The greatest movie ever made..!

Absolutely amazing

A Disappointing Continuation

One of the film's great tricks is that, for a time, you think it will go down a rabbit hole of unrealistic glorification.

Pretension runs all through director Peter Clifton's 137 minute long, 1976 quasi-documentary on Led Zeppelin and a series of three concert performances at Madison Square Garden, in New York City, during July of 1973, called The Song Remains The Same. Aside from the concert footage, the film weaves assorted silly fantasy sections into the film, as well as footage of backstage goings on, such as security guards beating rowdy fans, the theft of $203,000 from the band's safe deposit box at the hotel they were staying at, and band manager Peter Grant's bullying of various Garden personnel over matters trivial and not, among others. The film was not the first attempt at a true 'rockumentary,' but it was the first rockumentary to try and add extraneous fictive material so the whole could be seen as a work of art, apart and above the actual music. Prior to The Song Remains The Same such films, like Michael Wadleigh's 1970 documentary Woodstock, on the famed 1969 rock festival, were basically strictly journalistic endeavors or attempts at cinema veritè. Not so with this film. And that's its fatal flaw.While the music, and even the band's lapses into self-indulgence, are great, the film's cinematic pretensions bring the whole effort down into a barely passable cinematic mediocrity. In a sense, parts of the film play out almost like a precursor to Rob Reiner's seminal 1984 'mockumentary' classic This Is Spinal Tap. Numerous shots where the band is actually 'live' in concert are mixed in with scenes of them on stages at Shepperton Studios that do not resemble their American venues, and numerous other little alterations had to be made. The film would have been so much better had they simply filmed the concerts, then did the fantasy sequences and combined them, rather than the time and money wasting rigmarole that ensued.Unlike the Beatles' A Hard Day's Night, which received overwhelmingly positive reviews for a bad film, The Song Remains The Same, a merely mediocre film, was almost routinely savagely attacked from Day One, mainly for the fantasy sequences. That said, like the Beatles film, the Led Zeppelin film did well at the box office. Unlike A Hard Day's Night, though, The Song Remains The Same was, indeed, a highly influential film. Almost all concert films and rockumentaries that have come since have this film's DNA stamped on it, for the good or the ill. And, unlike the Beatles film, this film's improvs are restricted to the musical stage, where Plant and Page were masters of that art form.

I was absolutely in full frontal excitement when I bought this, I really couldn't wait to watch my heroes live for the first time. I was way too young to have seen Led Zeppelin in person(at least in their heyday) so I couldn't wait. And I'm not gonna' lie I was extremely disappointed by it. But after settling down I realised it's not that bad. It would be ridiculous to assume that Led Zeppelin would be able to replicate the structural perfection of the studio on a stage, and why would they want to. The spontaneity of the performance is captured, not amazingly but at least to the point that one song will suddenly drift into another or a guitar solo will be a completely 'on the spot' concoction. Sure the fantasy sections are pieces of pure over-the-top self appraisals. Robert Plants section is especially vain. Overall though there is enough quality musicianship to buy this. Great song performances include a touching 'Rain Song', an absolutely astounding 'Since I've Been Loving You'(in which Plants voice resembles a Luciferian angel's), and a powerful heart grabbing 'Black Dog'. Worth a watch.

I've become a major Led Zeppelin fan and, since I was born in the 80's, I will never get the chance to see them live in concert. So, being born as late in the century as I was, this concert film was a godsend and gave me an awesome chance to watch one of my favorite rock bands working their magic on stage. The film is collected from footage over three days during their 1973 performances in Madison Square Garden in New York City. The band performs some of their greatest pieces, including "Whole Lotta Love", "Since I've Been Loving You", and "Stairway to Heaven". Now I see that Zeppelin seemed to have a great energy and stage presence; it's a shame I'll never been able to experience it in person. Jimmy Page is incredible to watch and John Bonham has some killer moments (i.e. his killer drum solo during "Moby Dick").The music is, of course, incredible, but the movie has some flaws. I didn't really care for the fantasy sequences, though I don't regret their inclusion. I loved the fact that each member of the band was given the chance to visualize their own segment and it was a cool glimpse into their creativity. I just didn't feel the movie needed the sequences. They may have been better as additional supplemental material. Also, the movie is an endurance challenge to watch in it's entirety. At 2.5 hours, good music or not, it gets to be a bit difficult to watch in a straight run. A 2.5 performance in person with the ideal sound and atmosphere is one thing, it's different when you're viewing it on a television screen. Regardless, I loved this movie. Led Zeppelin is one of the rock legends and now I've gotten to experience them in concert (even if it was in limited format).

This movie is mostly a chronicle of the probably the greatest rock band EVER in concert together with a combination of some music video type fantasy sequences and a bit of 1970s documentary to boot. It is true that the non-concert fantasy sequences of this movie are on the self-indulgent side, but this film was made during (and contributed to) the "invention" of the idea of the music video. That alone is pretty impressive, and its really inconceivable that one of the first attempts at an entirely original genre would end up being the best ever made. Top that off with the fact that the musicians themselves were in charge of these parts of the movie, its probably a miracle that they didn't ruin the film together.Another thing that makes this movie special for the fan is how notoriously "anti-TV" the band was during its career and thus how much less exposure they had during their prime. Speaking of which, I do NOT agree with a previous reviewer that 1973 was their artistic height, "Physical Graffiti" and "Presence" are both groundbreaking rock albums that took the genre to another level. Obviously their last all new album, "In Through the Out Door" is considered by most to be an experiment that surprised everyone and did not impress many. I just watched the 2007 remastered version film and second disc of extras. Their manager, Peter Grant, explains in a 1976 interview from the BBC why they were not dying to get on TV at every opportunity like most other bands. He says that TV has a tiny picture and crappy sound so it is just not a proper way to experience the band (which I think was both very true and an extremely gutsy opinion) and that is why the avoided TV at every turn. There is also 1973 news footage about the safe deposit box robbery in NY, of course it would've been nice for them to at least put up a one page graphic stating that this crime is still totally unsolved after almost 25 years, something that I think most people would naturally be left wondering at the end of the piece. There is also four additional songs from the 1973 Madison Square Garden shows that were used to create the film on the bonus disc, which again is great for fans but does validate that they did pick the best songs for the movie itself. There is also a (unintentially) funny time capsule extended news piece from Tampa in 1973 about the concert there, its like the inspiration for Ron Burgundy in the movie Anchorman, how did that EVER get saved all this time? The original movie trailer is included as is an audio only piece done in 1976 by Cameron Crowe about the band. I have a pet peeve about Crowe that (for me) he has a special talent to make something that SHOULD be very interesting extremely boring, like his real life experiences with Zeppelin and other bands turned into a sappy lovesick puppy snorefest about some groupie (Almost Famous.) Its a "Zeppelin primer" of a mix of him talking together with song segments through the release of the album "Presence" and the only person who might find it interesting is someone who has no idea of the history of the band.One nice touch is that the menu system is actually pretty cool, someone spent a lot of time making the menus actually somewhat original and interesting, even the song selection menus show three songs at a time each with a completely different layout.The remaster of the movie is very well done, especially the inclusion of both Dolby Digital and DTS remastered soundtracks. They really open up the sound much better than the original soundtrack, although I haven't done extensive scientific side-by-side listening sessions. At proper concert volume it sounds spectacular.I will always wish that I could've seen one of the greatest bands of all time live, but this is definitely as close as you can get now, I will be forever grateful that this movie was made for that reason alone. Final words: original version - AWESOME; 2007 version - turns it up to ELEVEN.