Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii is a 1972 concert film directed by Adrian Maben with the English rock band Pink Floyd performing at the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy. The band performed a typical live set from the era, but there was no audience beyond the basic film crew. The main footage in and around the amphitheatre was filmed over four days in October 1971, using the band's regular touring equipment, including a mobile 8-track recorder from Paris (before being bumped up to 16-track in post-production). Additional footage filmed in a Paris television studio the following December was added for the original 1972 release. The film was then re-released in 1974 with additional studio material of the band working on The Dark Side of the Moon, and interviews at Abbey Road Studios.
The film has subsequently been released on video numerous times, and in 2002, a director's cut was released on DVD, which combined the original footage from 1971 with more contemporary shots of space and the area around Pompeii, assembled by Maben. In April 2025, a 4K restoration, Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII, was shown in cinemas by Trafalgar Releasing and Sony Music Vision, and released on home media shortly after. This was followed by an album with the remixed songs and outtakes, which was released on 2 May 2025 and topped the music charts in several countries. A number of bands have taken inspiration from the film in creating their own videos, or filming concerts without an audience.
Background
Filmmaker Adrian Maben, interested in combining art with Pink Floyd's music, contacted David Gilmour and the band's manager, Steve O'Rourke, in 1971 to discuss the possibilities of making a film in which the band's music was played over images of paintings by René Magritte, Jean Tinguely, Giorgio de Chirico and others. Pink Floyd had experience filming outside the context of a standard rock concert, including an hour-long performance in KQED TV studios in April 1970, but Maben's idea was rejected. Maben went on holiday to Naples in the early summer. During a visit to Pompeii he lost his passport, and went back to the Amphitheatre, which he had visited earlier in the day, in order to find it. Walking around the deserted ruins, he thought the silence and natural ambient sounds present would make a good backdrop for the music. He also felt that filming the band without an audience would be a good reaction to earlier films such as Woodstock and Gimme Shelter, where the films paid equal attention to performers and spectators. One of Maben's contacts at the University of Naples, Professor for Architecture, Ugo Carputi, who was a Pink Floyd fan, managed to persuade the local authorities to close the amphitheatre for six days that October for filming. Access was secured after payment of a "fairly steep" entrance fee.
Filming
Pompeii The performances of "Echoes", "A Saucerful of Secrets", and "One of These Days" were filmed from 4 to 7 October 1971. O'Rourke delivered a demo to Maben in order for him to prepare for the various shots required, which he finally managed to do the night before filming started. The choice of material was primarily the band's, but while Maben realised it was important to include material from the band's new album Meddle, he was also keen to include "Careful with That Axe, Eugene" and "A Saucerful of Secrets", as he felt they would be good numbers to film.
The band insisted on playing live, and brought their regular touring gear with them. Their roadie, Peter Watts, suggested that the 8-track recorder would produce a sound comparable to a studio recording. In addition, the natural echo of the amphitheatre provided good acoustics for the recording. The equipment was carried by truck from London and took three days to reach Pompeii. When it arrived, it was discovered that there was insufficient power to drive it correctly. This problem plagued filming for several days, and was finally resolved by running a lengthy cable of approximately from the local town hall.
The first section of footage to be filmed was montage shots of the band walking around Boscoreale, mixed with shots of volcanic mud, which can be seen at various points in "Echoes" and "Careful with That Axe, Eugene". For the live performances, the band recorded portions of the songs in sections, which were later spliced together. After each take, they listened to the playback on headphones. Maben closed all the entrances to the amphitheatre, but a few children managed to sneak in and were allowed to watch the filming quietly from a distance.
Paris
The remaining songs were filmed in Studio Europasonor, Paris, from 13 to 20 December and can be distinguished by the absence of Richard Wright's beard. To fit in with the theme of the earlier work in Pompeii, the filming around Boscoreale, along with stock footage of waterfalls and lava and various shots of Roman mosaics and drawings from the Naples National Archaeological Museum were added into the Paris footage. Maben also filmed additional transflex footage for insertion into the Pompeii performances. While both the director and the band were disappointed with this footage, due to a lack of time and money, there was no alternative left but to use it.
During the filming in Paris, the band suggested they would like to film a performance of a short blues song with a howling dog, in the style of "Seamus" from Meddle. Maben knew Madonna Bouglione, daughter of circus director Joseph Bouglione, who was known to walk about Paris with a dog called Nobs. Accordingly, Nobs was invited into the studio, where the footage was filmed for "Mademoiselle Nobs".
