is justly regarded as one of the very best of the genre, comes up trumps in both respects.

Filmed over three nights in December1983 at Hollywood's Pantages Theatre, the film is all in concert with no backstage footage or interviews and only a few seconds of crowd  shots towards the its end. The band is in brilliant form as they deliver their hits including ‘Psycho Killer’ ‘Burning Down The House’. Take Me To The River’. ‘Once In A Lifetime” and so on, the core band of bassist Tina Weymouth, drummer Chris Frantz, keyboardist Jerry Harrison and David Byrne guitar and vocals being joined by a percussionist, second guitar and keyboards and two singers.

Needless to say, Byrne is mesmerizing in a extraordinary performance that builds from him alone with an acoustic guitar and boom box doing ‘Psycho Killer’ and over the next five numbers being jouned by the remaining band members  as the stage is gradually filled for a scorching version of ‘Burning Down the House’. The concert culminates with Byrne in his classic big suit for a rendition of ‘Girlfriend Is Better’. Although  Byrne looks anything but the rock star, he is clearly the genius behind and in front of The Talking Heads (the film only slightly stalls when the Wymouth-Frantz “side project, The Tom Tom Club, perform a song "Genius of Love" mid-show) bringing a wired intensity like a possessed marionette to the songs which range from art-pop to Afro polyrhythmic beats. It is small surprise that the success of the band owed much to the influence of MTV during the 1980s as Byrne clearly understands the importance of the visual dimension to pop music.

Director Jonathan Demme and cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth (who had lensed Blade Runner) do a beautiful job of filming the concert, the camera unobtrusively capturing the performers (cleverly Demme used the first concert as a dry run, with actual filming beginning on the second night) with unforced attentiveness and superb clarity of sound and image using state-of-the-art direct-to-digital recording equipment (the film was remastered for Dolby for its 15th anniversary theatrical re-release).
 
Even if you are not a Talking Heads fan Stop Making Sense is an exhilarating experience

 

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