Stop Making Sense

By all accounts, this is the best live concert film in the history of cinema. Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs), a master of music documentaries, is exceptionally skilled when it comes to translating the ecstasy of live performance to the cinema screen. In Stop Making Sense, however, his task was easier: with David Byrne at the centre, the camera seemingly tunes in to his energy. Incidentally, the Talking Heads frontman has been involved with cinema for decades and knows its needs (two years later, in 1986, he will direct True Stories, which we are showing in the musical section). He has the moves of a skilled dancer, a flair for visual extravagance (for this tour, Byrne donned his absurdly large businessman’s suit), and the whole thing was shot in Hollywood and conceived as a show in the making. The film features all the Talking Heads’ hits – including Burning Down the House, Once in a Lifetime, Girlfriend Is Better and This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody), transformed into musical numbers.

Patrycja Mucha

Jonathan Demme (1944–2017) was an American director and screenwriter who started his career with B-movie producer Roger Corman. He’s best-known for two films mixing comedy, romance and action, Something Wild (1986) and Married to the Mob (1988), as well as for the psychological horror film The Silence of the Lambs (1991), for which he won an Oscar. He has also directed several concert films, the most acclaimed of which is Stop Making Sense (1984).

4K restoration from 2023.