Maben subsequently edited some of the final cut at home, due to financial constraints. He regretted doing this, as he felt it was important to separate his work and home life, but, at the time, he had no choice.
Release history
The original premiere took place on 2 September 1972, at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. This initial cut, running for one hour, only featured the live footage. The film was scheduled for a special premiere at London's Rainbow Theatre, on 25 November 1972, but it was cancelled at the last minute by the theatre's owner, Rank Strand as they didn't have a certificate from the British Board of Film Censors and the theatre could be seen to be in competition with established cinemas.
Maben was concerned that one of the problems with the film was that it was too short. In early 1973, Maben was fly fishing with Waters, and suggested the possibility of improving the film by watching them at work in a recording studio. Subsequently, Maben was invited with a small crew using a single 35 mm camera to Abbey Road Studios to film supposed recording sessions of The Dark Side of the Moon, as well as interviews conducted off-camera by Maben, and footage of the band eating and talking at the studio cafeteria. Maben was particularly happy with this footage, feeling it captured the spontaneous humour of the band.
Running at 80 minutes, this latest version premiered on 10 November 1973, at the Alouette Theatre in Montreal, the release organized in part by George Ritter Films, and Mutual Films. It was a financial success in Canada, and according to Billboard, the film "did such amazing business in its first week in Montreal that the original number of prints ordered for Canada has doubled." The film's American release was overseen by the Cincinnati-based April Fools Films, an independent distributor founded for the purpose of distributing the film. Early test screenings in the US were held in April 1974 before premiering in other parts of the country, which happened later into the summer (accompanied in certain instances by a special quadraphonic mix). The film earned considerably more in the US, where, by October 1974, BoxOffice reported that the film had already grossed over $2 million.
The film was not financially successful according to Mason, though Maben disagrees, and suffered particularly from being overshadowed by the release of The Dark Side of the Moon not long after the original theatrical showing. It was released on various home video formats several times.
A director's cut version of the film was released in 2002. It included all the original footage except for the short instrumental intro known as “Pompeii” and the studio footage of “On The Run”, and added some additional filming of the Apollo space program. It also includes the original one-hour cut as a bonus feature. This cut also features approximately 10 minutes of black and white documentary footage shot in 1971 at the Europa-Sonor studio in Paris, and, much like the Abbey Road footage, features shots of the band eating and working in a studio, along with individual interviews.
Unlike the rest of the film, this footage was shot on Maben's own 16mm camera. In 2013, Maben restored and re-edited the footage into a 52-minute documentary titled Chit-Chat with Oysters. The documentary was originally shown at the Toute la mémoire du monde film festival in 2013.
A 4K resolution restoration was screened in cinemas in April 2025, under the new title Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII. The soundtrack was remixed by Steven Wilson. The re-release earned $3,034,432 worldwide (including $1,297,249 in the United States) on the first day. By 27 April, it grossed $6,497,252 (including $2,620,076 in the United States), and ranked #10 at the U.S.-Canada box office in its opening weekend after earning $1.3 million between 25 and 27 April. The film was released on streaming, DVD, and Blu-ray on 2 May 2025. A 4K UHD Blu-ray version was released on 27 February 2026.
The film's soundtrack, also titled Pink Floyd at Pompeii – MCMLXXII, was released on 2 May 2025 under Columbia Records, marking the first time the film's soundtrack had been released standalone. In addition to being released in CD and digital audio formats, this re-release marks the first time that the film's soundtrack was made available vinyl and Dolby Atmos. The album went straight to no.1 in the UK Official Album Charts on 9 May 2025, giving the group their seventh UK no.1 album.
Reception
Maben was particularly pleased with positive reviews that came out of the film's showing at the Edinburgh International Film Festival, but was disappointed to hear one New York critic describe it "like the size of an ant crawling around the great treasures of Pompeii".
Reviewing the 1974 release, Audience regarded the film as "a handsome visual production." The Hollywood Reporter called it a "fully structured concept which stands on its own quite beyond its function of recording a live rock concert". Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and wrote, "The interviews with Pink Floyd are too scattershot to achieve any significance; we are left with the music, which is extremely fine." Meanwhile, Billboard said it looked dated and was "dull, unimaginative and hokey, and does not do justice to the Pink Floyd Vision". Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times dismissed the film as "a fan-magazine article dressed up as a movie, with lots of close-ups of its heroes and an off-screen interviewer who occasionally drops in a question or a comment—about their equipment or their compatibility—and is satisfied with whatever he is told".