USA,
1984, 90 min
Shown in 1984 / 1999
CREDITS
OTHER
COMMENTS
Jonathan Demme, Gary Goetzman, David Byrne, Jerry Harrison and Lynn Mabry in person in 1984. All four Heads (Tina Weymouth, Chris Frantz, Jerry Harrison, David Byrne) plus Demme and Goetzman in person for 1999 rerelease.The perfect teaming of filmmaker and band results from Jonathan Demme's first rock concert film, chronicling the climax of the Talking Heads' recent tour in their spectacular appearance last December at Hollywood's historic Pantages Theatre. Shot in Dolby stereo, Stop Making Sense is the first music film to employ direct-to-film digital re-recording technology. Working in close collaboration with lead singer David Byrne, Demme (Melvin and Howard, Citizen's Band) and cinematographer Jordan Cronenweth (Altered States, Blade Runner) have created a multimedia spectacle, with each song offering a visual landscape reflecting the panorama of the Byrne personae. The film draws most of its songs from the band's most recent album, Speaking in Tongues, aptly described as the "cheeriest work yet" by the group responsible for the most consistently challenging and exciting music of the past decade. A critic's description of the album as "dissolving notions of color and genre in smiles and sweat" might also serve to characterize the films of Jonathan Demme. With a sensibility closer to that of Jean Renoir than just about any other American director, Demme has consistently focused on the efforts of groups of people rather than the glorification of stars. His films, like Renoir's, have alternated moments of deep feeling and high comedy in a manner that is as true to the heart as it is, all too often, fatal to the box office. The Talking Heads, an art-rock group that "doesn't flaunt its cleverness" have found their match in Stop Making Sense. There are more than a few highlights in this exhilarating work which are as unexpectedly moving as any musical moments we've seen on film since Jason Robards began reluctantly warbling "Bye Bye Blackbird."
—1984 SFIFF Program Guide
When Jonathan Demme’s Talking Heads doc Stop Making Sense world-premiered at the SFIFF in 1984, the audience danced in the aisles. Literally. (This didn’t go over so well with the Castro Theatre staff, of course, who were worried about the recently refurbished pipe organ.) And the landmark concert film—both an exemplar of honest cultural appropriation and a spare, yet rich model of what a music film should be—has lost none of that rhythmic power and charisma, especially in this dazzling new 15th-anniversary print with its newly remixed soundtrack. Flaunting David Byrne’s famous “big suit”—in which the gaunt, geekish singer cavorts like a 12-year-old caught in dad’s work clothes—the film reels from bright, funk-influenced danceables (“Life During Wartime,” “Take Me to the River”) to austere and atmospheric numbers such as the moving “Heaven” and the brittle “Psycho Killer.” Demme’s roaming camera focuses on the stage action, blissfully swimming amongst the band members—Talking Heads Jerry Harrison, Chris Frantz, Tina Weymouth and David Byrne, along with Parliament/Funkadelic keyboardist Bernie Worrell, percussionist Steve Scales and vocalists Lynn Mabry and Ednah Holt—and never forgetting that a concert film should be about the music, nothing more and nothing less.
—Nick Tangborn, 1999 SFIFF Program Guide